So Many Phonies • • • So Little Time

Former “Mayor” Who Nearly Bankrupted Dover Township In 1992 Fiscal Crisis Now Wants To Be Municipal Utilities Authority Chairman

Wnek Pompously Says “We Will Educate You” As Furey And Larsen Confess They Put Up Dissolution Plan Without Ever Seeing DMUA Facilities Or Understanding Agency’s History

Broome Declines To Quit While He Is Ahead And Foolishly Draws Attention To Aldrich Job Scam Irregularities Everybody Had Forgotten About

A round robin of bipartisan sham and pretense at Tuesday’s township committee meeting continued to demonstrate that voters were right to change the local government.

Figuring out how to make the change without getting back the same phonies who wrecked the local government in the first place may, however, be quite another story.

OCPolitics•Com has learned that GOP boss R. C. Clement wants to make former Mayor Paul Wnek the chairman of the Municipal Utilities Authority when the authority reorganizes in February.

Suffering From Amnesia,
Wnek Says “We Will Educate You”

Wnek, who is apparently still suffering from terminal amnesia regarding his own dismal record in public office, showed up at the committee meeting to announce pompously “we will educate you” in connection with past DMUA successes he had nothing whatsoever to do with.

Foot In Mouth, Broome Demands
Apology From Furey

At the same meeting, Authority Chairman John Broome was present to demand an apology from South American tourist “Doctor” township committeeman John Furey (left) for sending information about the Aldrich job scam to the County prosecutor.

The only problem with Broome’s apology demand was that Broome was up to his ears in doctoring of public records and manipulation of employment procedures that set up the appointment of former “Mayor” Clarence Aldrich as DMUA superintendent.

Falsification And Rigged Job Procedures

The records falsification and rigged job procedures were part of a political conspiracy last Spring to get Aldrich off the township committee to create a vacancy for former lottery queen Virginia Haines.

The Aldrich-Haines deal, described by one official as having the “odor of unrefrigerated seafood”, was led by Haines, Wnek, Commissioner Leonard Hedinger, and Clement’s wife Debbie, a DMUA commissioner and health insurance double dipper who Clement has designated as authority vice-chairman.

Haines was anointed by Republican leaders to fill the Aldrich vacancy and Aldrich has been working as “superintendent” for the DMUA since last June 17th.

Wnek Was One Of The Worst Public
Officials In Ocean County

Former “Mayor” Wnek ranks as one of the worst public officials in Ocean County and may be designated as such if he is selected as DMUA chairman; his career in politics has been a demeaning travesty that has featured a level of incompetence which is rare even for Boss Clement’s little gang of patronage seekers.

Wnek, Payroll Padding And
Tax Increases: Perfect Together

Wnek will be an excellent point of reference, a poster boy for the the tax increases and payroll padding that have made the government in Dover Township the laughing stock of voters and taxpayers:

• Wnek served as bogus appointed “mayor” in the wrecking crew that produced the $32 million 1992 fiscal crisis, the worst in the history of New Jersey local government, and the world class tax increases that the crisis caused.

• Wnek ran away from the financial crisis he helped create in 1992 and did not run for re-election to the township committee on the theory that he had caused enough grief for the taxpayers and besides, he didn’t have a prayer of getting re-elected.

• Wnek was appointed as a DMUA commissioner so he could collect benefits and inflict his deficit spending ideas on DMUA ratepayers while Boss Clement tried to find him a job in the county GOP patronage establishment.

GOP Created Costly Public Works Job For Wnek

• Wnek was too much baggage even for a county payroll padded with every washed up political hack in creation, so in 1997, Boss Clement and former GOP boss William Sommeling and GOP overboss Assemblyman James Holzapfel actually created a brand new, totally worthless and unnecessary “management” job as “coordinator” in the Dover Township Department of Public Works, and appointed Wnek to it.

• Padding the payroll with the likes of Wnek created an immediate “morale problem” at the public works department, where one of Boss Clement’s relatives was established as “director” of the department. Some of the more presumptuous employees even thought they should have a chance to fill the “coordinator’s job. The “morale problem” was “resolved” when the township committee approved big raises for everybody in a contract happily negotiated by the firm of “labor counsel” Holzapfel, described by many as “hush money”, so the department, its budget bloated with political slush, now has a permanent extra expense component of more than $600,000, much of it inspired by wasting public funds on Wnek’s patronage job, and that will be a big factor in the next township tax increase.

• As soon as he joined the township payroll, Wnek became a double dipper on health insurance benefits, and, ever since, taxpayers have been picking up the tab for Wnek’s TWO expensive health insurance policies, one of which Wnek doesn’t even need.

Wnek Written Up In One Of The Few Accurate
Parts Of State Investigative Audit

• Wnek’s misadventures were written up in the investigative audit conducted by the state government which said, among other things, that Wnek’s job was created without consulting the head of the department. The audit described the “coordinator’s” job as “not necessary” and recommended “discontinuing the position”.

• A few years later, when the heat became too intense for this arrangement, Holzapfel set Wnek up with a job in the Burlington County Road Department, where he is still double dipping.

• Recently, Wnek shared responsibility for the DMUA current year $6.4 million operating deficit.

As “Loyal Opposition”, Furey Was A Big Flop

Instead of drawing attention to the DMUA irregularities in his role as part of the loyal opposition, Furey lost the opportunity by referring the charges, which were not criminal in any event, to the county prosecutor.

The result was the Democrats blew the chance to use the issue, and Democrat Thomas Rodgers lost an election he should have won easily as the Republican establishment imploded and self destructed.

Abject Lunacy Of Larsen-Furey DMUA
Dissolution Plan Undiminished

Blunders and misrepresentations by Wnek and Broome, however, did nothing to diminish the abject lunacy of the Larsen-Furey DMUA dissolution plan, which could create the township’s sixth financial crisis since 1980, and produce huge tax increases and sewer rate hikes within a few years.

Larsen-Furey Plan Is Already Delaying Overdevelopment Responses

The Larsen-Furey plan has already begun to further aggravate the township’s puny response to overdevelopment and traffic gridlock: all the facts coming soon on OceanCountyPolitics•Com.

Click here for previous Aldrich golden parachute job scam article.

Click here for DMUA history showing Wnek had nothing to do with agency success.

Click here for article on four Furey lies in one sentence.

Click on Larsen plan: very much like Enron ripoffs.

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