IRVINGTON, NJ — Elouise McDaniel, the president of both the Irvington Joint Block Association Coalition and Nesbit Terrace Block Association, as well as the head of the Committee to Recall Mayor Tony Vauss, finally received the letter in the mail on Monday, Aug. 24, from township Clerk Harold Wiener, informing her and the other three members of committee that the notice of intent to actually do the recall has been certified.
“This is to advise you that, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 19:27A-7a, the notice of intention to recall Anthony Vauss from the Office of Mayor, originally filed by you on May 12, 2015, and amended on May 21, 2015, is hereby approved,” Wiener wrote in the official letter dated Thursday, Aug. 20, that he sent to McDaniel. “As such, a copy of the certified copy of said approved notice of intention to recall Anthony Vauss from the Office of Mayor is included herewith, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 19:27A-7a. Please advise this office immediately of the three members of the recall committee that will be included in the publication of the approved notice of intention, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 19:27A-7b.”
McDaniel was one of the four people who signed their names to both the original and amended notices of intent that Newark Superior Court Judge Christine A. Farrington ordered the township to certify on Friday, June 26, and reiterated on Friday, Aug. 7, following legal challenges on a variety of grounds by Vauss’ attorneys, in an attempt to thwart the recall effort before it got started. The other notice of intent signatories are former at large Municipal Council candidate Destin Nicholas, Oakland Street and Orange Avenue Block Association President Dee Fuqua and Cathy Southerland.
McDaniel did not say on Monday, Aug. 24, whether or not all four names would appear on the approved notice of intention, as per Wiener’s instructions, but she did say she was happy the Vauss administration’s “stalling tactics” were finished.
McDaniel said now she, Nicholas, Fuqua, Southerland and whoever else decides to enlist in the uphill battle to actually carry out a recall of Vauss can get down to the nitty gritty business of doing it.
“I got a call last week from Harold that he was going to approve the notice of intent to recall the mayor, and so today, Monday, Aug. 24, I received the letter and he approved it,” McDaniel said. “And now we’re ready to move forward. We have everything ready to go, so we are moving forward, from this point on.”
On Friday, Aug. 7, Farrington had notified attorney Eric M. Bernstein of Eric M. Bernstein & Associates of Warren, who was hired by the township to represent Wiener in the case to block the notice of intent. Weiner denied the original notice filing because it was not filed properly, according to state law, and after that, McDaniel and company filed an amended notice that township attorney Ramon Rivera had directed Wiener not to certify, because the administration did not believe it was based on indisputable facts.
Then, on Friday, June 26, Farrington ordered Wiener to certify McDaniel and company’s filing within three business days after the town’s receipt of the order. She also added a handwritten note that stated, “The clerk’s reason for denying certification are not found in the statute and therefore not within his authority to deny certification.”
This didn’t stop the Vauss administration from filing another motion on Wednesday, July 15, asking Farrington to rescind her order because it was supposedly short on facts and long on defamatory statements. A hearing on that motion was scheduled for Friday, Aug. 7.
“The judged ruled on the papers, so there was no oral arguments on Aug. 7, because the judge ruled on the motion based on all the paperwork that was submitted by the parties,” attorney J. Waller, who represented McDaniel and company in the notice of intent case, said on Monday, Aug. 10. “What happens is the judge will either grant the order or deny the order and then send it back to the moving party. In this particular case, the township was the moving party. So they should have all the information on it.”
Waller said Bernstein “made two motions — one was a motion for reconsideration and then they made a motion to stay the prior order.” He said this meant Farrington “had two orders she had to consider.”
“Her prior order basically ordered the town to certify the letter of intent,” Waller said.
But on Friday, Aug. 7, Farrington ruled once again that facts from the opposition’s points of view didn’t matter when it came to filing notices of intent to do a recall of an elected official. She said the only thing that mattered is that the filing meets the statutory requirements laid out by state law, which is “clear and unambiguous,” when it comes to filing notices of intent for recalls and motions to reconsider orders that have already been made by a court.
“A motion for reconsideration must be based on at least one of three grounds: 1) the court’s decision was palpably incorrect on the facts of the law; 2) the court did not appropriately consider or appreciate evidence; or 3) the party has new information which could not be brought previously, which the court can consider in its discretion,” Farrington said in the letter dated Friday, Aug. 7, that she sent to Bernstein. “The party seeking reconsideration ‘must state with specificity’ the basis for the motion, including ‘the matters or controlling decisions which counsel believes the court has overlooked or as to which it has erred.’ For the court to even consider a motion for reconsider, the ‘magnitude of the error cited must be a game-changer.’ Thus, ‘a litigant must initially demonstrate that the court acted in an arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable manner before the court should engage in the actual reconsideration process.’”
On Friday, Aug. 7, Farrington ruled Bernstein’s motions did not meet that established legal standard.
“No new factual or legal arguments have been presented within these motion papers to establish that the prior decision was in any way incorrect on the facts or the law, nor that it was arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable,” Farrington said on Friday, Aug. 7. “Movants do not dispute that plaintiffs’ notice of intention fully complied with the requirements of Section 6 of N.J.S.A. S 19:27A-7(a). Movant objects to the contents of plaintiff’s statement of the reasons for the recall pursuant to subsection ‘e’ above — at the option of the recall committee, a statement, not in excess of 200 words, of the reasons for the recall. Defendant’s disagreement with the court’s decision is insufficient to require reconsideration. Accordingly, having considered the moving papers, the court denies defendant’s motion for reconsideration.”
Accordingly, on Thursday, Aug. 20, Wiener certified McDaniel’s notice of intent to do a recall of Vauss. McDaniel said she’s really glad he finally did.
“It’s still the same facts and that tells me that they were trying to stall,” McDaniel said on Monday, Aug. 24. “They did not want us to exercise our legal rights. But in the end, it paid off and the judge ordered the clerk to certify the notice of intent. Now we will move forward. We are already organized. We’re just going to go on now and move forward. We have to get the petition and they have to certify the petition, but the same thing that’s in the letter of intent will be on the petition, so I don’t see why or how they cannot do that.”