Russell fires back over ethics violation opinion

Brick Councilwoman Kathy Russell wants an apology from Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis and the township attorney for what she says is a bogus ethics charge.

Chances are, she won't be getting one.

"My inquiry, which is the type of investigation that I would have expected the township attorney to conduct prior to leveling such a devastating charge against me, has uncovered evidence that clearly and unequivocally shows that the ethics charge was based on completely false information," Russell said in a recent statement.

Neither Acropolis nor Township Attorney Jean Cipriani has any plans to apologize.

"I think she owes me an apology for dragging me into this," the mayor said Monday. "This is not about Steve Acropolis.

At issue is Russell's release of a concept plan for the purchase of the Ocean Ice Palace, a plan now moot since owner Joan Dwulet cut off negotiations with the township last month.

Russell began calling for a referendum on the Ice Palace purchase last summer, when Acropolis first announced the township planned to buy it.

This spring, she aligned herself with the group Stop OverSpending, which successfully gathered enough signatures to put the Ice Palace purchase on the November ballot.

A resident berated Russell at the May 27 Township Council meeting for supporting the referendum question. The resident also asked if Russell erred in releasing a concept plan for a community center on the Ice Palace property to the public.

After the resident finished, Acropolis asked Township Attorney Jean Cipriani to research the matter.

"I asked the township attorney to get the resident an answer," the mayor said. "I know it seems foreign to Democrats that you should answer residents' questions."

Cipriani issued a May 29 memorandum that said there was a "compelling position" that disclosing the concept plan without the consent of the mayor and/or full Township Council was an ethical violation.

She recommended that the township's Ethics Committee be bypassed if anyone decided to take the matter further and the issue referred to the state Local Finance Board.

Russell at first contended the document was already public when she discussed the concept plan at a council caucus meeting.

She later filed Open Public Records Act requests with the Morris County Improvement Authority, the agency Brick had hoped to use as a vehicle to obtain financing for the Ice Palace purchase.

The concept plan Russell refers to, "C- 2," included a second ice rink, a fourstory parking deck, a field house and a community center. T&M Associates, the township's engineering firm, sent the plan to Township Administrator Scott M. Pezarras by e-mail April 21. Pezarras then e-mailed the concept plan to the MCIA at 4:47 p.m. April 22, several hours before she discussed the plan at the council meeting, Russell said.

"The e-mails show that the basis of the ethics charge, that I improperly disclosed a confidential 'concept plan' to the public, was false because the mayor's office had already publicly released the 'concept plan' before I even saw it," she said.

But Cipriani said it was her understanding that Pezarras provided the information to Acacia Financial Group Inc., the township's financial advising firm, which then forwarded it to the MCIA.

Russell called Cipriani's ruling that the concept plan was not a public document "dead wrong." She said she conducted her own investigation of the matter, because of the seriousness of the allegations that she had acted unethically.

Cipriani said she researched the matter after a resident requested the information, and Acropolis asked her to follow up on it.

"It was based on a set of facts I believe the mayor and all of the council members agreed upon at the time the memo was written," she said Monday.

Cipriani said she has no plans to issue a revised opinion unless she is asked to do so by the mayor or council members.

"I am not going to write additional opinions through the newspapers," she said.

Cipriani said she doesn't think the original memo was incorrect.

"It was based on a certain set of facts, including the fact that the document was still predecisional and would have been protected from an OPRA release," she said. "Since it appears it was obtained through an OPRA request made not through the township, but the MICA, that is a different set of facts, which could alter the analysis."

Cipriani said she was disturbed by suggestions that either the mayor or her employer told her what to write.

"The opinion was my own," she said. "It was not functioning as a mouthpiece for anyone."

Russell is also demanding a written retraction of the ethics violation.

"I also call for an investigation into the mayor's office and the possible intentional concealment of evidence that would have immediately show the falsity of the ethics claim and blocked the defamatory statements about my character," she said.

Acropolis said he had done nothing more than respond to a resident's question by asking Cipriani to research the matter.

"This is nothing else but the Democrats trying to shut down local government," Acropolis said.