A single, nasty lawsuit won't derail reform in Hackensack

Hackensack residents lining up to question city officials during the public-comment portion of Tuesday night's City Council meeting.By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITOROn Tuesday night, more North Jersey Media Group staffers gathered in one place in Hackensack than at any time since 2009, when the Borg family's flagship newspaper abruptly abandoned the city.Four reporters and a photographer covered the City Council, which met on the third floor of City Hall,...

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Politics are killing Hackensack, our state and our nation

Anthony Rottino, seated left front, is Hackensack's director of economic development and acting city manager, jobs awarded to him after he helped raise funds for the successful campaign of a reform slate of City Council candidates in last year's non- partisan municipal election.By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORPolitics are an obsession at The Record of Woodland Park.The editors, columnists and reporters seem incapable of discussing any serious issue without...

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Look to readers for the unvarnished truth about Christie

On the Jersey shore, the Sandy Hook national park includes a nude beach, above, and one of the big guns that protected New York Harbor during World War II, with the Manhattan skyline in the distance, below.By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORIf you want the truth about New Jersey's worst governor ever, ignore the front page of The Record today and flip to letters from readers in the Opinion section."More important to him [Governor Christie] than a happy New...

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Hackensack budget plan tries to fix past sloppiness

The Record again today incorrectly reports Hackensack attorney Richard E. Salkin, speaking at Thursday night's City Council meeting, above, was fired as city attorney in 2013 after a reform slate was swept into office in the municipal election. Salkin was fired as municipal prosecutor, but held onto a second job as Board of Education attorney. He was city attorney from 1989 to 2005. Jim Mangin, the city's chief financial officer, is at right.By VICTOR...

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Editors surrender to Christie on taxing the wealthy

The Engine 5 Firehouse on Main Street in Hackensack is one of the most distinctive around.By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORDemocratic lawmakers are renewing the debate over taxing wealthy residents and corporations to balance the state budget at the end of the month, but The Record's editors have already made up their minds.How can Editor Marty Gottlieb run today's front-page story on a plan to avoid Governor Christie's drastic cuts in the state contribution...

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Environmental, quality of life stories go below the fold

A center divider has been added to Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry, near the entrance to a shopping center. It's not clear whether the new barrier is related to the elimination of the nearby Little Ferry Circle. The badly buckled, flood-prone entrance road to the shopping center and its lone tenant, a Korean supermarket, was repaved. By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORSaving heroin addicts from overdoses is a worthy cause, but it affects far fewer people...

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Despite Christie, justice in New Jersey seems assured

Cross traffic is rare at this red light in the middle of nowhere. Stop signs would work fine. Welcome to the Bergen Town Center in Paramus. By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORYou have to read between the lines of today's lead Page 1 story in The Record to find out Democrats have put the kibosh on Governor Christie's evil plan to remake the state Supreme Court in his own conservative image.The A-1 headline is awkward and the story is poorly edited, making...

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More and more, editors speak for the rich and powerful

The Johnson Public Library in Hackensack.By VICTOR E. SASSONEDITORThe Record's Page 1 "ANALYSIS" of Governor Christie's growing business-tax cuts takes literally forever to tell readers they have done little to improve the state's anemic economic recovery (see last three paragraphs on A-4).This is the fifth year in a row the GOP bully plans to balance the state budget on the backs of public workers, senior citizens and middle-class homeowners.Yet,...

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