Joe Ferriero's legacy of greed still is infecting Hackensack

Hackensack Democratic Party Chairwoman Lynne Hurwitz, back to camera, conferring with Board of Education Attorney Richard Salkin before a June meeting of the City Council. Seated at right is husband Howard Hurwitz, executive director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority, where he is paid more than $136,000 a year.

Editor's note: The editor of Eye on The Record is a lifelong Democrat.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We don't have Joe Ferriero to worry about anymore.

The once-powerful leader of the Bergen County Democratic Party (1998-2009) has been given 60 days to surrender and start serving a 35-month federal prison sentence, according to Page 1 of The Record.

As one indicator of how slow justice is, Ferriero was convicted way back in April of what U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman calls "running a local political organization as a criminal enterprise" (A-1).

"He used his power and position to enrich himself through a racketeering operation fueled by influence peddling, bribes and kickbacks," Fishman said on Friday.

See Comments section below on a major factual contradiction in today's Ferriero coverage.

Hackensack yoke

No other Democrats were involved, but in Hackensack, residents still are recovering from being ruled by the Zisas and the powerful figure behind their political dynasty, city Democratic Chairwoman Lynne Hurwitz.

A number of Zisa family allies still run the free-spending Board of Education, which approved a 2015 budget that exceeded the city's own.

Here are links to two reports on Hurwitz's influence in Hackensack, where a slate she backed in the May 2013 municipal election was defeated by reformers:

Key strategist in Hackensack

Is Lynne Hurwitz backing Hackensack slate?


Taxing hospitals

So many stories in The Record sound more like public relations than news, such as the lead story on the Local front today:

Staff Writer Lindy Washburn rewrote a press release from the New Jersey Hospital Association, claiming non-profit hospitals employ people who contribute "more than $1.4 billion to local and state tax revenues" (L-1).

So what?

Hackensack University Medical Center and other non-profit hospitals don't pay property taxes, shifting the burden onto homeowners and owners of commercial property. 

None of the taxes paid by their employees eases the property tax burden in Hackensack, which is saddled by two other big non-profits, Bergen County and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The rest of Local today is dominated by Law & Order news, including a gee-whiz photo of a small SUV that tried to drive through the basement window of a Garfield school, injuring two teachers (L-1).

Cliche-filled column rehashes 10-day old domestic dispute

Meridia Metro Hackensack at 94 State St. as it looked on Aug. 6. The completion date for the 222-unit building -- called the "first significant residential project ... downtown" -- has been pushed back several months to May 2015.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Is there anything new in Mike Kelly's front-page column today rehashing a 10-day-old domestic violence incident in Saddle Brook?

This is vintage Kelly, The Record's appointed sage, eager to report the lessons he sees in routine police news (A-1).

"Sometimes small local disputes can touch on deep, divisive national debates," Kelly says in the third paragraph.

He must think we're morons. 

Home arsenal

Police found nearly 200 guns and more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition in the home of Robert and Eileen Lintner.

OK. The old guy is off his rocker, but he certainly doesn't look like a revolutionary or terrorist or guns-right advocate, and his wife didn't use a gun; she allegedly stabbed him in the neck with a knife.

Word pushing

Once you start the fourth paragraph, the rest of Kelly's long-and-winding column is just recapping all the details of what amounts to old news.

It's just a rewrite. What's the point, Editor Martin Gottlieb? Slow news day? We get it. But a colossal waste of space.

Would you have stood for Kelly's cliche-ridden introduction at The Times? 

"When they sped to a quiet neighborhood of well-trimmed lawns ...."

Page 1 is boring

What a crappy front page.

Below Kelly is a golf column from Tara Sullivan in Sports.

The first paragraph is filled with puzzling detail: 

"A perilously setting sun," dueling golfers and "a battle rife with drama and thick with tension."

The A-1 story on Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale makes one passing reference to his nearly nine years as Passaic County sheriff (deep on A-6).

But there is no mention of all of the controversy he generated in that job -- reported in detail by The Record's old Passaic County Bureau.

Lynne Hurwitz of Hackensack at a May 20 meeting of the City Council. Her husband Howard is executive director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority.

Hag of Hackensack

Kelly's Page 1 column on Saturday focused on Lynne Hurwitz, chairwoman of the Democratic Party in Hackensack.

The columnist calls her "the key strategist behind the Zisa family political machine, which ruled the city for three decades until its slate of candidates was defeated last year."

In other words, she is the "Hag of Hackensack."

Now, Kelly quotes the grandmother in her mid-70s as saying she is back in the Bergen County political game.