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Date: 1992/03/04 Wednesday Page: Section: NEWS Edition: FINAL

JUDGE REFUSES TO BAR ORANGE RECALL ELECTION
KEVIN C. DILWORTH

A judge in Newark yesterday refused to grant a temporary injunction halting Monday's special recall election in Orange's North Ward. Merits of a legal challenge, filed by Councilwoman Louise Corvino, a two- term incumbent and the subject of the recall, will not be heard until March 20, Superior Court Judge Carol A. Ferentz ruled. Corvino's attorney, Joseph G. Dooley of West Orange, sought to block the Monday election and argued it did not make sense to wait until March 20 to hear the case. Ferentz questioned whether the recall petitions met a stipulation that requires the main petitioner's signature to be affixed twice on each petition sheet, asked if the reasons listed for recalling Corvino were too vague and inquired what they specifically had to do with Corvino's duties as a councilwoman.

In the end, however, Orange municipal attorneys Thomas Vena and Larry L. Johnson and Kenneth Kayser, a former Orange city council attorney representing Councilman Mims Hackett, one of the recall effort's four main petitioners, maintained Corvino's ''eleventh-hour'' challenge should not delay the election. Judge Ferentz agreed. One question on the ballot will ask North Ward residents if Corvino should be recalled. The other question is whether an immediate replacement should be selected: Donald Page, a board of education member and a civilian supervisor with the Newark Police Department, and Corvino. There are 3,177 North Ward residents eligible to vote. Corvino's term runs through June 30, 1994. Corvino defeated Page in the May 1990 council race, 666-471. Besides Hackett, the recall effort was spearheaded by Ann Cobbertt, the wife of Police Director Charles Cobbertt; Gloria Holland, Mayor Robert L. Brown's mother-in-law, and resident Kevin Hardaway.

The petitions seek to recall Corvino on the grounds that she has ''regularly and consistently opposed all efforts to secure adequate educational services for our children,'' regularly and consistently ''opposed the efforts of the city's police director to improve morale of the department'' and failed to ''adequately represent the citizens of the North Ward.''

How could Corvino be singlehandedly responsible? Judge Ferentz asked. She questioned if the petition organizers told the whole truth behind the statements to all those who signed the petitions, but later conceded that voters should have had the intelligence not to be misled, should have read what they were signing and should have gotten any questions they had answered.

Regarding Corvino's involvement with the question of aid to Orange's public schools, Ferentz asked, ''Is that a function of the council or the board of education?'' On the surface, she conceded, it appeared to be function of the school board and the Legislature, not Corvino as an individual.