After 4 years of blindly following Torpey, BOT finally stands up and gets a Torpey Temper Tantrum

The BOT Meeting on Monday night was "must-see-TV".  I tuned in near the end, but there was an hour long heated discussion about Torpey's latest PR initiative - "The Open Democracy Ordinance"

The result was an hour of Torpey at his most arrogant, condescending and patronizing self towards the entire BOT that has generally pandered to him for 4 years.

You've got to watch for yourself at  http://ec4.cc/de8be4c97
( this is a link that takes you directly to the April 13 Board of Trustees Meeting, and the discussion on ORDINANCES FOR FIRST READING)

Ironically, prior to the meeting, @Transparent posted this "ETA: Any Trustee that supports this ordinance, four weeks befote Torpey leaves office, should be ashamed of him/herself".  So, I guess they are reading MOL.

AMazing how this was his biggest campaign promise, and he waited until the second to last meeting to try to get this done.  And when his sheep stopped following this lame duck, he couldn't handle it.  So mature and professional

Village Green now has a story about this 

Holy crap - who does he think he is? Are we at risk of him doing this before he moves on and lets us get back to living in a normal world? This quote scares the crap out of me with only 4 weeks left with this guy. I bolded/underlined the important part.

"Torpey pointed out that he had already taken many steps toward increasing transparency in South Orange, and that he could have instead issued an executive order to enact the policies rather than bringing the ordinance to the BOT for a vote."

scottgreenstone said:

AMazing how this was his biggest campaign promise, and he waited until the second to last meeting to try to get this done.  And when his sheep stopped following this lame duck, he couldn't handle it.  So mature and professional

 Perhaps he waited until he was about to leave so that the "legally accountable" part didn't apply to him.

From the Village Green:

Only an ordinance would have the teeth to hold officials externally and legally accountable, said Torpey. “Third parties can sue you to enforce it,” Rother cautioned.

Particleman - that is exactly why I am sure.

I jus thope in his last 4 weeks he doesn't try to pull some executive order bull*****.

Executive orders are easy enough to revoke   Who cares at this point?

I care because it wastes village staff time just to bloat his big ass head.

Yeah, but how demoralizing it would be to have your last executive order, one that you pounded the table and screamed about being so important, revoked on day 1 of the next administration.

scottgreenstone said:

I care because it wastes village staff time just to bloat his big ass head.

Unbelievable what a waste of time this PR Ordinance was.  Clearly, it was written by (or with significant input from) Village Counsel or the Village Clerk, with the sole purpose of Torpey's publicity.

I bet Torpey had a Press Release all ready to go about this, until the BOT rained on his parade.

Its fascinating that the Village Council, as you stated, most likely spent billable time on this, despite stating at the BOT meeting that this was uneccesary.  Makes you wonder if he just does what is need to line the corporate pockets of his firm. 

scottgreenstone said:

Its fascinating that the Village Council, as you stated, most likely spent billable time on this, despite stating at the BOT meeting that this was uneccesary.  Makes you wonder if he just does what is need to line the corporate pockets of his firm. 

 To be fair, it's not his job to decide whether the work should be done. Just to provide advice and do the work asked of him.

Actually it is his job to guide and advise. If he thought it was something that should not be done, he should say so and not spend billable hours doing it, unless Sir Torps A Lot made a unilateral decision to make him do it. 

scottgreenstone said:

Its fascinating that the Village Council, as you stated, most likely spent billable time on this, despite stating at the BOT meeting that this was uneccesary.  Makes you wonder if he just does what is need to line the corporate pockets of his firm. 

Looking at the Bills Lists for 2014, Village Counsel billed over $260,000 for his firm in one year.  Not too shabby. 

This bears repeating in this thread:

Trans_Parent said:

Four years ago, in his transparency platform, Torpey promised:

"All elected officials attendance and voting records must be available in prominently viewable and searchable, accessible online format."

And, now that he clearly failed to implement his bright idea, he wants the Board to enact a LAW requiring this?

This is a pathetic, desperate attempt by him to re-write history, so he can claim he "implemented" this make-work, lame idea.

Kudos to the trustees for calling a stop to this -- albeit too little, too late.

But, now having viewed that board meeting video, which is must-see TV for every resident, it's clear that our departing, lame duck village president has lost touch with reality.  Did he really compare this squashed ordinance to the Clean Air Act and mandatory seat belt laws?  Did he really compare this ordinance to releasing urban mass transit data to the public to support Google Maps directions?

South Orange, for many years and long before Torpey's election in 2011, has had among the most progressive open public access to its government.  South Orange was videotaping, broadcasting, and archiving its public meetings way before most towns.  Try to find video archives of nearby towns' meetings.  Its online repository of meeting agendas, minutes, resolutions, and ordinances preceded many towns.  And, its clerk's office always has responded to OPRA requests with speed and efficiency -- accepting email requests and responding by email.

To watch Torpey argue (and brow beat his opposing colleagues) that's what's voluntarily been done by the Village, as a matter of practice, is meaningless unless codified in a law was a pathetic, thinly veiled attempt to take credit for what's been done by others.  Ironically, the one thing that he committed, four years ago, to accomplish -- online attendance and voting records -- has not been done.

One additional concern:  Did Torpey state that he attended the Board's Legal & Personnel Committee meeting to explain/sell this ordinance?  Isn't the entire point of limiting these Board committees, by ORDINANCE, to only three trustees to avoid convening a 4-person majority of the board outside of public, broadcast board meetings.  Once Torpey steps into a Board committee meeting, a majority of the Board has convened and can formulate and agree on public policy without the bright light of full, public scrutiny.  Have there even been minutes posted from that (or any of those) meetings?

Thanks Alex Torpey for being such a "champion" for transparency in local governance.

Excuse me, are you sure about that $ for Legal Counsel???

A Quarter of a Million dollars, Plus?

Gosh we could fix a lot of potholes, and plant a ton of trees for that.

Trans_Parent said:

Kudos to the trustees for calling a stop to this -- albeit too little, too late.

But, now having viewed that board meeting video, which is must-see TV for every resident, it's clear that our departing, lame duck village president has lost touch with reality.  Did he really compare this squashed ordinance to the Clean Air Act and mandatory seat belt laws?  Did he really compare this ordinance to releasing urban mass transit data to the public to support Google Maps directions?

South Orange, for many years and long before Torpey's election in 2011, has had among the most progressive open public access to its government.  South Orange was videotaping, broadcasting, and archiving its public meetings way before most towns.  Try to find video archives of nearby towns' meetings.  Its online repository of meeting agendas, minutes, resolutions, and ordinances preceded many towns.  And, its clerk's office always has responded to OPRA requests with speed and efficiency -- accepting email requests and responding by email.

To watch Torpey argue (and brow beat his opposing colleagues) that's what's voluntarily been done by the Village, as a matter of practice, is meaningless unless codified in a law was a pathetic, thinly veiled attempt to take credit for what's been done by others.  Ironically, the one thing that he committed, four years ago, to accomplish -- online attendance and voting records -- has not been done.

One additional concern:  Did Torpey state that he attended the Board's Legal & Personnel Committee meeting to explain/sell this ordinance?  Isn't the entire point of limiting these Board committees, by ORDINANCE, to only three trustees to avoid convening a 4-person majority of the board outside of public, broadcast board meetings.  Once Torpey steps into a Board committee meeting, a majority of the Board has convened and can formulate and agree on public policy without the bright light of full, public scrutiny.  Have there even been minutes posted from that (or any of those) meetings?

Thanks Alex Torpey for being such a "champion" for transparency in local governance.

Well said, Transparent.  Here is a a direct link to the "discussion" at the meeting that everyone should watch:  

http://view.earthchannel.com/PlayerController.aspx?PGD=southorangenj&iID=272

jgberkeley said:

Excuse me, are you sure about that $ for Legal Counsel???

A Quarter of a Million dollars, Plus?

Gosh we could fix a lot of potholes, and plant a ton of trees for that.

 Just a guess, but wouldn't the counsel have been representing SO in what could be called extraordinary negotiations--one that quickly comes to mine is all the litigation, etc., with the East Orange Water issues.  Is the $260,000 comparable to the average billings in the past prior years?  

Here's the Tally that I captured for 2014.  Thanks to one Trustee defending EOWC for the past 4 years, the legal issue with EOWC has cost us a lot of money to simply run out the clock on the contract, instead of terminating for breach.

@michaelgoldberg, does $268K include Rother's monthly retainer for covering all routine matters?  How much is that?

Also, based on the resolutions posted on the Village's website, his last appointment, http://southorange.no-ip.org/weblink8/0/doc/126657/Page1.aspx, expired last year on 12/31/2014.  Is it a legal problem that our Village Counsel is representing the Village without legal authority to do so?

This fiasco is a perfect example of what happens with an egomaniac as Village President, a legal committee headed and staffed by non-attorneys and a Village Attorney who is incompetent and overpaid.

Trans-Parent: please see http://southorange.no-ip.org/weblink8/0/doc/133626/Page1.aspx - re-appointment of professionals - resolution 2015-27 dated 2/9/15.

levisonhw said:

Trans-Parent: please see http://southorange.no-ip.org/weblink8/0/doc/133626/Page1.aspx - re-appointment of professionals - resolution 2015-27 dated 2/9/15.

Resolution 2015-27, because of how it was created, is unsearchable.  So, a search for "village counsel" among the resolutions posted for 2015 reveals no result.  In fact, among all 83 resolutions for 2015, an obvious search for the omnipresent word "resolution" returns only 16 results.  Yes, a rather surprising result.

If you want to provide the public with online access to Board resolutions and provide the facility to conduct keyword searches, it's important that whoever creates the archived documents is trained to do this correctly.

To state the obvious, it's not especially transparent to post a resolution for hundreds of thousands of dollars of professional fees and simply state "as per contract" without posting the referenced contracts.  How could any member of the public, even if they can find this resolution, have any clue as to what the Village is paying all of these professionals -- many of which were renewed without advertised RFP's.

Isn't it unsearchable because the BOT wouldn't pass Torpey's ordinance to require machine readable records?

Trans-Parent

You are absolutely correct and why I was insisting that internal processes and procedures be developed to meet the proposed objectives (Alex's Ordinance) should be created before implementation (also agree that these should be stated as policy and memorialized by resolution not by ordinance)- what was proposed was like a cart before the horse.  

Our intent is to provide at least the information you describe.  

Thanks Howard for clarifying that. Can you also clarify why the Village council agreed to work on and draft this ordinance to later just tell the board that is no the right way to go? Did this cost the village money or was it part of his retainer?

It is part of his retainer and job.

You may want to ask Village counsel on the other part of your other question.

OK - at least it didn't result in additional billable hours.

Just convert the documents electronically rather than scanning them.   Saves space, too.