PARSIPPANY – At the Tuesday, August 20th Parsippany Council meeting, Councilmembers Michael dePierro and Loretta Gragnani, in contradiction of their past public positions and statements, improperly introduced a motion to pay nearly $500,000 in accrued leave payments to former police Captain James Carifi, with whom the Township has been in litigation for several years.  Despite establishing Tuesday, August 27th as the deadline for this payment to be made, dePierro and Gragnani were no-shows at the special Council meeting called to clarify the terms of payment and other complex issues surrounding their unorthodox and contradictory motion.

Since taking office, our new legal team and I have worked diligently to end the multi-year, multi-million-dollar Carifi legal saga launched by former Mayor James Barberio and former Township Attorney John Inglesino. I fully support payment of Captain Carifi’s accrued leave claim, but it would be irresponsible to do so without resolving Captain Carifi’s pending legal matters and ensuring that the Township’s insurance coverage is not impacted.  Unfortunately, dePierro and Gragnani’s reckless actions, in blatant disregard of legal counsel, make a final resolution to all litigation almost impossible in the short term, and will simply lead to more litigation and attorney’s fees.

dePierro and Gragnani had the chance to listen to legal advice at this Council meeting.  The attorneys most familiar with the Carifi litigations and related insurance issues were there.  The Councilmembers had the chance to either withdraw their motion or clarify it to allow for payment to be made in a responsible and legally appropriate way.  Instead, despite imposing this deadline of August 27th themselves, they chose not to even show up or call in to the Council meeting.  If they didn’t plan to be around on this date, why would they establish an arbitrary August 27th deadline to make this legally questionable payment?

For years, Councilmembers dePierro and Gragnani supported the Barberio-Inglesino administration’s wasteful litigation against Captain Carifi, and opposed my administration’s efforts to resolve this series of cases in an equitable and lawful way.  My question is this: why now?  Why not last year?  Why not during the Barberio-Inglesino administration before millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted?

Changing their minds on an issue of this gravity without informing legal counsel is bad public policy, plain and simple.  Respect for the legal process they initiated is the only way to finally resolve this multi-million-dollar, taxpayer-funded series of lawsuits.  We cannot get ourselves out of this mess with the same political calculations that got the township here in the first place.

I am sick and tired of Parsippany’s taxpayer dollars being spent on a blood feud that appears to have emanated from a mayoral primary race between Mr. Barbiero and Council President Paul Carifi.  There is one, and only one, consistent theme to dePierro and Gragnani’s voting records here: continuing to vote for exorbitant, wasteful legal fees that cost Parsippany residents millions of dollars.  The days of flouting the law on the Council dais are over.  This needs to end.