Borough Board of Health Sues Hopatcong

In a 15-page lawsuit, Hopatcong's board of health alleged the borough mayor and council violated state laws by passing legislation granting their administrator power to appoint health department employees.

The board of health said in the lawsuit, filed March 15 with the Sussex County Superior Court, that Mayor Sylvia Petillo and the six-member council wrongfully usurped the board's duties of appointing, supervising and compensating health department workers.

The lawsuit seeks to void the law, returning powers to the board, and to recoup legal fees.

Click on the right for a PDF of the lawsuit.

Petillo said Wednesday she would defend her and the council's actions and that she was disappointed with the lawsuit, filed by Eric M. Bernstein & Associates.

"I'm disappointed that the board of health would think that using our time and resources in this matter is good for the taxpayers," she said.

Petillo and the council overstepped their bounds by giving Borough Clerk Cathy Gleason registrar of vital statistics duties and reassigning the employee who previously held the health department job, said the lawsuit, which also alleged they violated the state Open Public Meetings Act by failing to give proper notice of agendas of meetings on Jan. 18 and Feb. 1 when the law was introduced and adopted, respectively.

The mayor and council also violated a New Jersey Civil Service law when it didn't give the former health department employee or the board of health notice that it would discuss changing their duties and powers, the suit added.

"They're leaving us nothing to fall on but our own swords," board of health President Mariano Gianni said Wednesday, "and we're getting tired of falling on that."

Board of Health Vice President Thomas Forbes refused to comment on the suit, which comes after tensions between the board and the council seemed to peak at a March 26 special meeting.

In the , the council voted to appoint two of its members—Michael Francis and John Young—to the board and to introduce a law creating a health advisory committee. The appointements and law are expected to pass final votes on April 18.

Hopatcong entered a shared-services agreement with Sussex County in 2009, eliminating almost its entire health department, save for a clerk and the registrar, which were kept around, Petillo said, to ease the transition. But the clerk retired earlier in the year, and her position wasn't filled. That left the registrar as the health department's only employee.

Borough Attorney John Ursin said the mayor and council didn't break laws.

"We're confident that the procedures that we followed were correct," he said. "We'll continue to analyze the lawsuit. The claim that the board of health wants employees to report to them seems very frivolous under the circumstances that there are no board of health employees."

Ursin said all employees on the borough payroll, including those in the health department, "in one way or another" report to administrator Bob Elia.

"He's the head of operations on a daily basis, only below the mayor," Ursin said. "The fact that someone was moved—in the end, the clerk and the registrar were combined, which is very common for a town of our size—saves the taxpayers money."

Gianni said the board voted to sue Petillo and the council at its Feb. 15 meeting, but haven't approved the minutes from that meeting since it canceled its March gathering.

Ursin said the lawsuit wasn't delivered to the mayor and council until Wednesday.

Relations between the borough and the board have been frosty for months, Petillo said.

"We have not been able to get agendas or the ordinances they've been passing or a response to their letters," she said.

What's more, the board also shouldn't have hired a separate attorney at the cost of the borough for its January reorganization meeting without the approval of the borough, Petillo said.

"They were paying hourly for an attorney to sit at their meeting and they had no business," she said. "All they did was read one resolution and one ordinance … They should have read that themselves. They had a bill of 500-something dollars to have a lawyer sitting at a board that has no department."

"The fight that they're fighting—it's a battle where there is no fight. There's no [health] department. It's been gone for three years. Three years later you decide you want to have a battle? There is no battle because you have no department."