Church-group dinners with indicted sewage official bring ethics trouble for two judges
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The New Jersey Supreme Court considered on Tuesday whether two judges created an appearance of impropriety when they attended weekly dinners with a group of church friends that included an indicted sewage official.
Judges Raymond Reddin of Passaic County and Gerald Keegan of Paterson Municipal Court say they were aware of the indictment, but they did not do anything wrong, the New Jersey Law Journal reports. The indicted official, Anthony Ardis, worked for the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, which is responsible for wastewater processing. Ardis was accused of directing staffers to do repairs at the homes of his mother and girlfriend while on government time.
The group, which typically consisted of 15 to 30 people, met at restaurants in Passaic County before evening mass. The ethics complaint says Reddin was a criminal judge at the time in the same courthouse where charges were pending against the official. He is now a judge in the civil division.
Justices asked disciplinary counsel Tracie Gelbstein whether it would be improper for the judges to sit in the same church pew as Ardis, and whether a bright-line rule should be adopted that requires a judge to “run the other way” when encountering an indicted friend.
