Commission Must Pay Its Own Way at County Fair

The Monmouth County Human Relations Commission was established by the Freeholders in 1990 to fight bias and discrimination in the county through public speaking, advocating for victims, improving relations between communities and their police departments, educating employees and employers, and providing resources for schools. The Commission maintains a hotline for residents to report bias and discrimination incidents.

With such a broad mandate, it seems odd that the Commission would have to pay $325 to have a booth at the County Fair, as mentioned in the recently published May 2011 minutes of the Commission's Executive Committee. It's worrisome that most of the Commission's programmatic initiatives seem to be stalled because commissioners aren't attending the meetings. Membership cleaned house by voting off a number of inactive members in May but named no new members. The Immigration Working Group sounds like a vital part of Commission work but there was no report. One report that probably was too detailed by half involved Incident Response and Reporting. Assessments of bias hotline callers, like website passwords, should probably remain offline.