REINHART'S TWISTED PRIORITIES: NO TO RECREATION, YES TO PRIVATE CONVENIENCE

Burlington County Freeholder Director Aubrey Fenton said today that his opponent, Shamong Township Committee member Mary Anne Reinhart, voted against a Green Acres loan from the state to fund the Township Recreation Complex while supporting spending taxpayers’ money to pave a road for the convenience of seven property owners, one of whom was a personal friend.

         “A more skewed and distorted sense of public benefit priorities is difficult to imagine,” Fenton said of Reinhart’s actions.

         In September of 2006, Reinhart voted against a Green Acres loan to finance a recreational complex for the benefit of all the citizens of the community and only three months later in December of 2006 she expressed her support for spending $600,000 to pave a road with seven houses on it.

         “Reinhart clearly cannot grasp the fundamental responsibility of an elected public official; that is to act in the overall best interest of the community rather than the private interest of a few,” Fenton said.

         Freeholder Stacey Jordan, Fenton’s running mate, said Reinhart’s actions “are a stunning example of using a public position of trust to benefit personal friends or supporters.”

         “It is actions like hers that contribute to the cynicism and skepticism people hold with regard to elected officials,” she said.  “She exemplifies the belief that there are two sets of rules --- one for ordinary people and one for the politically-connected.”

         “Serving in government at any level involves making choices --- often difficult choices --- about spending and establishing priorities,” Fenton and Jordan said.  “Reinhart’s record is a clear signal that the choices she makes are motivated by personal considerations rather than public good.  That is exactly the wrong mind set to bring to government.”

         Reinhart’s badly misplaced sense of priorities were revealed earlier as well when she voted three times to deny a paid leave of absence to a part time township employee --- a master sergeant in the Marine Corps --- who was deployed to Iraq, while accepting salary increases for herself.

         “For her, the personal benefit trumps the greater good,” they said.