ORANGE, NJ — Residents were swift to comment when news broke that the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division recently ordered Orange Mayor Dwayne Warren to rehire a former assistant city attorney who said he was wrongly terminated because he blew the whistle on Willis Edwards, the former acting business administrator, deputy business administrator and Warren’s Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother.
“The audacity of the mayor, an attorney himself, to appeal this clear whistleblower case,” said Katalin Gordon, the woman who singlehandedly uncovered the fact that the city had over-billed taxpayers millions of dollars during former Mayor Eldridge Hawkins Jr.’s administration and who also recently scored a victory against the city in her own legal battle to obtain information about the job status and salary payments to Dwight Mitchell while he was supposed to be out of work on sick leave, due to an automobile accident directly related to the McGovern case against Warren, Edwards and the city of Orange Township, on Saturday, Aug. 5. “Of course, the taxpayers are footing the bill. And you are right, this is another layer of how this man, Mitchell, has been given money left and right for no reason.”
Gordon said there is a clear link between the case of John P. McGovern v. City of Orange Township and Mayor Dwayne Warren and her recent victory in her NJSC Appeals Court case that found Warren and the City Clerk’s Office, led by deputy clerk Madeline Smith, “willfully and deliberately” denied Gordon’s Open Public Records Act request for information related to Mitchell’s employment status and salary payments.
“Because McGovern was not aware at the time, or did not say so, that Mitchell was not eligible for workers’ compensation, because his supposed health problems were found not to disable him from daily work,” said Gordon. “This admission had been made by the city, in their brief of my appeal case.”
Former Orange Citizens Budget Advisory Committee member and former airline pilot Bruce Meyer said obfuscation is par for the course in “Mayor Esquire,” his nickname for the Warren administration. He has also previously spoken out publicly about the current administration’s refusal to comply with court orders or share public information and said the McGovern decision should not come as a surprise to anyone in Orange.
“Orange taxpayers paid for all of former city clerk Dwight Mitchel’s medical bills, as well as full pay, not workmen’s comp, for his long medical absence, yet he got to keep the full court judgment that was to pay those costs,” said Meyer on Saturday, Aug. 5. “A sweet and illegal deal that our assistant city attorney, McGovern, objected to. Orange taxpayers are now paying back-pay, interest, damages, attorney fees, etc., to our illegally fired assistant city attorney McGovern, as well as the legal costs to defend the city for his wrongful termination. Taxpayers again pay for both sides of a legal battle that should never have been started in the first place, like paying for Willis Edwards to defend his illegal job; legal battles brought on by a cynical disregard for the law, repeatedly displayed by Mayor Dwayne Warren and his administration.”
Meyer agreed with Gordon that one of the worst things about the McGovern case and other instances of the lack of transparency and accountability in Orange since 2012 is the fact that Warren is a licensed, working New Jersey lawyer, which means he is an officer of the courts and legally, morally and ethically bound to uphold the law, though it seems he rarely does so as attorney or mayor.
“Warren has sworn an oath of office to work for the citizens of Orange as mayor,” said Meyer. “He has sworn to uphold the laws of New Jersey as a practicing lawyer. There is no excuse for the illegal and unethical practices Warren has subjected the citizens of Orange to. Citizens of Orange can only hope that the ongoing FBI criminal investigation into Orange City corruption will ultimately put a stop to this kind of activity.”
Former Zoning Board member and 2016 mayoral candidate Janice Morrell agreed with Meyer and Gordon. She said NJSC Appellate Court judges Joseph Yannotti and Michael J. Haas spoke very clearly in deciding John P. McGovern v. City of Orange Township and Mayor Dwayne Warren and she hopes the current administration finally gets the message that other judges in other cases for the last four years have repeatedly tried to send them in every ruling against them.
“Orange received a judicial spanking,” said Morrell on Saturday, Aug. 5.
According to city spokesman and IT Director Keith Royster, the Warren administration got the message of Yannotti and Haas loud and clear.
“The administration is currently in the process of complying with this court order,” said Royster on Tuesday, Aug. 15.
In the matter of John P. McGovern v. City of Orange Township and Mayor Dwayne Warren, on Friday, July 21, Yannotti and Haas reaffirmed an earlier court’s judgment against Warren and the city that ordered them to rehire McGovern and pay him all money he lost when the mayor fired him at Edwards’ request, because the former acting business administrator was angry that McGovern did what he asked him to do, but made sure to let everyone involved know he only did it because he had been ordered to do it by Edwards.
According to the NJSC Appellate Court, McGovern said Warren fired him because Edwards ordered him to release the $100,000 lien on Mitchell’s money, even though it was against the law to do so and, when McGovern didn’t do it right away, Edwards got angry and ordered him to do it again and McGovern did it, but he made sure to make an official note that he only did it because Edwards, who was his superior as business administrator, had ordered him to do it. That notation was important, because it provided CEPA whistleblower legal protection for McGovern.
According to NJSC Appellate division papers, Edwards didn’t like that one bit and got Warren to fire McGovern because of it.
McGovern decided to sue Warren and the city and the courts agreed with him and ordered Warren and Orange to rehire him, recoup his salary and benefits, and pay his legal fees for a total of almost $300,000. But the Warren administration appealed the first judgment against them and, on Friday, July 21, the NJSC Appellate Division upheld that initial judgment against Warren and the city and now the current business administrator, Chris Hartwyck, has to find the $300,000 needed for what the court ordered them to do.
Edwards still has not repaid the almost $300,000 that Superior Court Judge Christine Farrington ruled he has to repay the city of Orange Township for the salary he was paid when he was “illegally” employed as the deputy business administrator. Farrington’s ruling supplemented a previous ruling by a different judge in the same courts, who ruled that Edwards could not be the deputy business administrator because, according to Orange statutes, only a full-time business administrator could appoint a deputy business administrator and, at the time that Warren appointed him to that position, the City Council had already voted not to hire Edwards as the permanent full-time business administrator, once his 90-day stint as the acting business administrator ended.
Therefore, Edwards was not the business administrator or the deputy business administrator when he ordered McGovern to waive the $100,000 workers’ compensation lien on Mitchell’s alleged motor vehicle accident settlement money. But Yannotti and Haas didn’t take Edwards illegal job status into account when they made their ruling on Friday, July 21, regarding the Dec. 8, 2015, judgment against Warren and the city that they had tried to appeal.
“The judge found that the city had terminated plaintiff in violation of CEPA for whistleblowing activity,” said Yannotti and Haas in their decision on Friday, July 21. “The judge noted that plaintiff had objected to ‘pressure’ from Edwards to compromise a worker’s compensation lien, which plaintiff believed was a violation of the city’s ordinance. The judge pointed out that he had ordered defendants to provide a written statement of the reasons plaintiff was fired and they had not done so. The judge entered an order dated Jan. 7, 2016, which awarded plaintiff back pay in the amount of $136,048.96, with prejudgment interest of $6,511.57, totaling $142,560.53; awarded plaintiff compensatory damages of $50,000; reinstated plaintiff to his position as assistant city attorney; required the city to pay pension contributions for plaintiff from Feb. 1, 2013, until the date of his reinstatement; and directed defendants to pay plaintiff attorney’s fees and costs totaling $37,354.”
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