November 2010 Op Ed Column

Op Ed
By Edward J. Heaton
November 2010 Column

The Question At Hand

In the October 2010 edition of N.J. Able, my reputation was attacked by William Ditto, ex-Director of the New Jersey Division of Disability Services. Later in this column, I will print both his letter and my reply to it, with some additional comments.

As a journalist, one is taught never to bury the lead: the lead in this case being, “Is Joseph Amoroso qualified to be the next Director of the New Jersey Division of Disability Services?” The answer, for many reasons, is no.

On top of all the other reasons listed in my previous columns, I must also relate to you what happened at the National Conference on Disabilities Summit for the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I was informed on July 26 that Mr. Amoroso was attending the conference, and was looking for me. This was not a meeting I wanted to have. On Tuesday morning, July 27, I observed Mr. Amoroso in the main conference room, and purposely went to another aisle to avoid him. Within thirty seconds, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Joe, saying that he wished to have a conversation with me. I asked him if we could have it later, after the morning speakers had concluded. About an hour later, I excused myself from the session to use the facilities. Within a minute of my leaving the conference room, Joe was at my side, wanting to have a conversation.

He said that he understood that I was mad at him, but that he wasn’t mad at me. However, he was upset that I mentioned in my June 2010 column that there was a substantiated discrimination complaint against him. He felt that was “inside baseball.” Joe then informed me that the reason why he was found guilty of the discrimination complaint was that he called someone a “crip”. In the vernacular, “crip” is short for “cripple.” He went onto say — I’m paraphrasing here — Y’know, Ed, we use that term all the time among ourselves. It was just that somebody didn’t like it. The term “crip” may be slang, but do you really want a person who is going to lead the Division of Disability Services to be referring to the people he is serving as “crips?”

Whether this is the truth or not – and knowing Mr. Amoroso, it might not be – it is obvious that much like the scorpion in the fable about the scorpion and the frog, Mr. Amoroso cannot help himself. He feels the need to try to justify the unjustifiable. Again, I challenge Mr. Amoroso to come clean and publicly disclose exactly what the discrimination complaint against him was, and how it was resolved.

The other problem I have with Mr. Amoroso as the Division Director is that the process used to select him was flawed from the start. The previous director, William Ditto, handpicked the selection committee. In my opinion, this was done with the sole purpose of having Mr. Amoroso eventually named the Division Director. Mr. Ditto did not want a nomination, as much as he wanted a coronation.

While there were people with disabilities on the committee, major constituencies of the disability community were not included, such as the Centers for Independent Living and the New Jersey Council on Developmental Disabilities. I would recommend that the whole selection process be started over, this time including representatives of both the CILs and the NJCDD.

Below are the letters submitted to N.J. Able by Mr. Ditto and by myself. At the end of my letter, I will have some additional comments.

An Open Letter to Able Readers (October, 2010)

I have decided to write to set the record straight regarding a number of inaccurate statements, slanderous comments and flawed observations about the N.J. Division of Disability Services (and some of its employees) made by a disgruntled former employee.

Now that I am retired and no longer actively employed by government I feel comfortable in sharing my reactions and concerns as they relate to this individual who has used various media to attack and criticize me, certain members of my staff and the functions and priorities of the Division I formerly headed.

Let me say at the onset that I had no personal animosity toward this former employee until I was assaulted by continued negative public comments made by this individual. However, at this time I feel the need to defend my good name, as well as that of the Division and its employees. I resent having to write this letter after many years of faithful service to the residents of New Jersey with disabilities and their families. But I will not let my reputation be damaged.

First, I need to make you aware that the employee who is constantly attacking the Division was an individual hired in good faith and with my belief that this person would be a fantastic addition to our staff. I was, in the end, very disappointed to have to offer this dysfunctional employee a choice between resigning and being terminated.

The reasons for this stemmed from the fact that the employee could not handle the responsibilities of the job, consistently offered invalid excuses for substandard performance and blamed other staff members for any problems that arose. As any of you who have managed or supervised staff will know, this is not a tolerable situation in a work environment.

People have to take responsibility for their actions (or in-actions). Other staff complained to me on a regular basis about the individual.

Both the individual’s supervisor and I tried to find ways to resolve the mounting problem – but to no avail. This employee went so far as to suggest a transfer into another position, with less responsibility but with no decrease in salary, would be a solution.

When the choice was made and the resignation offer was accepted (instead of a termination), the individual set out to defame the Division, sending letters to elected officials, state government agencies and even the governor attempting to destroy the credibility and performance of the Division and its senior managers.

It was a purely self-serving vendetta against an organization that was unable (and unwilling) to tolerate substandard job performance. When all of these attacks failed, the last step was to attempt to discredit the reputation of DDS staff members – just how low can you go?

Bottom line – The Division of Disability Services offers quality services and has one of the best reputations of any state agency. Does the Division sometimes make mistakes? Yes.

Does the Division strive to do the best possible job it can under the constraints a government agency faces? Yes, it does. Can the Division improve? Yes, but only with constructive, informed criticism – not the destructive, angry insults it has received from a disgruntled former employee who lost a job based on poor performance.

Letters to the Editor, November, 2010
This letter is replying to Mr. William Ditto’s letter in the October edition of New Jersey Able.

It is regrettable that, in his first public comments post-retirement, Mr. Ditto has chosen to write about me. At a time when he should be stopping to smell the roses, he has instead made a detour into his garden to fling some compost in my direction.

Instead of trading barbs with Mr. Ditto over his opinion of my work habits, I choose to stick with the facts. In his missive, Mr. Ditto said that I wanted to take a lesser position with the same salary. That is a lie.

When Mr. Ditto came to me with his “resign or be fired” ultimatum, I made two suggestions. The first one was that I trade positions with another employee. That much is true. However, I offered to switch both positions AND salaries with the employee in question, who earned less than I did. When Mr. Ditto rejected my suggestion of switching positions, I then offered to remain in my current position for two-thirds of my salary. Mr. Ditto also rejected that proposal out of hand.

Mr. Ditto claims that I was “attempting to destroy the credibility and performance of the Division and its senior managers.” In fact, the only program I called into question was the Information and Referral program, and the only manager I mentioned was Joseph Amoroso (now Acting Division Director).

Mr. Ditto made a point of stating that I wrote to the Governor. Oh, the horror! I did exactly what any other private citizen would do who had questions about how a portion of the Division was run.

Mr. Ditto also claims that I tried to discredit Mr. Amoroso’s reputation. I assume he is referring to the fact that I mentioned that Mr. Amoroso has at least one proven discrimination complaint against him (http://www.state.nj.us/csc/msb/09/pdf/21109m.pdf.). (Case # B-96.) This is a fact, not opinion. I challenge Mr. Amoroso to come forward and admit exactly what the substantiated act or acts of discrimination were.

My email column, where these issues were discussed, only reaches about 2,100 people. New Jersey Able reaches many times that number. If there was a scale for character defamation, Mr. Ditto’s letter far surpasses anything I have written. In fact, Mr. Ditto’s whole letter is an example of the old political technique of “If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.”

Even after all this, I still wish nothing but the best for Mr. Ditto. He has earned the right to have a long and happy retirement. Unfortunately, his choice to air his dirty laundry in New Jersey Able does self-inflicted damage to his reputation. Nothing I could ever write could stain or tarnish his legacy.

As General Douglas MacArthur once said in a famous speech to Congress, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” So should retired division directors.

Mr. Ditto said that he had “no personal animosity toward this former employee until I was assaulted by continued negative public comments made by this individual.” That is untrue. Shortly after I left, I wrote Mr. Ditto an email asking for recommendations for jobs that did not involve administration, such as public relations, marketing, etc. Mr. Ditto flatly refused, stating that he could not recommend me for any jobs because he felt a recommendation by him of me would damage his reputation. Mr. Ditto said that my job performance was the worst he had seen in thirty-five years as an administrator. This email was written by him fourteen months before I started writing about the Division of Disability Services in March 2008.

Mr. Ditto seems quite concerned and thin-skinned about his reputation. One of his catch phrases when I worked for him used to be, “Don’t they know who I am?” Yes, Bill, they know who you are. Unfortunately, they now know what type of personality you have: a vindictive one.

Mr. Ditto accused me of “attempting to destroy the credibility and performance of the Division and its senior managers.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the people in the Division do a fine job of implementing innovative programs that Mr. Ditto should receive proper credit for creating. I find it sad that after all of his many accomplishments, he feels the need to attack me to defend his reputation.

In the four years since I’ve left the Division, my personal phone number and email have not changed. If Mr. Ditto was at all upset by anything I had written, he could have picked up the phone or written me an email at any time. He chose to attack me instead.

The scale of defamation I mentioned in the letter is approximately 8 to 1. N.J. Able, according to their circulation statement, is sent to over 16,000 readers every month.

Finally, I have one last question for Mr. Ditto: Does he really want to be known as his generation’s version of Ethan Ellis: a person who cannot retire gracefully and stays too long at the party? By his actions, Mr. Ditto also threatens to become an “old man who yells at cloud.”

Mr. Ditto has done many things in his life that I respect. His letter to N.J. Able was not one of them.

What Now for NJ DDS?

By Ed Heaton

Recently, I was reading the biography of George Steinbrenner, by Bill Madden. The more I read, the more familiar the character of Mr. Steinbrenner seemed to me. The ego, the incessant demands, the never admitting of a mistake, blaming either his manager, general manager or players on the field for his failures. George Steinbrenner actually fired someone once because it was raining.

After reading the book, I realized why Mr. Steinbrenner seemed so familiar to me. I had the unfortunate experience of working for the George Steinbrenner of NJDDS: Joseph Amoroso.

I would have probably never written this column except for the action of Mr. William Ditto, recently retired director of the Division of Disability Services. Mr. Ditto named Mr. Amoroso Acting Director of the Division. In so doing, he took a cold and turned it into influenza.

Besides Mr. Amoroso’s questionable people skills, there are questions surrounding him concerning figures and facts. According to a document written by Mr. Ditto in December 2008, DDS’s Information and Referral Area (led by Mr. Amoroso) receives 1,700 calls per month. What Mr. Ditto did not state was what types of calls are being received. How many of the 1,700 calls are new requests for information, repeat calls, or follow-up calls?  Both Mr. Ditto and Mr. Amoroso like to point to the amount of calls received as an indicator of the success of the I & R Area. Without outcomes attached to the calls, the number of calls received is not a true indicator of the effectiveness of the I & R Area. In fact, without a report of outcomes, an evaluation of the I & R Area’s effectiveness in assisting consumers cannot even be determined.

While interpretation of data can be debated, facts cannot. In my June column, I noted that Mr. Amoroso was found guilty of a discrimination complaint by the Chief of Staff of the Department of Human Services. Since then, I have discovered that the Merit System Board denied Mr. Amoroso’s appeal of that complaint. The thing is, if Mr. Amoroso had admitted he was wrong and just accepted his punishment, I would have never found out about the complaint. Instead, by always needing to be right, Mr. Amoroso filed an appeal, which became a matter of public record. It also bothers me that a person found guilty of a discrimination complaint, not once, but twice (because of the review), was named Acting Director.  Given this, wasn’t there anyone better qualified?

A search committee has been formed to find Mr. Ditto’s replacement. In his final column in the Able Newspaper of August 6. 2010, Mr. Ditto states, “We have recruited several people from outside of state government to serve on the committee to make it as fair and impartial as possible.” What Mr. Ditto does not mention, by limiting his comment to “state government”, is that all members of the committee that I know of are directly connected to government in one way or another: either county, academic, or retired state government employees. There is no one from the disabled community or the non-profit provider community to assist this committee in making their choices. My recommendation would be to name a CIL director (Eileen Goff) and a person from an advocacy organization (Lowell Ayre), to the committee to expand its outreach.  It is my sincere hope that a replacement for Mr. Ditto is named quickly.

The people I feel most sorry for are the current employees of DDS. I have served my time in hell. Theirs is just beginning.

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