Editors ignore broken home-rule system

A relative of Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza was an editor at one of Italy's first newspapers. Here, he prays for good news.

The big front-page news today is an apparent sickout by more than 100 members of the public school staff in Englewood.

But The Record's editors don't explore the real story: the broken home-rule system of financing education.

Even the headline is inaccurate, lumping in school secretaries with teachers and professional assistants, who are called "educators."

Lazy editors

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza both covered Englewood as reporters -- Sykes for a weekly newspaper, Sforza for The Record -- but their coverage of the city's schools in the past decade couldn't be more flawed.

Despite reaping property taxes from hundreds of big homes on the East Hill -- including the mansion of Chairman and former Publisher  Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg -- and from a large industrial area, the city has allowed its public schools to limp along.

Minority schools

The elementary and middle schools are mostly black and Hispanic, and there hasn't been a story about desegregation efforts at the high school for a couple of years.

Wealthy residents on a panel advising the mayor recommended and eventually pushed through cuts in public library funding. 

And a Hebrew charter school threatens to grab hundreds of thousands of dollars in public school funds to educate rich students.

$4 million deficit

Finally, do two large private-school campuses hurt the public schools by luring away most of the white students, and just how much does their tax-exempt status cost the city? 

Sykes and Sforza don't think any of that is important.

In the past three days, The Record has reported the school district faces a $4 million deficit and hopes to save $2 million by outsourcing the jobs of teaching assistants and school secretaries, but readers remain in the dark on what caused the deficit.

Horsing around

Editor Marty Gottlieb doesn't seem to notice the holes in the Englewood coverage, preferring to devote valuable space on Page 1 today to the enormous value of a race horse's schlong.

Staff Writer John Rowe is a sports columnist who has been covering horse racing so long he appears to have been embalmed.

But his A-1 piece today doesn't answer the question in every reader's mind: Just how big is a horse's $10 million penis?

Railroading readers

The front of Sykes' Local section focuses today on pedestrians who "trespass" near railroad tracks and ignores whether NJ Transit had added any safety measures to prevent deaths and suicides (L-1).

There is so little news from Hackensack and other towns, Sykes and Sforza needed a photo of a minor minivan fire on Paterson's Eastside to fill out L-2 of the Bergen Edition.

Sforza sent out the ambulance-chasing photographer so late, the photo shows four firefighters, standing next to the vehicle and bullshiting.

More strikes against home rule

Image by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region via Flickr

The Great Swamp really was swamped by Hurricane Irene.

Today's editorial blames "civilization" -- not all those poorly run North Jersey towns desperate for ratables -- for repeated flooding that crested with the destruction of Hurricane Irene.


The editorial on Page A-20 of The Record of Woodland Park says:


"Environmentalists and state environmental officials have spent years shouting into the void that paving over flood plains, building houses in flood plains and generally ceding common sense to the lure of commercial development is about as wrong a move as civilization can make."


Of course, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin knows the shouting should have been at all those petty officials who hammer homeowners with high property taxes to run their expensive, inefficient home-rule towns, so why doesn't he say so?


Power plays


And how many businesses and homeowners have to lose power and sustain millions of dollars in damages before building officials insist that any new wires be installed underground, and that utilities begin to take down poles and put wires out of harm's way (A-1)?


Why do readers need an A-1 news story on the reopening of roads and a Road Warrior column on the same subject (Local front)?


In the second story marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11, what's the big deal about the rate of volunteerism falling from 28.8% in 2005 to 26.3% in 2010, and why did Editor Francis Scandale put the story on Page 1?


The only good thing about the piece by Staff Writer Harvy Lipman is the non-profit reporter's byline has been appearing more than once a week lately.


Why does Doblin's A-21 column on President Obama carry a headline with a really unfortunate double entendre: "Can you come later?"


Office-driven coverage


Four days after gawkers invaded some flooded Bergen County neighborhoods to make light of homeowners' misery, a story appears on the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section.


Apparently, no reporters or photographers visited those same neighborhoods until Thursday -- cementing the assignment desk's reputation as the laziest in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.


With all the news generated by the hurricane, tropical storm or whatever it was, it's a wonder Sykes found room on L-2 today for a photo and caption updating readers on telephone-pole news.


On L-3, a story and photo caption don't tell readers a police officer rescued the the driver from his smoking tanker truck until the fourth paragraph.


Stale review

In Better Living, the mouth-watering photos on the cover and Pages 16-17 deliver more than Gregory T's, an upscale diner in Emerson, where the "tough" prime rib "bore a grayish pallor," tortilla chips were stale and the crab cakes hid tiny pieces of shell.


Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung delivers the kiss of death with a 2-star rating -- what she gives to a mediocre chain restaurant.


The features copy editor also lost his way in writing the caption for three food photos in the centerfold, describing the photo on the left  as "far left."

Time to call Christie's bluff?

Image via Wikipedia

In the last paragraph of today's Page 1 story on NJ Transit fare hikes, Staff Writer Tom Davis quotes Governor Christie as calling the agency "a political patronage mill." Well, if that's true and if that's part of Christie's justification for cutting state transit aid, why hasn't Davis given us any details?

Instead, Davis cobbled together an elaborate but ultimately inaccurate front-page story yesterday in The Record of Woodland Park alleging that since NJ Transit receives government assistance, it is taking taxpayers for a ride

Today, this ink-stained wretch reports a proposed 25 percent fare hike and service cuts drew outrage from mass-transit advocates who fear bus and rail service will become unaffordable and "force people to choose their cars over trains and buses."

Hey, Tom, what about the thousands of poor schmucks who have no choice but to ride crappy local NJ Transit buses, because they can't even afford cars? Do you even know they exist?

And when is the former Hackensack daily going to ask the governor about promised property tax cuts? When is Christie going to be asked for details on reigning in the grossly inefficient home-rule system? He loves to issue executive orders, so why not order consolidation of school districts and such municipal agencies as police and fire?  

How is cutting school, municipal, mass-transit and environmental aid going to help the middle class?

Yesterday's Hacknsack Chronicle led with a story on city schools, where the hiring of minority teachers lags behind the percentage of Africa-American and Hispanic students. A second story, on Page 2, contained the Hackensack schools superintendent's reaction to state aid cuts.

Neither of these stories appeared in The Record, which has virtually ignored Hackensack schools in the past few years, while running numerous stories about schools in other North Jersey towns, as part of Publisher Stephen A. Borg's "every day" education coverage (suspended during the summers).

It's a good thing the Hackensack Chronicle is another publication of the Borgs' all-seeing, all-knowing North Jersey Media Group, and is delivered with The Record on Fridays, apparently in recognition the daily has abandoned the city where it prospered for 110 years -- both physically and editorially.

Isn't anyone talking about home rule?

Image via Wikipedia

Since the November election, the state's growing financial problems have bounced onto and off of the front page at The Record of Woodland Park  with the regularity of  desperate, incompetent editors grasping at any bit of sensational news to sell more papers.

Now, two days before Chris Christie takes office as governor, the potential $10 billion budget deficit and what he plans to do about it is all over Page 1, with a huge photo that casts him in the role of "The Thinker." Let's hope he is not just dreaming of his next meal. (Photos: Christie and Governor Corzine, below.)

But despite all this flattering coverage, I could not find any mention of home rule, the archaic system of small-town government that keeps property taxes high and gives birth to the legions of politicians with their hands out. Will Christie order towns to consolidate or regionalize services as a way of cutting the incredibly expensive duplication in 566 town governments and hundreds of boards of education?

It doesn't look like it from what is reported today in The Record, which has been a staunch defender of the home-rule system. In fact, the paper says Christie may make cuts in the Department of Environmental Protection, which, he claims, harms the economy with permit delays and fines. This is a scary reminder of the DEP cuts made by one of his Republican predecessors, Christie Whitman.

The stories do say municipal governments and school boards will "face new pressure from Christie to cut spending" and that the new governor will call "on different levels of government to seriously consider sharing redundant services as an opportunity for property tax relief." But if you are familiar with the baby steps towns in Bergen County have taken to share services, you know Christie is sure to fail unless the state orders these changes.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

And will the new governor be the first in a long time to raise the gasoline tax to fund bridge repair and expand mass transit or will he succumb to the opposition of selfish drivers and the knee-jerk reaction of every newspaper columnist eager to write his political obituary?