The problem is not what
the council did, but how

It figures. Things had been quiet in Howell for a couple of months. Some people, it seems, just can’t stand a lack of conflict.

So to break up the peace, we have the Howell Township Council meeting in executive (private) session on the evening of Jan. 22. The next day Greater Media Newspapers was told, and later confirmed, that Township Manager Jacqueline Ascione had been fired by a vote taken at the council’s executive session.

Democratic Councilwoman Kimberly Alvarez said she and Democratic Councilman George Pettignano objected to the action.

Democratic Mayor Timothy Konopka indicated that he was in favor of dismissing Ascione, who has been on the job since June 1999.

Democratic Councilman Reinhard Kirchhof has not been heard from, and Republican Councilwoman Cynthia Schomaker said she will not comment on the matter because it is the subject of litigation.

If Schomaker voted to fire Ascione, we’d like to know how she reached that decision, having only been sworn into office Jan. 1. Did a novice council member have ample time to evaluate the job being done by the manager or was she convinced to dump Ascione by other members of the council? Either way, it’s not a promising start for the newest member of Howell’s governing body.

By this week, the story was changing. Township Attorney Richard Schibell said the council did not actually fire Ascione on Jan. 22. Instead, he said, the council members’ action should be interpreted as a prelude to a public vote on Feb. 5.

That explanation is not wholly satisfactory.

Schibell was not present at the council’s Jan. 22 executive session.

As an attorney, he knows full well that the council may not fire Ascione in executive session; the vote must be conducted in public.

That it wasn’t done in public sends a bad message to the people of Howell — the message being that some members of the governing body apparently want to hide things from the citizenry and that they don’t want to obey the regulations of the Open Public Meetings Act.

Anyone who serves on a governing body in New Jersey should be well versed in the regulations of that act.

The council’s apparent firing of Ascione is really neither here nor there for, as the mayor stated, the manager serves at the pleasure of the governing body, and Ascione is smart enough to realize that if enough members of the council wanted her gone, she would be.

She has her detractors and her defenders, and they can and will voice their opinions of the job she did while in the position.

Most residents of Howell probably couldn’t care less who the township manager is anyway. What should concern them, however, is their governing body’s seeming disregard of a law that demands that — with very limited exceptions — the people’s business must be done in public.