Court Opinion

ID: 9857262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:24:46.632949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:22.299446
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting in part.
If the circumstances of this case do not present an appearance of impropriety on the part of both the Mayor and the Planning Board members, nothing does.
*534Defendant Rizas became Mayor of Neptune Township on January 3, 1988, having been elected to that position by the members of the Township Committee. By virtue of his office Rizas was himself a member of the Planning Board. See N.J.S.A. 40:55D-23(a). The Board consists of nine members plus two alternates.
On the day he assumed the Mayor’s office for his first term Rizas appointed Eamon Jones to the Planning Board for a four-year term. At the Committee’s annual organizational meeting on January 1, 1989, the Committee Members again elected Rizas as Mayor. Thereupon the Committee appointed Daryl Daniels as a Class III member of the Planning Board for a one-year term, and the Mayor appointed Gene Marks to a one-year term. Mr. Marks was the Class II member, that is, an official of the municipality: building inspector, code-enforcement supervisor, and construction official, with a salary of $37,500. He had been appointed to those positions in September 1988 by resolution of the Township Committee, introduced by Mayor Rizas. On January 1, 1989, the Mayor appointed Paul Roberts to the Planning Board for a four-year term, and George Basket and Joe Sears as alternates with two-year terms.
Mayor Rizas was also an owner and developer of commercial property. During his 1988 term as Mayor he had contracted to purchase an undeveloped lot in Ocean Grove, a part of Neptune Township. The property was one of the very few lots in Ocean Grove that had remained undeveloped, and it was the only undeveloped lot in the Historic District — Commercial zone.
Wishing to develop the property, Rizas, in March 1989, some nine months before his term as Mayor was to end, filed an application for site-plan approval with the Planning Board — the same Board of which he was a member and to which he had appointed three members and two alternates, as recited above. The application, which met with strenuous opposition from members of the public (the Planning Board received 225 letters in opposition to it), took the rocky procedural course described *535in detail by the Appellate Division, see Wyzykowski v. Rizas, 254 N.J.Super. 28, 31-35, 603 A.2d 53 (1992), before the Planning Board finally approved it by a vote of three to two. Some members did not vote on the Mayor’s application, and others disqualified themselves. The three who voted in favor — Chairman Jones, Mr. Marks, and Mr. Basket — were all Rizas appointees. Mr. Sears, appointed by Rizas, and Peter Stagg, a holdover member from a prior administration, were recorded as opposed.
While the Mayor’s application was making its way through the Planning Board, the objectors, plaintiffs here, filed this action in lieu of prerogative writs. After the Planning Board had acted, the trial court, emphasizing that it was “not impugning the integrity of the members of the planning board,” determined that the application should proceed anew before that Board because of a “[pjublic perception * * * that the mayor [had] influenced members of the Board” — a perception of impropriety. See Griggs v. Princeton, 33 N.J. 207, 219-22, 162 A.2d 862 (1960). The Appellate Division agreed, in a carefully-circumscribed opinion by Judge King with which I am in substantial accord. Notably, the court below said:
We do not suggest that the Mayor or any member of the Board is automatically disqualified from making any application for relief, for instance, for a dimensional variance to their homes for a modest addition or an acknowledged accessory use. Certainly, if such necessity compels an application then all appointees of the Mayor on the Board, and all advisors to the Board in whose appointments the Mayor participated, should stand aside. We do hold that the Mayor should not pursue planning and zoning approvals for his own private development and commercial rental businesses while holding office without running the risk of judicial abrogation of those approvals as potentially tainted.
[254 N.J.Super. at 41-42, 603 A.2d 53 (footnote omitted).]
I see the stated holding not simply as consistent with our well-established case law but as compelled by that law. In Place v. Board of Adjustment, 42 N.J. 324, 200 A.2d 601 (1964), on which the Appellate Division relied, this Court found that a mayor’s representation of a private citizen before a board comprised of persons appointed by the mayor “create[d] doubt in the public mind as to the impartiality of the board’s action.” *536Id. at 333, 200 A.2d 601. If a mayor’s representation of another creates that tension, a fortiori the public perception of a mayor appearing before such a board in connection with his own lucrative business venture should trigger even greater suspicion regarding the legitimacy of the board’s action. See also Aldom v. Borough of Roseland, 42 N.J.Super. 495, 500-01, 127 A.2d 190 (App.Div.1956) (“A public office is a public trust. Borough councilmen, as fiduciaries and trustees of the public interest, must serve that interest with the highest fidelity. The law tolerates no mingling of self interest; it demands exclusive loyalty.”).
The majority concludes — and I agree — that the Municipal Land Use Law intended to carry forward the common-law standards concerning conflicts of interests announced in this Court’s earlier determinations. See ante at 523, 626 A. 2d at 413 (“Thus, common-law principles concerning the participation of public officials in matters in which they have a personal interest primarily govern this dispute.”). However, the majority also views its result as consistent with the Local Government Ethics Law (the Ethics Law), N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.1 to -22.25. Surely it is not.
The Legislature enacted that Law in 1991 to codify a set of guidelines designed to limit actions by local officials that might create doubt in the minds of citizens concerning the motivations of those officials. N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5(d) provides that
[n]o local government officer or employee shall act in his official capacity in any matter where he, or a member of his immediate family * * * has a direct or indirect financial or personal involvement that might reasonably be expected to impair his objectivity or independence of judgment.
As the majority notes, at least one respected commentator has suggested that the Ethics Law intends an even broader category of disqualifying interests than this Court has pronounced previously. Ante at 530, 626 A.2d at 416; see William M. Cox, New Jersey Zoning and Land Use Administration 30 (1992). Certainly, the Ethics Law contains no suggestion that the Legislature sought to slacken the ethical standards that apply *537to actions by local-government officials. As I understand that Law, the same factors that guided our resolution of earlier cases would apply in the instant action as well.
The majority offers a number of formulations of the common-law rule: “the official has a conflicting interest that may interfere with the impartial performance of his duties as a member of the public body,” ante at 523, 626 A.2d at 413; “the circumstances could reasonably be interpreted to show that they had the likely capacity to tempt the official to depart from his sworn public duty,” ante at 523, 626 A.2d at 413; “there is a potential for conflict,” ante at 524, 626 A.2d at 413; “the public official has an interest not shared in common with the other members of the public,” ante at 524, 626 A.2d at 413; or “contradictory desires tug[ ] the official in opposite directions,” ante at 524, 626 A.2d at 413. Under any of those propositions the members appointed by Rizas could not vote on his proposal.
Recognizing the important justification for restraints on the actions of local officials in the face of an apparent conflict, the majority notes that “for a person in public office to appear to seek to take advantage of the office will invariably be the worst politics.” Ante at 529, 626 A.2d at 416. It characterizes as “profoundly disturbing” the issue of the Mayor’s appearance before the Board. At least 225 persons were so upset by the Mayor’s application that they put pen to paper to acquaint the Board with their concerns. The two courts below were “disturbed” enough to order rehearing on Rizas’s application. If an application stirs such considerable concern among such large numbers of presumptively reasonably-minded persons, the application involves a “potential for conflict” sufficient to require that the interested members of the Board refrain from voting on it. The troubling feature of this case is not the Mayor’s appearance before the Board but the Mayor’s appearance before a Board four of whose five voting members he had appointed.
*538The Court limits its concern to Mr. Marks, who had benefited from Mayor Rizas’s introduction of a resolution appointing him to positions paying a total of $37,500 per year. The majority agrees that Marks should have refrained from action on the application. Along with the Court I am willing to assume that Marks acted impartially and that he meticulously considered Mayor Rizas’s application. Indeed, no evidence suggests that Marks acted otherwise. Nevertheless, nothing Marks could have done short of disqualifying himself from consideration of the application could have, prevented a reasonably-minded citizen from wondering if Marks’s affirmative vote on the application was a “payoff” for Rizas’s sponsorship of Marks for his salaried position with the Township. Whether Marks departed from his sworn duty matters not, because the circumstances were fraught with the temptation to forsake that duty — or so one might reasonably conclude.
The majority’s reliance on N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5(k), which says that “[njothing shall prohibit any local government officer or employee, or members of his immediate family, from representing himself, or themselves, in negotiations or proceedings concerning his, or their, own interests,” is misplaced. This case involves a more vital ethical question not addressed by that section, namely, whether a local official may appear before a local board and before persons appointed to that board by the applying official. If this case involved a similar site-plan application by a member of the Neptune Township Shade Tree Commission, I would have no hesitation in concluding that that person could appear before the Board without violating the Municipal Land Use Law or the Ethics Law; but our case differs significantly, and our concern should not be limited solely to the problem of the one Board member, Marks, whom the applicant had recommended for salaried employment in the municipality.
In focusing on N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5(k), the majority zooms in too closely and misses the big picture. The trouble lies not in Rizas’s position as a local official, but in his status as appoint*539ing authority for the three members who voted in favor of his application. The conclusion that Mayor Rizas’s appointees should not have considered his application is not at all inconsistent with N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5(k).
In support of its judgment the majority also relies on the need for clear and uniform application of the Ethics Law. Ante at 531, 626 A.2d at 417. To hold that a person who has been appointed to a planning board by a mayor-applicant should not participate in the consideration of the mayor’s commercial-development site-plan application strikes me as being as certain as — and more rational than — the rule announced by the Court.
In the end, we must return to the intent of conflict-of-interest laws — to maintain public confidence in government — and to the values that guided our determination of earlier, similar cases. The goal of maintaining public confidence is ill-served by a determination that a mayor may gain the benefit of a controversial decision in his favor when the only votes in the mayor’s favor are cast by his own appointees. The circumstances present a prototypical eventuality for participation by members of a board of adjustment in the consideration of an application. See N.J.S.A. 40:55D-23.2 (permitting members of board of adjustment to serve on planning board when conflicts of interest reduce to less than a quorum the number of planning-board members eligible to act).
N.J.S.A. 40:55D-23.2 will allow a mayor to bring a similar application without the same potential for taint as this case presents. Therefore, a mayor will not be “disqualifie[d] [from] * * * the regular pursuits of business in his or her community.” Ante at 528, 626 A.2d at 415. Although the Legislature approved N.J.S.A. 40:55D-23.2 after Rizas had submitted his application and the Board had acted, that section undoubtedly lessens the burdens on a mayor who might wish to pursue a similar application. See ante at 528-529, 626 A.2d at 415-416.
*540Our late Governor and Chief Justice Richard J. Hughes understood the need for public confidence in government. In three consecutive state-of-the-State addresses, he emphasized that theme. Noting with pride that in 1967 he had signed a bill that strengthened the state’s conflict-of-interest laws, he termed that act “no more than a meaningful first step.” Fitzgerald’s Legislative Manual 798, 838 (J. Joseph Gribbins, ed., 1969). The majority’s conclusion that a mayor might appear before a planning board on which he served and whose membership included several persons whom that mayor had appointed,. and one member that the mayor had recommended for salaried municipal employment, represents a major detour from the path to public confidence. As Governor Hughes said, “It is the public's legitimate expectation that those elected or selected to do the work of government will do so with only a single thought — the public.” Ibid.
I therefore dissent from so much of the Court’s judgment today as validates the consideration of citizen Rizas’s application by Mayor Rizas’s appointees.
For modification and affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI and STEIN — 7.
Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER and POLLOCK concur in part and dissent in part — 3.