Below is a letter sent to Gloucester City & Camden County The Truth about the actions of the Clementon Housing Authority and the Borough of Clementon. The letter was written by OPRA/OPMA Activist and Gloucester resident John Schmidt.
November 6, 2011
Dear Clementon Residents and Interested Parties,
For most of this year, I have been submitting many OPRA (New Jersey Open Public Records Act) Requests to governmental agencies in South Jersey. I am focusing most of my efforts in Camden County,auditing municipalities to make sure our government officials are being open and transparent to the people they serve. I also wanted to ensure that they were following the Open Public Meetings Act of New Jersey. I believe that we, as people and citizens of the state of New Jersey, have a right to know how our government spends our money. It is also our right and obligation to make sure our government officials and the people they hire to do our work, are following the law. The basic and most crucial point of our country is to be open and transparent to “we the people.”
In August of this year, I filed a handful of OPRA requests with the Clementon Housing Authority, as I have with other government agencies. The Clementon Housing Authority, which is led by Chairman Jack Nicholson, the Republican Candidate for Mayor in Clementon this year, did not have an OPRA form, although they are required to under the law. The law governing OPRA forms has been in place for 10 years and is there for all municipalities to follow. The Authority refused to respond to my request; I drafted a lawsuit a month later and informed them I would file suit in Superior Court, which finallygenerated a response to my OPRA. Under the law, they only have seven days in which to respond.
In September, I attended the Clementon Borough council meeting where I expressed my concerns about Housing Authority. Mayor Mark Armbruster, a Democrat and Council President Carol Andrews, also a Democrat, listened to my concerns and took immediate action by instructing the Municipal Clerk Jenai Johnson to send a letter to the Housing Authority asking them to ensure they are complying with OPMA and OPRA.
I must say that the OPRA request that I filed with the Housing Authority is not my motivation for this story, it is the next event that I am about to describe that is. In September, I attended the Housing Authority meeting in Clementon to inform the Commissioners what happened. I went to the meeting, like I have in so many other municipalities, with a pen and paper, a prepared list of questions and a video camera I wanted to ask them to ensure they hold their contracted professionals accountable and to encourage them to be open and transparent. Things did not go as planned though, it went horribly wrong.
When I entered the meeting with my equipment and materials, I was threatened by the commission. They contacted the police in an attempt to have me arrested. This was all generated bythe commission because of my intention to video tape the meeting. I was able to prevent this unlawful arrest with the help of the Chief of Police, who told the commission that under the law I had a legal right to video tape the meeting. The unlawful attempts by the Housing Authority caused this meeting to start nearly 30 minutes late, even though it was legally advertised for 4:00 p.m.
As I am writing this article, I feel that it is important the residents of Clementon know what the public officials in the Borough are doing. You, as a reader should also know my personal standpoint on politics in general. I am a Democrat, but at the local level, I believe my party has forgotten its true mission. It seems that the local Democrats care more about keeping the public, the people they serve, in the dark instead of doing the people’s business. My party, the Democratic party, has forgotten the little guy but remembers big business and campaign contributions. Is that fair? Is it right? No, it isn’t. That is why last November, and again this November, I am helping to elect Republicans on the local level. I recently heard from a friend in Clementon, that the Republican Mayoral Candidate is campaigning on a platform to stop the corruption in Clementon.
Having been to countless meetings this year, I can tell you that Mayor Mark Armbruster is one of only a few Democrats that remembers what government is all about. It’s about people. His opponent, Jack Nicholson, talks about ending the corruption in Clementon, but the only corruption in Clementon is the corruption in which he creates and supports at the Housing Authority in Clementon.
I am writing this because the people of Clementon should know the truth about the two candidates running for Mayor. As an Open Government Activist, I hope that the people of Clementon choose to re-elect Mayor Mark Armbruster. Mayor Armbruster is the type of person that has the ability to restore the Democrat Party and our government system back to what it should be, and make it about “we the people” again. The Borough of Clementon is one of the few government agencies that truly is accountable to the people they serve.
-John P. Schmidt
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