Council candidate confronts Mayor Liz Lempert over potential conflict of interest

Princeton council candidate Anne Neumann publicly confronted PrincetonMayor Liz Lempert on her conflict of interest with the University during Monday night’s council meeting.

Neumann noted that Lempert’s husband, Kenneth Norman, is employed by the University andworks in the Department of Psychology as well as in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.This connection would impact any mayoral decisions that involves the University, Neumann said.

Neumann said a conversation with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs on April 11 brought up the Local Government Ethics Law.

“No local government officer… shall act in his official capacity in any matter where he [or] a member of his immediate family… has a direct or indirect financial or personal involvement that might reasonably be expected to impair his objectivity or independence of judgment,” she said, citing the law.

Lempert said she did not find legitimacy in Neumann’s suggestion of the conflict of interest.Sheadded that she is unaware of why Neumann is levying these allegations against her.

“My husband is a tenured professor at the University. I’m completely open about that. I recuse myself when required. I ask for and follow the advice of our municipal attorney,” Lempert said.

She said that she was not the first mayor to be married to a professor and have a University connection. Lempert added that many residents have some degree of involvement with the University and that the town and University have many aligned interests.She further noted that she would most likely not be the last either, as Princeton is traditionally a college town.

“The town would not be the same without the University, and the University would not be the same if it were situated in a different community,” she said.

Neumann said that the mayor should certainly recuse herself from any participation in any matter likely either to benefit or to harm the University. She added that despite this conflict of interest,Lempert continues to hold private meetings with the University, which concern the aesthetics of the sidewalks and other public infrastructure on Nassau Street.

She said these meetings, which were formerly open to the public, are now private. She said this is an example of how Lempert strives for the University to benefit the town, rather than the other way around, because Lempert hopes that the University will contribute financially to the downtown’s renovation.

“The University does not always behave with the town’s interests at heart. It acts as a corporation for its own benefits. [The University] has a long history of conflict with the town’s interests,” Neumann said.

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Neumann said that Princeton pays an annual tax of roughly $2.5 million, which is much less than if the University were not categorized as a non-profit and thus made tax exempt. This issue is currently being addressed ina lawsuitthatquestions the University's non-profit status.

“I and others favor a Special Improvement District, or SID, that would include the University," she said. A SID would mean that the University would come to contribute annually and substantially — not just once — to downtown Princeton’s maintenance.

Neumann said that the relationship between Lempert and the University with regard to this beautification process of downtown Princeton is a reflection of an effort to establish goodwill in advance of the settlement the University will surely offer in lieu of continuing the lawsuit.

"The private task force I described might appear to people like me to be the University’s attempt to preempt a SID,” she said.

This lawsuit, whose parties are currently exploring mediation, makes any financial dealings with the University on [Lempert’s] part now especially ill-timed.As Neumann campaigns for a position on the council this spring, she said she senses a new spirit of activism in Princeton in opposition to unchecked development, including development by the University.

“Many of the Princetonians I've spoken to while campaigning believe, as I do, that the University has a history of making relatively small, occasional contributions to our town to avoid making larger, ongoing ones,” she added.

She first introduced the discussion on whether the University’s Butler tract should be rezoned as residential land at the council’s March 14 meeting. Neumann added that the mayor should have not suggested delaying the rezoning until November or December.

“That is, development is governed by ordinances in effect when developers submit applications, not when a municipality decides on them… it would not be unreasonable to assume, given notice of a delay in rezoning the Butler tract, that the University could make alternate plans for the Butler tract and submit an application before the site is rezoned,” she said, citing the time-of-application rule in the state of New Jersey.

According to Neumann, the University has already mentioned using the Butler tract temporarily for event parking, in order to delay the rezoing process.

However, Lempert says she has never felt any type of pressure from the University to regulate certain situations in favor of the school.

“The relationship between the two entities has had its ups and downs over the years," Lempert said.

She added that there are always going to be areas of disagreement and areas of common purpose between the municipality and the University.

"The important thing is to have good communication and a relationship of understanding and respect,” she said.

Neumann said Lempert knows that the role of mayor entails being first among equals, both on the Princeton Township Committee as well as in New Jersey’s township form of government.

“But [Lempert] is a mayor of a consolidated Princeton under New Jersey's borough form of government, the so-called weak mayor/strong council form,” she said.

Neumann said she would like to see Lempert step back from the downtown task force and step down from the dais when the University is the point of discussion.