The Morris County Commissioners want the state to investigate one of their own – Commissioner Tom Mastrangelo – for a possible ethics violation.

Officially, the board adopted a resolution Wednesday night asking the state Local Finance Board to review a matter involving Mastrangelo under the Local Government Ethics Law.

This political divide on the all-Republican board has its roots in voting, or more accurately, how voting is done in Morris.

This year’s advent of early voting prompted the county to buy new voting machines, which caused a heated debate back in August.

Mastrangelo argued strenuously for the county to buy the Dominion Voting Systems, but the board went with Elections Systems & Software in a 4-2 vote. The selection was in line with the recommendation of an in-house committee. The “no” votes came from Mastrangelo and Doug Cabana. Commissioner Kathy DeFillippo was absent.

Mastrangelo had contended that the Dominion machines were easier for voters to handle and more ominously, suggested that ESS lobbyists had been “hanging around” the county for some time.

The vote seemed to end things, but we now learn that was not the case.

A statement released by the county this week says that following the August vote, Mastrangelo approached a county employee member of the selection committee, complained about the selection and “made comments that the complaining employee reasonably interpreted as threatening to his employment.”

The employee reported the incident up the line and in October, the commissioners hired Somerville lawyer Franklyn C. Steinberg III to investigate the matter.

Steinberg’s investigation resulted in this week’s board resolution.

The resolution noted that Mastrangelo failed to cooperate with the in-house investigation, adding that a state review is needed “to protect the county from potential risk and liability.”

The resolution was adopted in a 4-0 vote.

Mastrangelo, Cabana and DeFillippo were absent.

The politics here is intriguing.  It’s quite odd for three commissioners to be absent at the same time. The three commissioners named above ran as a team in 2019. They’re all up for reelection again next year.

When contacted Thursday – a day after the vote – Mastrangelo said he was “flabbergasted” by the board’s action and denied not cooperating with the investigation.

His full statement below:

“Each Commissioner is elected to serve the people of Morris County and took an oath of fiduciary
responsibility to be good stewards of the public trust.”

“In what only can be compared to a ‘Deep State’ effort to silence any inquiries, I am now the subject of an official complaint by a 40-year bureaucrat simply for asking to see the research that supported the recommendation of a proposed multi-phased $5.7 million expenditure for new voting system equipment.

“The previous time Morris County purchased voting equipment, there were public meetings and presentations to the Board of Freeholders by the prospective vendors. This did not occur in this recent instance. Further, a simple Google search uncovered reports that the equipment being recommended by County employees was the subject of multiple lawsuits in other states and even admonishment of their practices by the media in our neighboring counties. The integrity of our voting system is paramount to ensuring that our citizens can participate in government.

“I requested the research that went into the committee recommendation. We owe it to our residents and tax payers to be vigilant when spending tax dollars — even more so for large expenditures such as this. Judging by the official reaction of the bureaucrats responsible for the recommendation, it is questionable whether comprehensive research was conducted. In standing up for our citizens, and the integrity of our voting system, I am now being subjected to a politically-motivated witch hunt.”