Zisaville still stinks to high heaven

Founders of Hackensack are turning over in their graves at the Church On The Green. (Wikipedia)

Politically connected lawyers continue to rule Hackensack months after the conviction of the former police chief, The Record reported today and Friday.

A Page 1 story on Friday reported:

"Hackensack zoning board attorney Richard Malagiere, lawyer Carmine Alampi and Anthony Errico -- the owners -- were not cited for any violations at 236 Johnson Ave. since they purchased the [house] in 2008, even though the previous owners had been issued such citations several times."

Hackensack is known as "Zisaville" after decades of rule by the Zisa family, including former Assemblyman and Police Chief Ken Zisa, who was found guilty in May of official misconduct and other charges.

Cousin on payroll

Ken Zisa's politically connected cousin, Joseph Zisa, remains as the city attorney.

Joseph Zisa's name doesn't appear in Friday's A-1 and A-8 stories on Malagiere, Alampi and Errico, or today's story on L-2, but the paper reported:

"Critics of the city's leadership, long dominated by the Zisa family ... say allies such as Malagiere, who has received at least $822,000 in fees from Hackensack for legal services since 2010, benefit from their ties and exert huge influence."

The legal fees were for zoning board work and Malagiere's "role in defending former Police Chief Ken Zisa in civil lawsuits filed against him by Hackensack police officers."

City Attorney Joseph Zisa has had to recuse himself from defending the chief, his cousin, forcing the city to pay yet another lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend the disgraced chief in those same cases.

Big production snafu

Friday's front page also contained a glaring production error that was completely missed by the six-figure editor in charge of such matters, Liz Houlton.

Sports fan were stopped dead on A-1 by a big block of missing type in Steve Popper's column about the hapless Nets, who fled New Jersey for Brooklyn.

Popper's breathless account ends abruptly after "Deron Williams" and picks up with part of a quote from the fired coach.

Jock publisher's role 

Sharing the blame for the screw-up is jock Publisher Stephen A. Borg, who fled Hackensack for Rockaway and Woodland Park.

When the paper was printed in Hackensack, some of the first copies off the press were rushed up to the 4th Floor, where copy editors would pore over the sections fronts and leaf through the paper, trying to find and fix errors.

Now, the paper is printed more than 40 miles way in Rockaway Township, where the first, error-filled copies apparently are fed to dairy cows grazing around the plant. 

Appropriately, the headline over Popper's column says, "Wherever Nets go, dysfunction follows."

All of the errors delivered to readers day after day show the same can be said for Houlton and The Record.  

The missing Popper type appears on A-2 today.

Dysfunctional columnist 

How about the Road Warrior column on Friday's L-1, where the lazy John Cichowski tries to alarm readers with a "57 percent rise in fatal New Jersey crashes for this year's 4-and-a-half-day Yule period"?

But only 7 people were killed last year, and that was in 3 and a half days -- so isn't the comparison flawed? (See the previous post for a longer discussion of Friday's troubling Road Warrior column.)


Leaving out Hackensack


On L-3 Friday, the Teaneck and Englewood reporters teamed up on a story about major substation work that is supposed to improve the reliability of electric service.

Did head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, forget that Hackensack and many other towns in Bergen County also get electricity from PSE&G, and may need similar work?

A story on Friday's L-6 doesn't explain why Carlstadt is biding farewell to its administrator and not firing its police chief, who probably gets paid more than $200,000 a year for going to fetch donuts.

Not worth the detour

In Friday's Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung tries mightily to sugar-coat the high prices at La'Mezza, a Lebanese fusion restaurant in Englewood that is more style than substance (BL-14-15).

La'Mezza charges $24 for a red snapper fillet -- or what can buy you an entire fish in many other restaurants.

The Englewood restaurant has only one lure: The owner leaves those unhealthy hookahs (water pipes) and their annoying smoke at his other Lebanese restaurant, La'Ziza in Clifton. 

GOP royalty 

Editor Marty Gottlieb leads today's paper with House Republicans' rebuke to Governor Christie, the GOP bully whose Sandy aid request faces major surgery (A-1).

Is that anyway for Christie's supposed allies to treat the governor, who The Record has already started to promote as a viable candidate for president in 2016?

More Republicans behaving badly appear in a second, front-page story today -- Bergen County's GOP-dominated Freeholder Board defeated a shared-services police contract with Demarest (A-1).

No cause of death

Sykes and Sforza show what poor editors they are with the obituary of former Paterson Mayor Martin Barnes, who died Friday at a relatively young 64.

Today's L-1 account says, "Barnes died of unknown causes."

The huge photo Sykes and Sforza use to fill out Local front today doesn't say whether the police cruiser a state trooper crashed on the turnpike was a Ford Crown Victoria, whose mechanical defects have been linked to the deaths of police officers and other troopers (L-1).

Today's heavy Law & Order report shows Sykes and Sforza are still taking a holiday from municipal news.