Prosecutor: Wildwood Violated Sunshine Law

WILDWOOD — County Prosecutor Robert Taylor said this city’s officials recently violated the Open Public Meetings Act or “Sunshine Law” while interviewing candidates for municipal administrator. It remains unclear what effect it will have on Dale Goodneau, who was selected during that potentially flawed process.
New Jersey’s Sunshine Law is meant to ensure that decision-making government bodies conduct their businesses in the public, except in special circumstances.
According to a June 17 letter from Taylor to Mayor Gary DeMarzo and Commissioners Al Brannen and Ed Harshaw, the city announced to official newspapers that special meetings would be held on April 27 and 28 for candidate interviews. At the meetings, however, city attorneys counseled commissioners that the Sunshine Law did not apply because interviews were a personnel matter (a special circumstance) not subject to the provisions of the Act.
“In my opinion, those rulings were not correct,” Taylor wrote. “It is clear that all three commissioners met to discuss the public business of the City of Wildwood, namely, interviews for the hiring of a municipal administrator…Hiring a municipal administrator is clearly public business.”
It was City Clerk Christopher Wood who contacted the Prosecutor’s Office to inform them of the violations.
“In my opinion, the City Clerk’s complaint has merit and there appears to have been violations of the of the Open Public Meetings Act,” Taylor wrote, noting that public business, as defined in the Act, “means and includes all matters which relate in any way, directly or indirectly, to the performance of the public body’s functions or the conduct of its business.”
The Sunshine Law also requires public bodies to keep comprehensible minutes on the essentials of all meetings, Taylor wrote. No one who participated recalled if minutes were taken and Wood reported no minutes being filed with his office.
Taylor said penalties could be levied against those who commit knowing violations of the Sunshine Law. He said he would not seek penalties “under these circumstances especially since Commissioner Harshaw and Commissioner Brannen are newly elected Commissioners and may not be aware of the Open Public Meeting Acts various provisions. But I would expect Mayor DeMarzo and the City Solicitors to be aware.”
“Any future violations may be dealt with in a different manner,” Taylor wrote.
“You should be aware that any action taken at a meeting which does not conform to the Act is voidable,” Taylor wrote.
In other words, the decisions made during those meetings could be undone, which leaves the status of the city’s newly hired administrator uncertain.
Goodreau, an Ocean View resident and former deputy administrator for Egg Harbor Township, was one of more than 50 applicants for the position. Acting administrator Richard Deaney and management recruitment firm Jersey Professional Management helped commissioners conduct an extensive search for the position, whittling the candidate pool down to 11 and then to three before Goodreau was finally chosen. Goodreau’s selection was announced at the city’s Jun 9 meeting.
“The Board conducted itself well within its legal right, especially after taking the advice of two city attorneys,” DeMarzo told the Press of Atlantic City, noting that he was disheartened by Taylor’s comment “that somehow an elected official is to disregard the legal opinions of its professionals.”
Wood, who provided a copy of the Prosecutor’s letter to the Herald, declined official comment for this story, but told the Press that the city “faces the very real possibility of a complete ‘re-do’ of that interview process — because the successful candidate was initially interviewed at one of those illegal meetings. What a colossal waste of time, and what a shame for the residents and taxpayers of the City of Wildwood.”