LG deal in Englewood Cliffs exposes big flaw of home rule

On a busy street near Palisade Avenue in wealthy Englewood Cliffs, domestic workers have to walk on the pavement, close to speeding cars, because the borough never installed sidewalks.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Is Englewood Cliffs anything like Hackensack, once known derisively as "Zisaville" for the decades-long political dominance of a single family?

On the front page of The Record today, a photo shows Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi applauding a deal between LG Electronics and environmentalists (A-1).

But the upbeat coverage sounds more like public relations than objective reporting (A-1 and A-8).

And it doesn't explore the decades-long rule of the Parisi family in the Cliffs, just as The Record hasn't done any probing in Cliffside Park, dominated for more than 50 years by the Calabreses.

Home-rule communities like Englewood Cliffs resist consolidating services with neighboring towns, and are desperate for ratables to cover the resulting inefficiences.

Englewood Cliffs fought a "racially tinged legal battle" to remove its students from Englewood's Dwight Morrow High School that began in 1985 and dragged on for years, The Record has reported.

Then, in October 2014, the state decided to cut nearly $600,000 in aid for 33 students from the Cliffs who were attending Dwight Morrow's Academies, a magnet program.

Hungry for ratables

More tax revenue was likely the motive for the borough to throw out its 35-foot height restriction, and approve the Korean company's plan for a 143-foot-high building on 27 acres between Sylvan Avenue and the Hudson River.

Now, the height will be reduced to 69 feet or five stories, but that still will be the biggest building ever approved for the Palisades north of the George Washington Bridge.

And in return for despoiling the majestic cliffs, Parisi and other borough officials will be celebrating an additional $2.5 million in property tax revenue every year.

Cliffs resident Donald Rizzo, who favored the higher LG headquarters, put it succinctly in a sidebar with a sub-headline reading, "Residents will benefit from revenue."

"A bigger building means more tax revenue. I'm all for it. I was never worried about the height of the building. I was worried about letting LG go" (A-8).

Maybe, the town can now afford to put in sidewalks on Summit Street to protect pedestrians and dog walkers.

In the county seat

In Hackensack, dozens of lawsuits filed against Ken Zisa, the former police chief and state assemblyman, cost the city so many millions to settle that one block of Euclid Avenue hasn't been paved for 30 years.

Prospect Avenue, lined with high-rises, and many other streets are in such poor condition one resident at Tuesday night's City Council meeting compared them to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

Hackensack's school board spends more money per pupil than Ridgewood's, yet feeds high school students food of such low quality that many race out to Starbucks, Chipotle Mexican Grill and other lunch spots.

Hackensack's property tax payers are so shell shocked they even objected to the city spending public funds on a downtown park and arts space as part of the redevelopment of Main Street.

Hackensack news?

On the front of Local today, Teaneck residents find two stories on Monday night's Township Council meeting (L-1).

But there is nothing about Tuesday night's council meeting in Hackensack.

As Police Director Mike Mordaga and Capt. Timothy Lloyd listened, clergy from Mount Olive Baptist Church and other churches commented on the killing of two suspects by city police officers in recent weeks.

They urged Hackensack to find money to buy Tasers or non-fatal stun guns.

As a result of the shootings, five police officers are "on leave," city officials acknowledged, but they insisted the department is not "understaffed."

HUMC pact

A lawyer hired by the city reported a federal anti-kickback law prohibits Hackensack from continuing to ask Hackensack University Medical Center to provide ambulance services to residents for free up to $140,000 a year. 

Still, Board of Education attorney Richard Salkin rose and rambled on about the lawsuit he has filed to enforce the original 2008 pact with HUMC that he negotiated for the city.

New Page 1 errors, bird shit and drug-filled ham

Hackensack residents awoke on Wednesday morning to find a crusty layer of snow covering their solar panels, above, and car windshields.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Page 1 is often considered the most important in a newspaper, but at The Record, you're as likely to find serious errors there as on any other page.

Today, a front-page photo caption contains a boneheaded mistake, and Mike Kelly's Page 1 column on the Boston Marathon bombing brings a dead cop back to life. (A-1 and A-7).

Wrecking a story

The A-1 photo caption claims "demolition began Tuesday on LG Electronics buildings in Englewood Cliffs" (A-1).

That's ridiculous. 

The demolition -- to make way for a new, taller headquarters on the east side of Sylvan Avenue, atop the Palisades -- was of vacant buildings "where LG plans to build its new North American headquarters," as the story on L-1 reports in the first paragraph.

The Record's reporters and editors have written so many stories about LG's controversial plan they don't even bother to say precisely where the new building will be located or what was there before, leading to the kind of serious error that appears on Page 1 today.

And, it appears, six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton no longer has her staff proof Page 1 before it goes to press or after the paper is printed.  

Readers' marathon

Readers can only hope Kelly stays in Boston after covering the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing (A-1).

Forget about his monotonous first paragraph, where he uses the verb "gaze" for perhaps the thousandth time.

On the continuation page, Kelly reports "relatives of the three spectators who perished ... and a police officer who was fatally shot later in a confrontation with the alleged bombers visited the finish line" (A-7).

Of course, the dead cop is still in his grave. 

But no one caught this mistake -- not the assignment editor who read it first or the news editor who made up the page or the copy editor who supposedly edited the story or the supervisor of the copy desk who supposedly went over his or her work, and approved it for publication.

Parking-lot news

What are two photos showing a man with homing pigeons, all from Stony Point, N.Y., doing on L-3 today, in the Local news section?

They happen to be in the parking lot of 1 Garret Mountain Plaza, and in the background, readers can see the nondescript office building the Woodland Park daily has called home since leaving Hackensack in 2009.

Gee whiz. I guess Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza didn't have any legitimate municipal news for his section today. 

Did that lazy editor send a photographer to the parking lot for a shitty "story" about flying birds?

Shameless plug

A day after Better Living editors debuted a "health page" with a strong focus on food, a story on Easter Brunch today recommends readers buy a smoked ham that is apparently filled with harmful preservatives and animal antibiotics (BL-1).

The piece, by a free-lancer, is a shameless plug for a single pork store in Fair Lawn, and doesn't mention readers can buy uncured, naturally raised hams at Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's and other stores that would be a lot better for them.

Crucial local news shows up on A-1 three years late

Stairway to the stars at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Record's front page today reports Hackensack's famously corrupt police chief  "may have been paid twice for unused sick time in 2010" (A-1).

Why are these payments to Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa -- one in April 2010 and another in June 2010 -- hitting Page 1 of The Record just now?

Or are they?

Today's story by Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports Zisa, who was arrested at the end of April 2010 on fraud charges, was paid $93,513 from a $4.6 million bond ordinance approved by his allies on the City Council on May 4, 2010.

On that same day -- May 4, 2010 -- The Record reported Zisa had been suspended with his pay of $191,000 a year, but no story about the $93,513 payout ever appeared.

Old news

Today's story also reports Zisa cashed out $53,671 in unused sick pay, receiving the money on June 1, 2010.

But the second payment is old news, having been reported in The Record of June 8, 2010, according to my notes of local news coverage at the time.

Poor editing

Today's story is poorly edited and contains at least one error: 

The story and photo caption on A-6 report Zisa "has vowed to appeal" May 2012 guilty verdicts in state Superior Court for official misconduct and insurance fraud.

The appeal of the convictions and a 5-year prison sentence imposed on Sept. 20, 2012, has already been filed, and he is under house arrest pending a ruling from a higher court.

Who is dishonest?

It was a city official's accusation of dishonesty against a formerly homeless man that triggered today's story on payouts to Zisa, and earlier accounts of the inflated salary and a payout to Agatha Toomey, head of the city's Department of Human Services.

Toomey had denied benefits to James Brady, claiming the formerly homeless man hadn't reported the $850 he found on the street and was awarded after no one claimed the cash.

Local news coverage

The Record has been doing a much better job of covering Hackensack since a reform City Council slate took office on July 1, but in 2010, city news was treated with benign neglect by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

It was not unknown for nearly a month to pass between Hackensack stories as the paper's local news coverage waned dramatically after North Jersey Media Group and its flagship daily abandoned 150 River St.

A good argument can be made that voter apathy in local elections is linked to spotty news coverage of Hackensack and other communities.

Health-care reform

Today's and Thursday's front pages are dominated by stories reporting problems with implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

But neither account tells readers Governor Christie had a hand in throwing state residents into the problem-plagued federal marketplace after he vetoed a measure that would have set up a state marketplace with more health-insurance options (A-1).

News media coverage of the health-care rollout has been relentlessly negative, and this morning, House Speaker John Boehner was quoted on National Public Radio as claiming that before the Affordable Care Act, the United States had the "best" health-delivery system in the world.

No reporter asked Boehner how the "best" system in the world left 30 million to 40 million Americans without insurance, and the rest of us paying for their care in emergency rooms.

Christie's plan?

Since Christie won reelection on Nov. 5, I haven't seen any stories about what he plans to do in his second term. Do we have to wait for his state of the state address in January for that?

Wednesday's paper led with the split between the GOP bully and former Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who reportedly was "very disappointed" with Christie's attempt to unseat his son, Thomas H. Kean Jr., as Senate minority leader.

Gee. After months and months of reading Record accounts of how Christie is the great compromiser who can walk on water, this rift among state Republicans comes out of left field.

LG controversy 

Coverage of the controversial LG headquarters north of the George Washington Bridge continues to be plagued by fuzzy reporting (A-1).

This story and previous accounts haven't explored whether the Parisi family that rules Englewood Cliffs has in the past made similar deals with big corporations that adversely impacted residents' quality of life and the environment.

If you are looking for local news that explores that and similar questions, you won't find it in Sforza's section today.

Shoot 'em up

In the absence of Sykes, who has been sidelined for months by a mysterious ailment, Sforza continues to rely heavily on sensational Law & Order news to fill his section.

The attempted murder of a Hackenack woman, allegedly by her husband, leads Local today (L-1), and every other page carries police, fire or court news.

Deadly cream and butter

In Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's 3.5-star appraisal of Cenzino in Oakland claims the regional Italian fare is "made with a light hand," even though the cover photo shows a rich, artery clogging dessert (BL-1) and another photo has ravioli swimming in a sea of butter (BL-20).

A cannelloni stuffed with ground veal she sampled came in a cream sauce, but she describes it as "delicate."

The reporter also misspelled the great Italian cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano, and mistakenly added a hyphen to its name.

Ung seems oblivious to the dietary restrictions followed by the majority of her readers, who are far older than her and don't eat as if they are going to live forever.

At the end of the review's data box, The Record states "the newspaper always pays the tab" (BL-20).

Why doesn't a similar statement appear every Sunday in The Record's Travel section?

Editors should end Road Warrior column now

A shortage of rush-hour seats on NJ Transit trains and buses, speeding drivers and lax enforcement of traffic laws are just three of the many pressing commuting issues ignored by Road Warrior John Cichowski, who continues to churn out inaccurate and exaggerated columns three times a week.

Today's Road Warrior column amounts to little more than Staff Writer John Cichowski's well-disguised correction of his first, wildly exaggerated  column on the pedestrian bridge over Port Imperial Boulevard in Weehawken that was published only 4 days ago.

It's time for Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record to end the Road Warrior column, which continually violates the high standards of accuracy newspapers demand of their reporters.

Errors galore

I'm not talking about typos, the many math errors Cichowski commits or how he often contradicts himself from one column to the next.

Wednesday's Page 1 column intentionally created a transportation crisis that didn't exist, and strongly suggested that pedestrians were being injured or killed crossing Port Imperial Boulevard to reach the NY Waterway ferry. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth, as today's L-1 column sheepishly admits on L-6.

Even Friday's Road Warrior column on the first traffic signal installed in Ringwood carried an L-1  photograph that directly contradicted Cichowski's claim that "no more than 7" cars backed up at the new light.

See the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers, which discusses historical, mathematical and other errors in the Ringwood column:

Road Warrior keeps on lying to readers  

Dead stories

Today's front page keeps on beating dead horses.

Three of the four main element are follow-ups to stale controversies involving the allegedly dishonest Assemblyman Robert Schroeder, LG Electronics' high-rise plan for the Palisades and Big Data.

Cliff notes

Coverage of LG amounts to little more than endless reporting of who is in favor and who is against the South Korean electronic giant's headquarters plan in Englewood Cliffs.

Today's A-1 story quotes an angry Mayor Joseph Parisi Jr.

Isn't it time for The Record's editors to research lawsuits and talk to neighbors of other corporate developments to uncover what borough officials might have done in the past in their desperate bid for ratables?

More guesswork

The fourth main story on A-1 today is about a "serious incident" in Leonia that keeps readers guessing from beginning to end.

Sadly, the story amounts to a shameful admission by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes that she and her staff have so few sources in that town they have to wait for press releases to tell readers the full story.