Old Contracts Place Cape May Mayor Into Election Fray

CAPE MAY – With three seats open on city council and five candidates running, it seemed a campaign that Mayor Edward Mahaney Jr. could watch from the sidelines. Mahaney has two years left on his term. The reality is a very different matter with Mahaney and council candidate Charles Hendricks trading threats of legal action against each other.
Gregory Saputelli, an attorney representing Mahaney, sent a cease-and-desist demand letter to Hendricks on behalf of Mahaney Oct. 15. The letter’s focus is Hendricks’ prominent inclusion of alleged ethics violation by Mahaney, found to be without merit in 2012 by the state Local Finance Board, concerning three contracts awarded to Temple University entities by the city.
Hendricks maintains that the contracts, the result of a no-bid professional services contract process, are evidence of the “old-school cronyism in city contracts” against which he is campaigning. Billing himself as the reform candidate for council, Hendricks is critical of much that has gone on during the term of the current council.
He singled out the Temple contract issue for special attention and, in so doing, made Mahaney, a non-candidate, a focus of his campaign’s attention.
The Oct. 15 letter details the process in 2012 when Hendricks and two others filed an ethics complaint against Mahaney alleging misconduct in the handling of three Temple contracts. The contracts in reference were no-bid awards for services made by the city and approved by the entire council, but which Hendricks claims implied a conflict of interest since Mahaney was at the time engaged in discussions with Temple concerning naming rights he would obtain under certain circumstances.
In that letter, Saputelli claims that Mahaney is being harmed by innuendo and misleading comments. The ethics complaint filed in 2012 with the Local Finance Board of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, the only state body that can hear such complaints, was unsuccessful. The board found that the three contracts were “professional services contracts and thus not subject to public bidding.”
The board went on to dismiss the complaint as having “no reasonable factual basis.” The period when the board’s decision could have been appealed has long past. Saputelli claims that constant reference to the Temple contracts issue is meant to intentionally mislead the public, since the language used implies that this is still an open issue and since it never indicates that the complaint had been heard and dismissed. If the cease and desist demand is ignored, Mahaney reserves the right to take further legal action.
Within days Hendricks made available a letter he wrote to Saputelli as well as a much longer document that details his view of the contracts controversy and the ethics complaint back in 2012.
Hendricks claims that Mahaney is trying to “chill constitutionally-protected speech” and to “dictate to the voters what is, and what is not, an important city-wide issue” in the election.
Hendricks goes on to say that further actions by Mahaney to stifle his presentation of the Temple contracts as a part of his campaign reform agenda will be construed by him as evidence of an “intent to interfere with the outcome of the impending election to my damage.” He states that his counsel is evaluating “potential counterclaims” against Mahaney.
In his long recital of the history of the 2012 complaint and the board’s response, Hendricks remains critical of the process, dismisses the decision of the board by questioning its competency, describes what he claims is the “low state of public confidence in the Cape May City Council under the leadership of Mayor Mahaney.”
At a candidates’ presentation after Hendricks had received the demand letter from Mahaney’s attorney, he continued to refer to the Temple contracts in response to questions.
The indication is strongly present that he does not intent to pull back from using this as a campaign issue. Meanwhile Mahaney claims his reputation is being harmed by Hendricks misleading the public about a matter that was investigated and dismissed two years ago.
Following the ethics complaint filed by Hendricks in 2012 as Mahaney was coming up for reelection, Mahaney was successful in his reelection. Again, voters will decide if Hendricks, with his reform agenda, will be successful in joining council.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.