We get it: Jersey is corrupt

Englewood's City Hall on Memorial Day. Today, The Record's local editors show they learned nothing from their time covering the city as reporters.

New York. Paris. Hey, you've got to be impressed with Editor Marty Gottlieb's journalism credentials.

But as today's front page clearly shows, readers wish he had spent a lot more time in New Milford, Paramus and all the other small and big home-rule towns that make up The Record's North Jersey beat.

Just because the paper's political columnist has had his head buried in his ass since Governor Christie took office doesn't mean Gottlieb now has to run a Page 1 story throwing cold water on the GOP bully's reformer image.

Cronies and worse

Readers long have known that image is just so much bullshit. 

And for years, the editors have ignored all the evidence that Christie is just another Jersey politician who has rewarded his cronies with high-paying jobs.

When Christie was the corruption-busting U.S. attorney and lionized by a bored media, he steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to a former U.S. attorney general who was his boss and to a former federal judge.

Once in office, he killed the biggest mass transit project in a region hopelessly choked with traffic, packed the Port Authority with his cronies and rubber-stamped exorbitant toll hikes on Hudson River crossings and the turnpike.

Has The Record ever bothered to list all the jobs he has given in an out of his administration to former members of his staff at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark? 


More from Zisaville

So, today's Page 1 stories on Christie and Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa, the convicted former Hackensack police chief, tell readers nothing they don't already know about Jersey-style corruption.

And they serve to remind Hackensack residents of how head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her lazy deputy assignment editor, Dan Sforza, have subverted the local-news operation.

Like Monsy Alvarado, the previous Hackensack reporter, Staff Writer Stephanie Akin has written more about Zisa than any other issue affecting residents.

If past practice is any guide, Akin will cover every burp, cough and fart of the 20-plus civil suits filed against the former police chief by his subordinates -- and completely neglect just about everything else that happens in Hackensack.

Errors 'R' Us

Residents remain in the dark about the city's budget and tax rate, and other important news.

On Page 1 today, Akin reports a June 6 deposition given by Zisa is the first time he has spoken on "the public record" since he was convicted in May of official misconduct and insurance fraud.

But a deposition isn't public, and doesn't become part of the public record until it is filed with the court as part of a motion. Or, it may be used at a trial. 

The only people who find New Jersey's red-light program "controversial" are lead-footed drivers who blow through them, causing accidents and killing themselves and others (A-3).

Road worrier

On Sykes' Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski has mastered writing an entire column -- supposedly about commuting -- from the air-conditioned comfort of his home or office (L-1).

Today's inconsequential piece answers e-mails from drivers -- at least one of whom is blind.

Peter DeMaio of Totowa claims the Garden State Parkway "no longer offers cash receipts." DeMaio somehow has missed all the toll lanes marked "Cash" and "Receipts."

Fire sale

In an L-1 story about plans for a new firehouse in Englewood, the editors err in discussing a development parcel made up of the firehouse and "the shuttered Liberty School."

It's the 100-year-old plus Lincoln School -- next to the firehouse -- that is closed. Liberty, which is blocks away, is used by school administrators.

Both Sykes and Sforza covered Englewood as reporters. How did they let that major error get through?