Favoring polluters, bi-state transit war, 'unique' restaurant

This New York Times image from 2007 shows Paul Eugene VanDunk with granddaughter Alexis Dennison holding a photo of her mother, a cancer victim. VanDunk and other residents of Upper Ringwood blame many cases of sickness and death on toxic paint sludge and other waste dumped in their neighborhood by Ford Motor Co., which operated an assembly plant in nearby Mahwah until the late 1970s.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's front page today is promoting a controversial plan to pave over toxic soil in several North Jersey towns that would save Ford, DuPont and other wealthy corporate polluters tens of millions of dollars.

Assurances that capping 166,000 tons of paint sludge is safe are falling on the deaf ears of Upper Ringwood residents a few months before a referendum that would force Ford Motor Co. and borough officials to remove the pollutants (A-1).

The Environmental Protection Agency would allow the waste to stay in the ground even though North Jersey's drinking-water reservoirs are nearby.

What remains unclear is what motivates Editor Deirdre Sykes and Staff Writer Scott Fallon to turn their backs on long-suffering residents, and to forcefully promote an unpopular solution to decades of corporate pollution.

With capping, Ford and the borough of Ringwood's insurers would see their cleanup costs drop to $5.4 million from $32.6 million (A-8).

At a Superfund site in Edgewater, Honeywell and other wealthy companies held responsible for the pollution would pay only $72 million, compared to $205 million for excavation.

Drop in enforcement

One story you've never seen in The Record is a dramatic decline in the enforcement of speeding laws on state highways -- even as the Road Warrior columnist obsesses over lines at the Motor Vehicle Commission and traffic jams at MetLife Stadium (L-1).

Today's front-page story should have reported Christopher Boes, 20, of West Milford might be alive, if Butler police did a better job of patrolling Route 23 and stopped such racers as the friend driving the car in which he was a passenger (A-1).

Bi-state transit war

Check out the hysteria over the war between New Jersey and New York on replacing the antiquated Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan (L-1).

The two states have been arguing for decades over which one gets the most from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Originally, the agency was called the Port of New York Authority.

We're probably going to see many more stories on where a new Manhattan bus terminal should be located.

But The Record won't be asking the bi-state agency why it doesn't expand bus service by adding one or two more exclusive bus lanes into the Lincoln Tunnel.

'Unique' BYO

Staff Writer Elisa Ung is so excited about Turtle + The Wolf in Montclair, she calls the New American BYO "unique," and rates it as Excellent to Outstanding (a half-star shy of the top rating of 4 stars).

And although she praises the "quality" of the food, only the brisket she sampled was naturally raised at Painted Hills Farm in Oregon (BL-14).

So, are readers to assume the $72-a-person roasted pig and the $45-a-person fried chicken dinners are conventionally raised with harmful antibiotics?

The money you save on wine will be blown on tolls and gasoline to get there and back. And does the place serve any seafood except octopus?

Misspells name

She might have been able to provide more details on the food, if she didn't feel compelled to report details of the chef-owner's resume and identify his business partner, whose last name she misspells.

Ung calls him "Matt Greneven," but today's correction says he is "Matt Trevenen."

That's not even close. 

Maybe she drank too much of the wine she brought or was overly giddy about eating hundreds of dollars of food -- plus dessert -- paid for by Gannett, The Record's owner.

Corrections usually run on A-2 the day after the error is made, but today's notes the review "was produced in advance."

Turns out the rave review appeared online on Thursday, almost a full day before the print edition.

Rail nightmare was averted, but commuters still face ordeal

Completed in April 2014, NJ Transit's new Anderson Street Station is more of a shelter, open to the elements on two sides, and with inadequate heating and few creature comforts.

Still, the station is a vast improvement over the two bus shelters and ticket machines commuters were provided after the original station house burned down on Jan. 10, 2009.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A tentative contract agreement may improve the lives of NJ Transit rail workers, who threatened to strike on Saturday.

But North Jersey commuters still have to contend with crowding on SRO trains and in their Penn Station waiting room in Manhattan, and frequent service disruptions.

The Record's A-3 reaction story today and Saturday's banner headline on Page 1 -- "Rail nightmare averted" -- ignores all of the problems rail commuters face, including higher fares and service cutbacks.

Nor is there any mention of Governor Christie's anti-mass transit policies, and the deep cuts he made in state subsidies, forcing NJ Transit to raise those fares.

Transportation reporter Christopher Maag, like his predecessors, apparently has never ridden a train to and from Manhattan during the rush hour, when seats are hard to come by, and reported on the quality of service.

And in more than a dozen years of writing the so-called commuting column, Road Warrior John Cichowski also has ignored train and bus service, distracted as he is by MVC lines, potholes, pedestrian deaths or road projects (L-1).

Half the story

In fact, a column and two major stories on today's front page are woefully incomplete.

Staff Writer Charles Stile's column sounds like a political battle over the state constitution between Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat (A-1).

But nowhere does Stile mention Sweeney's hand has been forced by the hundreds of vetoes the GOP bully has executed, including those against a hike in the minimum wage.

The A-1 graphic on local property taxes is missing towns where non-profit hospitals and other tax-exempt entities shift the burden to homeowners, such as Hackensack and Englewood, making it difficult for them to stay within the 2% cap.

And from the story on a lake cleanup, readers have a hard time deciding whether Pompton Lakes, state and federal environmental officials caved into corporate giant DuPont -- just like Ringwood did on Ford Motor Co. pollution.

Local news?

In Local today, stories about schools in Englewood, Saddle Brook, Edgewater and Leonia have Hackensack readers wondering why they rarely see anything in the paper on their schools (L-2 and L-6).

Readers also are puzzled why Englewood Schools Superintendent Robert Kravitz isn't being offered a merit payment for increasing white enrollment in the city's elementary and middle schools, where 99% of the students are black and Hispanic (L-2).

What's the point?

On the Opinion front, the first four paragraphs of Mike Kelly's column put readers to sleep.

OK. A Jersey shore native became "the first U.S. citizen to be convicted ... of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria and fight against his country" (O-1). 

"What is significant is how ordinary [Tairod] Pugh is," Kelly writes.

What is Kelly's point? Sadly, most readers will never turn the page.

Media, voters to blame for re-election of Garrett, Christie

On Tuesday, I passed on using this temporary locker at 24 Hour Fitness in Paramus, where I've also found the exercise equipment isn't always in prime condition.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

When is the last time you saw a story in The Record on Rep. Scott Garrett, the Tea Party idol who seems to do nothing more than raise campaign money?

Today, the five-term Wantage Republican, who represents much of Bergen County, is being criticized for not donating money to a House GOP campaign committee, reportedly because it has recruited and supported gay candidates (A-1).

Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson usually writes a flurry of stories every two years or so, when Garrett runs for yet another term, praising the arch conservative's fund-raising ability.

Last year, Jackson even forgot to remind readers that Garrett initially opposed federal aid to victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Can you blame voters for staying home when The Record and other media continually focus on the size of Garrett's war chest and how invincible that makes him?

Similarly, The Record's flattering coverage of Governor Christie's first term -- and his ability to veto every major Democratic initiative in the state Legislature -- helped generate so much voter apathy, the turnout in November 2013 was the lowest for any gubernatorial election in state history.

Christie's role?

Another front-page story today doesn't address whether Christie's poor environmental record has anything to do with the state dramatically shrinking the danger zone of a DuPont-contaminated site under homes in Pompton Lakes (A-1).

In fact, the story notes the state Department of Environmental Protection mapped out the much larger polluted area in 2008, before Christie took office.

A state study in 2009 found higher-than-normal levels of kidney cancer in women and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in men who live above the toxic plume, The Record says (A-8).

Can paint stop trucks?

Road Warrior John Cichowski never explains how re-striping and repaving Route 17 will stop a speeding, out of control tractor-trailer, like the one that killed Waldwick Patroman Chris Goodell a year ago (A-1 and L-1).

So much for improving the "safety" of a highway that has homes built "nearly to the shoulder."

Maybe, the solution is in far greater enforcement by Waldwick and five other police departments along the highway.

Now, one sergeant only chased down an SUV that passed his cruiser at 79 mph -- 24 mph over the 55- mph speed limit -- according to the reporter (L-1).

Of course, that would take money "at a time when funding is short," Cichowski says.

When isn't funding short in an inefficient home-rule town like Waldwick, which was so desperate for ratables officials allowed the construction of homes on the edge of a dangerous highway?

Change the critic

Elisa Ung's 3-star review of Gianna's in Carlstadt is sort of a back-handed compliment (BL-14).

The 16-year-old restaurant offers oversized, delicious portions of traditional Italian-American food, the critic notes, but not "change or innovation."

After reading how much she and her friends liked the five desserts they sampled, one "change or innovation" I'd like to see is Ung's replacement by a critic who emphasizes healthier fare for the large majority of readers who are watching their weight and cholesterol.

Christie is The Record's sacred cow

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The Record today has a long, gripping tale on legal fees from a lawsuit against The Prudential Insurance Company of America.

Staff Writer Jeff Pillets is one of The Record's best reporters, so you have to wonder why he and his many bosses aren't looking into Governor Christie -- a former federal prosecutor -- failing to "reform" the outrageous pay and benefits of hundreds of police chiefs in the state (A-1).

In decades of reporting on air traffic over North Jersey, today's story on A-3 is the first time I have seen anyone quoted as saying the noise holds the "potential for a decrease in home values." Something to think about the next time you challenge your assessment.

Stupid headline 

Ten letters to the editor support, even cheer the placement of solar panels on utility poles (A-11), despite a March 27 story on the Local front that carried the idiotic headline, "Clean energy's ugly side."

You have to pity the 113 plaintiffs who have been barred from the latest lawsuit against DuPont in Pompton Lakes  -- a decades-long fiasco of corporate and government inaction.

 

But the story on L-1 today fails to explore whether they got bad legal advice or were lulled into a false sense of security by the polluter's assurances on remediation of cancer-causing solvents in contaminated groundwater. 

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Reporter Kibret Markos can be found smoking outside the courthouse.

Past her bedtime

Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado writes about Saturday classes at the Middle and 5ive6ix schools (L-1) a few days after ignoring a Board of Education meeting that went past midnight as officials deliberated the budget and weighed record layoffs.

Bergen County Courthouse reporter Kibret Markos misses so many North Jersey stories, you have to wonder why he and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes are wasting readers' time with a long L-6 story on a dispute over legal fees involving a Baltimore lawyer, a North Carolina bank and The Prudential Insurance Co. 

Markos violates widely accepted standards of reporting in a second story today about a lawyer who stole nearly $540,000 of his clients' money (L-3). 

Sykes should be ashamed of herself for not striking the words "mentally ill" from a description of the lawyer's ex-wife, who has absolutely nothing to do with the thefts.

Where the hell is the copy desk?

Might as well subscribe to The Times

Image by muckster via Flickr

A member of an East Hill group calling itself Englewood F.A.S.T., which seeks to cut city funding of the Englewood Public Library, is urging residents to attend fund-raisers to make up the difference.

Another awful paper today. Reporters and columnists seem determined to fill as much space as possible, and despite all that type, readers always are left with questions. Where do you go when you want to know what's going on in North Jersey? 

Certainly not The Record of Woodland Park under desperate Editors Francis Scandale, Deirdre Sykes, Tim Nostrand, Jim McGarvey, Barbara Jaeger, Liz Houlton, et. al.


"Why don't you cancel your subscription to The Record and read The Times," my wife suggested. 

"I want to know what's going on in New Jersey," I said. 


"Well, you're not going to get that in The Record."

We were screwed

On Page 1 today, is this the tenth, 11th or 12th major story in the past couple of years on DuPont's royal corporate screwing of Pompton Lakes and all the contaminated land residents still have to deal with?


Staff Writer James M. O'Neill relates history dating to 1886, but there is not a word on whether the company has ever been sued or whether the state and town are going to take it to court now.

"We were ripped off," one resident says of DuPont. 

Now he knows how readers of The Record feel.


The other A-1 elements are a process story on the looming 2 percent property tax cap and a former nurse's whistle-blower lawsuit against Bergen Regional Medical Center -- the latter story carrying Staff Writer Jean Rimbach's oh-so-rare byline. 

Rimbach, of course, is head Assignment Editor Sykes' pet and one of the least productive members of the news staff.

Why isn't the A-12 story on TV stations refusing to run ads on a product to enhance a woman's sexual desire on the front page? Because the Business staff has no depth, and if it gave up that story, it would have nothing else to run in its place.

More Kelly 'magic'

I've lost count of how many times I've read a few paragraphs on the death of a pedestrian or a motorist in a single-car accident and have never seen a follow. People die in The Record and we never learn anything about them.


That was the case with Graciela Cruz, who was run down and killed Nov. 12 by a landscaping truck in Hillsdale -- until weeks later, clueless Columnist Mike Kelly found himself with nothing to write about, again. (He spells her name with two l's, then with one; I believe the latter is correct.)

So today, he really gets to fill a lot of space on the front and inside Sykes' Local section, even listing just about every store the woman walked by on the way to her fatal accident. After we plow through thousands of words, we learn she was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that blocked her peripheral vision while talking on her cellphone, and the driver was blinded by the sun.


But would the woman still be alive today if she took the bus? Is there a bus running along Broadway? And will her family be suing the driver of the landscaping truck and his employer for damages -- to salvage something from her meaningless death? 

On these subjects, the columnist who pushes around words is silent.

Weekly or weakly papers?

There is just a little municipal news in Local, including three stories apparently written by reporters of weekly newspapers affiliated with the former Hackensack daily, yet they're still called "Staff Writers."

One, on L-3, reports "several" residents and Englewood Public Library workers asked the City Council at a "recent" meeting not to cut library funding again. 

Mike Curley, the reporter, quotes Simeon Lifschitz -- a member of an East Hill group that has recommended cuts in the city budget -- as praising the library, which his children use, and urging everyone to attend library fund-raisers. 

But Curley never tells readers Lifschitz's group -- Englewood F.A.S.T. or Fiscal Accountability Starts Today Coalition -- also has urged officials to cut library funding.   

Editor's note: I've corrected the spelling of reporter Mike Curley's name.

We give you The Passaic Record

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When there was more than one edition of The Record of Woodland Park, Bergen County residents might think a paper with a lot of Passaic news -- like today's -- was delivered to them by mistake. But today's Passaic-centric edition is no mistake. With the local Bergen editors off in La-La Land, this single edition is all the desperate weekend staff could come up with.

For those subscribers who still call the paper The Bergen Record, here is The Passaic Record.


The front page needs not one but two filler wire-service stories to supplement the main North Jersey element -- more on DuPont pollution in Pompton Lakes (map). One of them, a doomsday AP piece on Social Security payouts and revenue during the recession, omits any information about the system's huge reserves. No attempt was made to localize either wire story.

The Pompton Lake clean-up story appears to be of wide interest -- this lake serves as backup to reservoirs that supply drinking water to many North Jersey towns-- but the focus is on technical aspects of removing soil. My eyes glazed over. Could this story get any more boring? 

At the same time, the reporter never answers the question of whether mercury has tainted drinking water in those reservoirs.

It's bad enough North Jersey Media Group and other companies stampeded hundreds of thousands of workers into early retiement, but why is its flagship paper leading today's edition with a Social Security story that amounts to a fraud? Reserves of $2.5 trillion -- that's right, trillion -- plus payroll taxes are expected to cover full payment of benefits for 33 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The front of Local is filled with more Passaic County news -- from Wayne, Clifton, and Woodland Park. Inside, you won't find any news of Hackensack, Teaneck or the 'Woods (Englewood, Westwood, Wood-Ridge and Ridgewood), but you will find a story from Ringwood.

Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale lives in Glen Rock and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes lives in Harrington Park. You'd think they could get more Bergen County news into the paper, wouldn't you?

On days like this, the Passaic County bias is so blatant, it must have to do with more than the move of NJMG and The Record newsroom to Woodland Park, and the move of daily newspaper printing to Rockaway Township.


Just about the only Bergen thing left at the old Bergen Record is Old Man Borg slowly walking the empty hallways of the former headquarters at 150 River St., Hackensack. He's probably muttering to himself, What the f--- did my two spoiled brats do to my beloved paper?

How about some background?

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Don't you hate it when a front-page story is not only poorly reported and edited but provides you with only the barest of background? You have that today in The Record of Woodland Park with another in a series about the long-suffering residents of Pompton Lakes. (Photo: A front page from 2007 for comparison.)

Why this story is on Page 1 is a puzzle. Why it doesn't portray this sorry saga of chemical pollution as both a shameful corporate and home-rule failure is only known to the lazy, desperate and incompetent editors who think Bergen County readers are eager for another update on this century old story in a far-off town.

The story says a DuPont munitions plant closed in 1994, but doesn't explain why a cleanup won't be finished until 2015. That's more than 20 years. And it's unclear -- even after a careful reading -- who came up with the idea of building a wind farm next to contaminated homes, where residents would get to trade one form of pollution for another (toxic chemicals for noise and vibration)?

At least the editors had the sense to put Governor Christie's budget problems and possible solutions on the front page for a third day in a row.

If you live in Hackensack, you'll find Staff Writer Monsy Alvarado, who is supposed to cover the city, missing in action for yet another day. There are more than 10 court, lawsuit, police and fire news stories in Local today.

The editors in Business decided one lavishly promotional story about 3-D TVs wasn't enough, so they assigned a reporter to write another for today.