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.

Is Lynne Hurwitz backing Hackensack slate?

Who really holds the keys to Hackensack City Hall?

 
Around City Hall, the Hackensack Coalition for Open Government -- 5 candidates in the non-partisan May  14 City Council election -- is known as the "Lynne Hurwitz slate."

So, who is Hurwitz? Well, she is 74 and lives in Hackensack.

But you won't find any additional clues in The Record's coverage of the campaign, which hasn't mentioned Hurwitz.

For that, you'll have to do an Internet search for comments about her: 



From Carol H on the Web site
of Blue Jersey, Sept. 12, 2007

I had to laugh when I read that Lynne Hurwitz, the Municipal Democratic Chair of Hackensack, felt intimidated by a bunch of rank and file Bergen County Committee Democrats who are tired of being ignored and their activist friends from Democracy for America and NJ for Democracy:

"Those opposed to the planned suit will be able to register their vote when the county committee meets. Or, said Hackensack Democratic Chairwoman Lynne Hurwitz, they could find time to schedule a private, diplomatic meeting with [Joseph] Ferriero.

"I've never known him not to want to sit down and discuss things," Hurwitz said. "The desire to bring it out on the street only tells me that they want a raucous confrontation and to embarrass the party."

But lets dig deeper, shall we?  Who exactly is Ms. Hurwitz and what job does she have at the county level?  She is Bergen County Deputy Chief of Staff. So, she is basically Ferriero's Karl Rove in the Bergen County Government.  And I wonder if she has family working for Bergen County as well......  Why, yes she does!  Husband Howie is Executive Director of the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority - a group that handles collective bargaining contracts with the employees union.

Combined, Lynne and Howie make over six figures and are involved in who to hire in Bergen County and what to pay them.  Now, if I was Chris Christie trying to figure out just exactly how all those Democratic County Committee Municipal Chairs wind up with County jobs, I might decide to ask Ms. Hurwitz a few questions.  But I'm not, so I'll leave my little thought experiment here.
carolh :: Lynne Hurwitz - Woman of Many Talents

Responding to criticism, Carol H said:

I did not attack Ms. Hurwitz.  I simply pointed out that she is clearly a political ally of Joe Ferriero and that she and her husband hold powerful positions in Bergen County Government - positions for influencing the hiring other Bergen County Employees.  If I wanted to be mean I really could have pointed out that she also worked for Ken Zisa when he was in the Assembly, and that she has very close ties to Bob Torricelli.  But I didn't do that, did I?

From a Web site
called Find the Data: 

Lynne B. Hurwitz was born in 1938 and retired from Bergen County on 01/11 with a retirement cause of Service. The Pension is funded by PERS - Public Employee Retirement System as a Member benefit type. 

The Salary used for the pension calculation is $97,047.6 with a monthly pension payment of $2,499.7, which is 17% higher than the average for all New Jersey State Pensions.

From PolitickerNJ,
April 30, 2010

Also worth watching is how Hackensack Democrats transitions out of the Zisa scandal.  Zisa’s brother is the Deputy Police Chief, his cousin is the City Attorney, and another brother was the longtime mayor.  The Hackensack Democratic Municipal Chair is Lynne Hurwitz, a longtime Zisa ally who now serves as Deputy Chief of Staff to Bergen County Executive Dennis C. McNerney.  Bergen County Freeholder Tomas Padilla, who is not seeking re-election, is a Hackensack police captain with exceptionally close ties to the Zisa family.

From a column in The Record,

June 30, 2012

She is a 73-year-old grandmother who says her “style is to help people.” Her critics call her a fierce, no-holds-barred power broker and key strategist behind Hackensack’s former police chief, Ken Zisa, and his family’s political machine.

See previous post on The Record's

Hackensack coverage