At the Jun 13th, 2006 Township council meeting Ms. Ritchie responded to the ITOW articles (1) (2) about her. One rule of ITOW is anyone featured in ITOW has the right of rebuttal, thus we present her comments.

In her response she accused Phil Kramer of misrepresenting the facts. First while it is true that Phil Kramer writes much of what goes on this site it is screened by several people before it goes up. Thus this is NOT Phil Kramer's web site; it is the TUF web site. Ms. Ritchie accuses the site of spreading the following information; that she took money from Jack Morris, that she put campaign signs up on Jack Morris's property, and that she is under investigation.

We looked carefully through our site and found no mention of her campaign signs on Jack Morris's property (though Chip Hoever did bring this up at the Jun 13th meeting) and we have never indicated that she took money from Mr. Morris. (When Phil Kramer was campaigning as Democratic Committee Member he did say that Jack Morris had donated to the Democratic Party always adding that it was entirely legal.) As to information that she was under investigation, that information was covered in newspapers (THNT, Star-Ledger). We included the newspaper articles because when we first presented the ITOW segment we did not have a copy of her email only what appeared in the press. The information about her email appeared in the same sentence as the investigation. Had we gotten her email when we requested it we would likely not have included the newspaper article.

When her email finally surfaced, it included the bulk of the information about the investigation that has surfaced to date. Our intention was not to cover those other topics but only to cover her interaction with Dr. Orsini. We had to however, present the entire letter or we would be accused of being selective in what we printed. Despite our best efforts it appears we are being so accused.

It is true that Phil Kramer's campaign website indicated that Ms. Ritchie was under investigation for her interaction with Dr. Orsini. The fact that the prosecutor was interested in Ms. Ritchie was both true and relevant. Even if this interaction was not illegal TUF believes it to be unethical.

Bluejersey.com - Bluejersey is a blog (admittedly some would consider TUF a blog) that is based outside of Franklin and thus is not dependant on Franklin's opinion of it. We debated including/excluding a link to the site. Completeness would dictate that we include it, but the fact that this is an anonymous outsider's comments made us wonder if we should exclude it. The arrangement of bluejersey.com is such that the article would be difficult to find without a direct link. It would have been easy for us to let it slide into oblivion, however we didn't want to hide anything so in the end we decided to provide a link.

Jun 26, 2006 - 12 hours after this was posted the originator of bluejersey emailed us to inform us that while bluejersey was not based in Franklin, DBK has live for a long time in our Township. The comments below remain valid even if DBK isn't an outsider. We do wonder who he/she is.

We believe that DBK is attempting to be fair but after reading the article we wondered:

• How did Ms. Ritchie know of this article on the day it came out, bluejersey is not in the Franklin mainstream?
• The comment about Mr. Regan being a former Republican is interesting because that information is not represented on the voter list, thus DBK could only have learned this by talking to someone. The source is not disclosed. (By the way Mr. Regan was a temporary Republican for the same reason Phil Kramer was a temporary Republican, to vote against someone in a primary. In his case a Republican Gubernatorial candidate, in Kramer's case to vote against George Bush.)
• How Mr. Vassanella got the Democratic nomination for council was not public information and would only be known by Grippo-Democrat insiders, including the council members that voted for the Bennett's/Veronica/Rt 27 project. How did DBK learn of it?
• How did DBK come to his/her opinion on why the Bennetts/Veronica/Rt 27 project turned out as it did? It's right out of the play book of those that voted for it.
• DBK claims we "truncated" Ritchie's quote. This would imply that he/she knows more of the quote than we do. How did he/she learn of it and from whom?
• Ms. Ritchie refers to TUF as Mr. Kramer's web site, DBK reefers to it as Phil Kramer's web site when it is actually the TUF web site. Why do they both make the same error?

DBK goes on to critique TUF's coverage of the Danielsen-Ritchie-Orsini issue. He/She accuses us of not presenting all of the facts. We are curious about what we missed. We included the entire confrontation between Mr. Danielsen and Ms. Ritchie, Dr. Orsini's letter, the entire interview on WCTC (which includes Ms. Ritchie's comments on the incident with Dr. Orsini), Ms. Ritchie's own letter and the associated newspaper articles. Yet DBK states,

• The tell-tale sign that this is much ado about nothing is that, whenever Kramer or others quote what Ritchie is alleged to have said, they leaves out portions of the remark to which Councilmember "admitted". The parts he leaves out provide exactly the sort of context that clarify the entire situation. An honest attempt to inform would not leave out those portions of her remarks.

We asked DBK this in a private letter more than a week prior to this publishing. If DBK has more information for us please present it and include your source. And again if Ms. Ritchie wishes to reply we shall print it, as we would the comments of anyone featured in ITOW, as long as it is civil and would not put TUF in legal jeopardy. (Added Sept 18, 2006 - after almost 3 months we still have not heard from DBK)

TUF stands by it's comments and the information it presented. Ms. Ritchie was not the only one that rammed through the Bennett's lane project but she was the most visible force behind it. It will destroy farmland and open space, add traffic to an already impossible commute, add children to an already exploding school budget, and thus raise our taxes.

Oh, by the way, the reason Phil Kramer was smiling was out of irony because Ms. Ritchie once again chose to wait to respond to him only after he sat down. That way he couldn't refute her on the spot.

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