Complaint Charges Vellon with Election Law Violations

Ralph Vellon, who lost in the recent board of education election after finishing third against winners William Freda and Joseph Longo, has been reported to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) for violations of election law he committed during his campaign.

But Vellon, who attributed the violations to human error, said the complaint against him was filed only after Vellon himself filed a complaint with ELEC.

Throughout his campaign, Vellon said Freda and Longo were under the sway of outside political forces and that the current board -- most of whom supported the incumbents’ candidacies -- did not adhere to ethical standards. Longo, however, now accuses Vellon of hypocrisy.

“If he wants to make accusations against me, well, turnabout is fair play,” Longo said.

Longo told Patch he filed a complaint because Vellon’s campaign literature, as well as his lawn signs, did not contain legally required “paid for by” language. The language did not appear on Vellon’s lawn signs when he ran in 2010 either, Longo said. The complaint was filed May 16, he added.

Vellon said that he purchased stickers with the appropriate language and affixed them to the signs, but some of those stickers may have come off. He did say, however, that he failed to get the same language on campaign mailers due to an oversight.

ELEC also requires candidates to file financial disclosure reports at regular intervals leading up to an election and a final report 20 days after an election, which this year was held April 27. The reports show the names of contributors (if more than $300 is donated), expenditures and other information. Longo and Freda, who ran a joint campaign, filed all required reports on time, ELEC records show.

Vellon, however, did not file any of his reports on time in 2011, in some cases filing them months late, ELEC records show. Vellon said he filed his reports late because he’d initially filled out the incorrect type of report, an error he attributed to inexperience as a candidate.  

Longo dismissed that explanation, however, chiding Vellon for what he described as his “political babe in the woods routine.”  

“If you check the ELEC website you will find that Ralph Vellon has run for school board three times with his wife Carmen as his treasurer each time and they filed reports late two of the three elections,” Longo said. “I have a hard time believing he filed his 2011 reports late because he filed the wrong forms.” In all, Longo added, Vellon may have committed about 40 violations of ELEC rules.

Longo also said he had heard from school district employees who had received invitations to attend Vellon campaign events through their school district email accounts.

“They were nervous and wanted to get out in front of it,” Longo said of the employees. “I told them they should not be telling me, they should report it to their principals. I don’t know if they ever did.”

Vellon, however, strongly denied making any such solicitation, saying, “I refute that as completely false. I never sent any emails to the schools, or anything like that.”

Throughout his campaign, Vellon repeatedly charged that Freda and Longo were part of a political machine that made hiring and other decisions for the benefit of supporters. But Longo threw those charges back against Vellon, noting that his ELEC reports reveal that he had the support of a number of former and current officials, including Deputy Mayor Marie Burke, former Mayor Mario Drodz, planning board members Sebastian Papa and Arlene Schor (herself a former member of the board of education).  

“Hey this is America, you should do anything you want,” Longo said. “But if you look at his supporters, it’s a political who’s-who list.  You’re not the breath of fresh air Belleville has been waiting for, you’re just another political hack backed by the Democratic chairwoman and deputy mayor Marie Strumolo Burke....I didn’t have the support of any of those people.”

Vellon, meanwhile, filed his own complaint immediately after the election. While refraining from describing it in detail, he said his concerns were much more substantive than the charges leveled against him. He described his errors as relatively “frivolous” and not a deliberate attempt to skirt campaign law. Vellon also “self-reported” his violations, he said.

He added that his campaign reports, while filed late, contain even more information than is required by law, including the names of campaign contributors who gave less than $300. By comparison, few donors to the Longo-Freda campaign are mentioned by name, presumably because those donors gave less than that amount.

Vellon also pointed out that several sitting board members who supported Longo and Freda have also failed to file complete campaign information. No contributor or expenditure information appears on the ELEC site for the campaigns of Judy Piscatowski, Peter Zangari or John Rivera, who all ran in previous years.

‘It’s not like I tried to deceive the public,” Vellon said. “I believe it is just a continuation of the retaliation against me.....I’ll continue to fight against the issues of immorality and unlawful acts, which are extremely detrimental to our community, which are really serious issues that need to be addressed. This is not going to deter me in this struggle.”