Hopatcong's GOP Leadership Bears No Responsibility on Conduct

The Sussex County Republican Committee elected Jerry Scanlan as its county chairman
in June of 2013. Scanlan is a resident of Hopatcong. His opposition for the position was Donald Ploetner of Sparta. The vote was 93-61. It was a contentious primary election. Ploetner stated
in his GOP campaign “this party needs to be run like a business. We need checks
and balances put in place, and everybody needs to be held accountable.” Scanlan’s winning proposal was - To maintain the Republican Party’s primacy in a Democratic-leaning state, he called for setting specific fundraising goals and growing the party both in numbers and
participation.

Fast forward to 2019 and the Hopatcong Republican Club (Scanlan a board member) and the County Republican Committee were wowed by his fundraising accomplishments. The style and manner in which he accomplished these goals were not a priority concern to them since they did not vote for a GOP chair that proposed for individual accountable, checks and balances to be put in place in GOP politics. Today the entire Hopatcong Borough Council and Mayor and all the County Freeholders have benefited from Scanlan's fundraising accomplishments. This would make it difficult to meter disciplinary actions on matters of careless and irresponsible conduct. The GOP Republican Committees likes to state they are following the "rule of law" but that rule of law does not contain a code of conduct for its officers.

Today's corporations have strict code of conduct rules especially in the area of public broadcast messaging that they enforce on its officers and employees (not so with politics). They do this to protect the corporation from legal suits resulting from poor or irresponsible conduct form its members. The Sussex County Community College does not have a Code of Conduct for its Board of Trustees although it has one for its faculty and student body nor does the Sussex County Republican Committee. The lack of a code of conduct from these arenas may be that the responsible actor of the foul action does not have to incur the legal action costs for their defense. Legal counsel and defense comes out of tax dollar revenues and not a company's profits.

In late July the Sussex County Republican chairman was under scrutiny for a list of offensive tweets and memes, shared via the county party’s official Twitter account, targeting four Democratic congresswoman of color. Jerry Scanlan, the county party chair since 2015, was also as the vice chairman of Sussex County Community College (a Freeholder appointed position). The college trustees were prompted to review the voluminous social media commentaries after members of the college community raised objections.

Howard Burrell, a trustee, pledged a thorough review, but did not specify what options were available to the college board. He stated “We don’t ride people out of town on a rail. We believe in the rule of law, but to the extent that we can, we want to make sure that the public knows that this is a great institution, that we don’t endorse this kind of language,” Burrell is an African-American and the last Democrat elected to county-wide office in Sussex, nearly 20 years ago.

Final disciplinary action on the expansive internet broadcast communique that resulted in a smear against the college board's integrity as a diversity friendly campus was transferred to the all Republican Freeholder board for a decision. On October 9,2019 the Sussex County Board of Chosen Freeholders got to give their commentary on this matter. Their meetings are publicly broadcasted on a YouTube channel. The commentary that former Hopatcong Mayor and Republican Freeholder (also running for Freeholder 2nd term) was the following at the 94:28 minutes into the meeting regarding Jerry Scanlan: "He said I didn't write it, I didn't speak it, I didn't post it. I reposted 22,000 tweets. ...Repost of 20 in 2 minutes was amazing he said and somewhere in the mix of the 22,000 these four tweets were on my phone were tied or connected to a tweet that he had tweeted that he had treated. So what I am trying to say is what he tweeted is not what he saw he didn't see it. ...I don't tweet and I guess when you tweet it is like a train..we Billy Gated that when he was able to come to my house."

The meeting had a rally of people to support Scanlan actions they included Hopatcong Council member Richard Schindler who represented himself as a resident of Hopatcong. He praised the good work that Scanlan has done on the Hopatcong Environmental Commission. Just like his appointed position to the College trustee board, the Hopatcong Environmental Commission board is an appointed position chosen by the Mayor.

The new presidence for following the "Rule of Law" that is remiss of a code of conduct for its politicians continues again in Hopatcong Borough. The Hopatcong Council race incumbent Republicans have coined themselves the “Real Republicans”. They have chosen a write-in candidate to run with them. Jennifer Johnson who won one of the Republican nominations for council in the June 5 primary stated “Running in the election and attending council meetings has shown me how vastly different my values are as a Republican from those I would be running with,” Jennifer Johnson core platform was covered in Hopatcong Lake Regional News as follows - For far too long, Hopatcong residents have been forced into paying additional money in things like interest fees and administrative cost on loans. This holds true for the general budget, water budget and sewer budget. We are paying roughly 12% of our tax budget to loans, roughly 33% of the water fees to loans and roughly 62% of our sewer fees to loans. This is our hard earned money going down the drain for nothing. We need to plan better and avoid these loans, not survive off of them. Apparently Jennifer Johnson perspectives are in conflict to Hopatcong's "Real Republicans" who don't believe the "real" calculations of our water and sewer budget should be expressed to the public.