Matthew Conlon’s four months as Trenton’s city clerk has been contentious.
And that’s the only thing city officials, including Conlon, agree upon.
“It’s been a rough 90 days,” Conlon said.
Since being hired in early August, Conlon has threatened to sue a councilman, filed a police report against a news reporter, called the FBI to report allegations that council meetings were wiretapped, and acknowledged his whistleblower actions led to the firing of the city’s law director – which the mayor tried to stop, but a judge allowed to proceed.
This has caused entrenched city employees, some in the law department, and led by At-Large Councilman Jerrel Blakeley, into a conspiracy that seeks his ouster, Conlon says.
“I am getting slapped around here,” Conlon told NJ Advance Media.
His critics say Conlon is far from any kind of victim, but the agitator.
“He needs to stay in his lane downstairs,” Mayor Reed Gusciora said of Conlon, referring to the clerk’s office, which is on the lower level of City Hall. Conlon’s brief tenure has been “disruptive” and he’s made himself a public focal point, when he should be seeking to be neutral.
Now, the mayor is having the law department conduct a background check, after questions that the council, who hires the city clerk, may not have had it done when he was hired.
“That background check is ongoing right now,” Gusciora said Thursday.
Conlon believes the city is not entitled to such a search, since he already submitted to one by the city’s personnel office.
Conlon has not been a career clerk, but says he’s worked for law firms on municipal matters for years, and trained to be a municipal clerk in 2017. He previously worked in clerk’s offices in Longport in Atlantic County and Highlands in Monmouth County, and was hired in Trenton at an annual salary of $122,000.
The series of public scuffles started soon after.
First, Conlon claimed in September to have called the FBI about leaks from an executive session of the city council when a reporter with the Trentonian, Isaac Avilucea, story posted on the Trentonian website featured an audio clip from the meeting.
Conlon did not say who he suspects of providing the audio to the reporter.
Then, in October, Conlon threatened to sue Blakely when the councilman questioned his legal education and background during a public council meeting.
The saga took another turn when Conlon filed a police report against Avilucea claiming harassment for the reporter’s repeated calls and allegations that Avilucea published his personal information in news stories or on Twitter. He also accused the reporter and city officials of being part of a RICO conspiracy, a federal charge typically used against mobsters, for requesting Conlon’s emails through the Open Public Records Act.
“The only thing I have conspired to do is commit journalism, which is lawful,” Avilucea told NJ Advance Media.
Blakeley said Conlon has been a fountain of “wild accusations and outrageous claims.”
“Mr. Conlon has an overactive imagination and has been watching too many movies,” Blakeley said.
Conlon says he’s also been checking into who has been checking into his legal background, and found Blakeley filed a request for his law degree and used his day job email with the NJEA, which he believes is improper.
Blakeley said in response Friday that he is authorized as a councilman to seek such information.
“I conducted a legal credential verification using my own dime on my own time and completed in my capacity as an at-large councilman. Whatever email I used is immaterial to the previous facts,” Blakeley said.
In a lengthy discussion with NJ Advance Media, Conlon portrayed himself as an outsider in a city where officials do not appreciate his “upsetting the apple cart.
“I do things a different way,” Conlon said. “They’re not happy that I know how to do stuff.”
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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.
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