The Gumshoe is On the Other Foot Now, Mr. Muschal

When Trenton’s South Ward Councilmember George Muschal thought he was under a covert extra-judicial investigation by the Administration of former mayor Tony Mack led by his brother Ralphiel, he was incensed. Just plain pissed off.

“They’re coming at me full force now. You  just can’t make this stuff up. I have it on good authority that a member of Mack’s administration contacted police to dig up any dirt that they can find on me… [Mayor Mack is] desperate and willing to do almost anything to keep me from speaking my mind… What’s next? Is somebody going to drive by and shoot up my place?… I never thought that it could get this bad. But we’re not going to take this. I’m not going to allow the mayor or his brother [to] intimidate me.”

That was 2010. When Councilmember Muschal served briefly as Trenton’s Acting Mayor in the spring of 2014, he conducted his own covert extra-judicial investigations of several of the City’s Department Directors and heads of city agencies.

But rather than assigning Trenton’s Police Department or any other law enforcement agency – or a brother – he hired, on the City’s payroll, a private investigator to “dig up any dirt” on “then-police Director Ralph Rivera Jr., fire Director Qareeb Bashir, then-law Director Caryl Amana, then-Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson and Lois Krause, who oversaw the YouthStat program once run by Colicelli,” as reported by David Foster in today’s Trentonian edition.

As Mr. Muschal would say, “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

The revelation that Mr. Muschal ran his own local version of Richard Nixon’s “Plumbers” became known yesterday as part of a lawsuit filed by Mr. Colicelli against the City of Trenton, alleging that he was illegally fired as a “whistleblower” after submitting a report about one of his targets, former YouthStat coordinator Krause, to the new Eric Jackson Administration in September of last year. In the account written by Cristina Rojas for today’s Trenton Times, Colicelli’s lawyer for this current lawsuit is quoted as saying, “He [Colicelli] pointed out things that were illegal and improper and ultimately, he paid the price for it by losing his job.” Among the allegations of improper activities supposedly reported to the Jackson Administration, Colicelli “allegedly found that $76,000 in funds had been wasted and federal funds were frozen multiple times after Krause failed to submit reports or properly administrate the funds.”

This was in connection with the city’s YouthStat anti-gang and youth mentorship program. Ms. Krause managed the program from March 2011 until abut a year later. Colicelli himself started the program for the City for the Doug Palmer Administration in 2009, and ran it until his contract was not renewed by City Council at the end of 2010. So he was very knowledgeable about this program when he was asked by “Acting” Mayor Muschal to investigate Ms. Krause, among all his other targets.

That’s not to say Colicelli was a disinterested observer. The brief history of the program described above omits some very complicated chapters in the history of the YouthStat program. After his contract was not renewed and Krause was hired, Colicelli sued the City in May of 2011,  claiming that hiring Krause over him was improper. That suit was withdrawn by Colicelli before it came to trial. So bad blood between Colicelli and the City of Trenton perhaps would have given a reasonable person some doubt about the wisdom of hiring Colicelli as a gumshoe to investigate the City of Trenton.

But not George Muschal. Under the guise of a Special Assistant to the Mayor, Colicelli ran his part-time intelligence operation from March to September of 2014.

I won’t comment on Colicelli’s investigation of Directors Rivera, Bashir or Amana. I will address Mr. Muschal’s behavior below. But I do want to present some information that should seriously call into question Mr. Colicelli’s findings about Ms. Krause.

According to Rojas’ Times account, Colicelli “allegedly found that $76,000 in funds had been wasted and federal funds were frozen multiple times after Krause failed to submit reports or properly administrate the funds.” In this particular instance, Mr. Colicelli conveniently omits serious charges of mismanagement of the city’s YouthStat program while under Barry Colicelli’s tenure, made by the US Department of Justice.

In October 2014, the DoJ released a report called “Audit of the Office of Justice Programs Grants to Trenton, New Jersey.” This audit (the existence of which I thank Jim Carlucci for letting me know), spanning the period from 2008 to 2013, found significant problems with the administration of each of the several grants made to the City of Trenton during that time, including YouthStat funds. In the Executive Summary of that report, the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Audit Division states,

“We determined [that the City of Trenton] was not in full compliance with the award conditions in some of the areas tested, and we identified $253,380  in dollar-related findings, approximately 15 percent of Trenton’s total award funding received of $1,718,047 through November, 2013. The audit questioned $176,915 in unallowable expenditures, $128,566 in unsupported expenditures, $5,502 in unreasonable expenditures; and identified $63,444 in federal funds to better use.”

In addition to the dollars involved, the DoJ auditors found significant systemic failures in the City’s administration of these grants, in areas of internal controls, contract and expense monitoring, reporting, and overall performance. These failings should make any Trentonian aware of how reliant the City is on Federal COPS and SAFER grants to payroll our Police and Fire Departments extremely nervous. If we screwed up these Youthstat grants, I doubt that we’ve been extremely conscientious about those bigger grant programs! I’m just sayin.

Back to YouthStat.

Now, not all of the unallowable and inappropriate expenses itemized above was for Youth Stat, and not all of that refers to Mr. Colicelli’s tenure. But a lot of it was. For instance, this is a table from the report showing expenses for Mr. Colicelli’s own contract as program Coordinator for his first two years.

This chart shows that in the first two years of the contract, $33,599 of contract payments and $3,387 of mileage reimbursements to Mr. Colicelli himself are considered Unallowable by the Feds.

Similarly, the DoJ report itemizes nearly $25,000 in expenditures to program contractor A Better Way as “unallowable, unsupported, and unreasonable.” The report does not give a timeframe for those payments, but since A Better Way has been part of the YouthStat program since its inception, it’s safe to assume that Mr. Colicelli was around during at least some of those.

Ditto with the claim that “federal funds were frozen multiple times after Krause failed to submit reports,” as claimed by Colicelli and his lawyer. Another chart from the DoJ audit shows that Trenton is a serial offender when it comes to late or missing reports. From 2009 to 2013, here’s the record:

Again, not all of these reports are for YouthStat. And not all of these are attributable to Mr. Colicelli. But Colicelli was more than willing to point the finger at Lois Krause in his investigation for “federal funds [that] were frozen multiple times after Krause failed to submit reports,” then he should be willing to accept some responsibility for late or missing reports under his watch.

For its part, the DoJ Auditors do acknowledge that part of the reason for Trenton’s miserable record on its grants administration is the tremendous upheavals that the City’s been living with for the last several years. The report mentions the significant layoffs in all departments that the City has endured. And this brief recitation surely understates the drama we’ve lived through:

“In addition, Trenton has endured substantial turnover within several departments that affected several areas of our audit. According to Trenton officials, between 2008 and 2014, 10 different people have held the title of Trenton’s Business Administrator. Within Trenton’s Finance Department, there have been three different Finance Directors between March 2007 and March 2012. Since March 2012, the Finance Director position has been vacant and the current Trenton Chief Financial Officer has been managing the Finance Department. In addition, according to a Trenton Police Detective, there have been eight different Police Directors from 2008 through 2014.”

The Department of Justice did not hold back in making its very serious charges of grant mismanagement. But the auditors did acknowledge the extraordinary environment in which this mess took place. In his report about his investigations, as alleged in his lawsuit, Barry Colicelli was quick to assess personal blame and even criminality to several of Trenton’s managers and department heads.

It remains to be seen what the result of many of these charges will be. Like many of Colicelli’s actions before now, this lawsuit too may be dropped. This suit may go to trial and the charges may be either proven or disproven. Or the City may settle before anyone sees the inside of a courtroom.

Reading the report of the Justice Department’s auditors as context, I think it is safe to say that Colicelli’s charges, at least as they relate to Lois Krause and her work for the City on the YouthStat program, may be highly suspect. They smell like they are highly selective, ignoring Colicelli’s own decidedly mixed record on the very same program. His “whistleblowing” report, at least as it may apply to Ms. Krause, may represent no more than payback from someone with a serious ax to grind.

Which in my mind leads me to be highly skeptical about ALL of the allegations being made by Colicell in this lawsuit. We won’t know for sure until much more is revealed, but it is reasonable to suggest that whatever “dirt” he may have found on Krause and Directors Bashir, Amana and Rivera may be dirt he delivered to meet the previously expressed expectation of his client, “Acting” Mayor Muschal.

Which brings me back to the Councilman. Whatever he was thinking when he hired Colicelli, under the cover of an Assistant to the Mayor title, as a Trenton “Plumber” – instead of bringing his suspicions to the City’s Police Department, OR County Prosecutor, OR State Attorney General, OR Federal authorities – he displayed extraordinarily poor judgment. I don’t think it too much to say he vindictively and aggressively pursued these investigations as personal vendettas. We recall he dragged the City into an unnecessary and costly legal tangle in Spring 2014 as he tried to fire Qareeb Bashir from his job as Trenton’s Fire Director. At the time I called Muschal’s actions Madness, but at least I thought he was pursuing his goals by legal and appropriate means.

I can’t say that now. With the revelation that George Muschal used his temporary, appointed position as acting mayor to conduct his own private covert investigation of several city directors, I have to conclude that George Muschal massively violated the public trust with his actions.  He has certainly killed any chance he may have at any higher elected or appointed public position.

The shoe is on the other foot now for Mr. Muschal. As noted at the top of this (long!) piece, when he thought he was the subject of a covert investigation by Trenton’s Chief Executive, he was rightfully and publicly indignant. When he found himself, by accident, in the Mayor’s chair himself, he did not hesitate to conduct a covert, improper investigation of several of his employees, and on the City’s dime to boot.

That’s vindictive. That’s paranoid. That’s wrong. He needs to be held accountable for this.

I honestly don’t know how he can continue in his current position on Council. He has certainly lost my trust.