Editors turning N.J. affordable housing law into dirty words

An NJ Transit train stopping at Hackensack's Anderson Street Station. For commuters, a strike or lockout is a moving target, according to The Record. The deadline was reported initially as "March 13," then "Sunday at midnight" and now "Saturday at midnight." 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

In the front-page coverage of a builder's plan for 142 apartments in Dumont, you'd never know a 1985 law requires New Jersey towns to accommodate their fair share of affordable housing.

In fact, Wednesday's Page 1 story in The Record and today's front-page follow-up don't even mention the Fair Housing Act or the two state Supreme Court Mount Laurel rulings, in 1975 and 1983, on which the law was based.

But Editor Deirdre Sykes is hiding more than that from readers, because mostly white North Jersey towns have long tried to subvert the requirement for low- and moderate-cost housing, and they've found a champion in Governor Christie.

According to the 2010 census, nearly 76% of Dumont's estimated population of 17,863 were white.

But the stories by Nicholas Pugliese don't even explore whether residents oppose the plan because 18 of the 142 apartments would be rented to minorities.

Today's paper

Sykes' front page today is another snoozer, dominated as it is by a suit over the Dumont apartments, the Republican Party primary ballot, college basketball and a state Supreme Court ruling on "burner phones."

The editor gets point for putting local news on Page 1, but she continues to neglect many stories from Hackensack and other towns.

Bethany Koval

I've been reading the stories about Bethany Koval, 16, the Fair Lawn High School student "who caused a firestorm ... with multiple Twitter posts criticizing Israeli treatment of Palestinians," according to an editorial today (A-10).

School officials wisely decided her political opinion is not bullying, "even if that viewpoint stirs opposition."

But the editorial, and every story before it, reported Koval "describes herself as an Israeli Jew."

Well, is she or isn't she? The way it's been put makes readers think the Woodland Park daily is skeptical.

Local news?

Sykes leads today's Local section with yet another crime story (L-1).

And a big feel-good photo of a circus clown visiting a bald 12-year-old patient is just more P.R. for Hackensack University Medical Center, the hospital taxpayers love to hate.

The hospital's questionable non-profit, tax-exempt status denies the city more than $10 million in taxes, raising the bill of every homeowner and commercial property owner.

An L-3 story reports on the proposed $100.4 million Hackensack budget, introduced Tuesday night, but The Record hasn't had anything on the city school board's $104 million spending plan, which was approved on March 1.

School taxes make up 44% of a Hackensack resident's property tax bill.

Mystery meat edition

Wednesday's Better Living section promoted nine dishes of mystery meat at North Jersey restaurants, including meatballs, hamburgers and a pork shank ($8 to $24).

Readers couldn't find a word from Food Editor Esther Davidowitz or Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung on whether the turkey, veal, pork, beef or lamb was raised naturally or pumped full of harmful antibiotics and other additives.

CEO at non-profit HUMC is being paid nearly $3M a year

Fort Lee has become known as a destination for affordable Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and other Asian food. Now, The Record's food editor reports, a high-end Korean steak restaurant will open in July on the ground floor of the Hudson Lights development, left, serving a full menu of mystery beef.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Even as Hackensack University Medical Center defends its non-profit, tax-exempt status in its cash-strapped host city, CEO Robert C. Garrett is being paid nearly $3 million a year.

And Garrett's salary of $2.72 million was for 2012, according to a 2014 investigation by NJBIZ.com.

See: "Medical Millionaires"

Web site

The Web site of the tax-subsidized hospital lists Garrett, but contains no information on his current compensation.

NJBIZ.com identifies Garrett as head of the "$1.72 billion Hackensack University Health Network."

HUMC and other non-profits are defending a legislative proposal that would have them make "community service contributions" in lieu of property taxes.

The city of Hackensack, where several non-profits shift the property tax burden onto residents, would receive $690,762.50, if the bill becomes law, according to The Record.

HUMC is paying about $4,877,000 a year on its taxable property in the city.

But most of its property is tax-exempt. 

Those buildings would normally yield an additional $10,623,000 a year in taxes, Tax Assessor Art Carlson says.

Hackensack news

The Record's local assignment desk hasn't done any reporting on the compensation of Garrett or anyone else running HUMC nor has it been covering recent Hackensack City Council meetings.

But Staff Writer Todd South, the reporter assigned to Hackensack and Maywood, made sure he got a seat at a court hearing on Thursday involving a marriage license for Richard Salkin, the Hackensack Board of Education lawyer.

Today, South reports Judge Roy F. McGeady, presiding judge for the Municipal Courts, dismissed a harassment complaint by city Registrar Maria Tartaglione as well as a counter complaint by Salkin (L-1).

Mystery meat

The Better Living cover today puts the focus on the mystery meat that will fill the menus of North Jersey restaurants slated to open in the coming months -- "from a funky Mexican joint to a high-end American steakhouse" (BL-1).

Food Editor Esther Davidowitz does her best to promote eight restaurants sight unseen.

Most of them are expected to advertise heavily in The Record.

On Friday, the paper's chief restaurant critic, Elisa Ung, offered a lukewarm, 2-star review of the pricey Ho-Ho-Kus Inn and Tavern, saying the chef's "flavors are all over the map."

The restaurant also lost points for desserts she labeled "heavy," "dry," "bland" or "unremarkable."

Those same words could describe her review.

Amtrak to Christie: Drop dead!

Image by JonathanCohen via Flickr

The debate over the Hudson River rail tunnels suddenly lost focus Friday.

A day after the editors welcomed Governor Christie with open legs and almost all of Page 1 to stake out his positions on education, transportation and other issues, federal officials told the Republican bully to drop dead.


The Record of Woodland Park tried to minimize the story's impact today, but a one-column head below a tabloid story on a Peeping Tom couldn't hide the terrible news: 

Amtrak slammed the door shut on salvaging the Hudson River Rail Tunnels to Nowhere -- meaning cash-starved New Jersey may get stuck with a bill that approaches $1 billion. (NJ Transit already spent $595 million on the project, and the feds want $271 million of their money repaid, plus interest and penalties.)

Christie double-speak

Amtrak's decision "late on Thursday" apparently caught Editor Francis Scandale and his hand-picked transportation reporter, Karen Rouse, off-guard. There certainly was no hint of it in Thursday's lavish coverage of Christie, who was quoted as saying the Amtrak talks were active.


NJ Transit can still salvage the project if it extends electrified light-rail service from the base of the Palisades into Manhattan. The use of light rail may also reduce costs, but I haven't seen anything about that possibility in The Record.


Look at the rest of Scandale's pathetic front page today. 

He must really be losing it in his pursuit of readers if he resorted to this ridiculous story about a hidden restroom camera that caught a man urinating. And the patch -- about improving science education -- what's that doing on A-1? 


Look at the headline -- right next to the Amtrak-NJ Transit rail-tunnels story. Why didn't the news copy desk avoid the cliched "on right track" here?

Lessons shaped to get 

students on right track

Let's see what head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes did with the Local section, her pride and joy.

L-1 has a large photo of a non-fatal accident today -- one of Sykes' favorite ways of filling all the space that her lazy minions can't fill.

What red light?

At the bottom of the page, Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski seems to be siding with drivers who blow through red lights -- endangering all of us -- with what is at least his second screed against red-light cameras. 

"Limp Chick," as he is known around the office, also has virtually ignored the commuting problems of mass-transit users, because he is in the pockets of the car dealers who advertise so heavily in the former Hackensack daily.

Staff Writer Joseph Ax reports on L-6 that "mechanical failure" has been ruled out in the fatal crash of Teaneck Police Officer John Abraham early Oct. 25, though he makes no reference to the safety problems of the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

Also on L-6 are a photo and brief on two more elderly driver accidents, which Sykes and Cichowski are doing their best to ignore. 

They should have launched a project on the driving challenges facing seniors and the help available to them long ago, but they'd rather grow warts on their asses from the hours they spend in front of their computers. 

$200 for mystery meat

I simply don't understand how Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung can blow more than $200 on dinner for two and come away with so little knowledge of the food she ate and so much contempt for the reader. 

Her three-star Better Living review of The Park Steakhouse in Park Ridge is a celebration of gluttony with no details on the quality of the meat served. And she says the restaurant serves Chilean sea bass, but doesn't tell you it is an over-fished species that is high in mercury.

Don't readers deserve to know if the $41 sirloin they order comes from an animal that is raised naturally on grass or one that was confined to a feedlot, pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed animal byproducts (bits of dead animals)?


Instead, Ung quotes the menu, telling readers it's "an exceptional cut of meat." Her opinion? "It  was quite good." And she loved the four desserts she stuffed down her gullet on two visits, including a $14 souffle.


There are no local restaurant health ratings in the paper today, but you will find wire-service stories on wine and bourbon