Our view
City needs to say what it spent on Hornick case

After years of legal battles, Joe Hornick is back on the job as a firefighter in Long Branch.

City officials still believe he should not be, but he is because, according to Mayor Adam Schneider, "The cost of this fight is getting too expensive. We were ordered to put him back on the job for now. It is a very strong likelihood that we would lose another appeal while we fight to have him terminated."

There are a couple of questions the mayor’s statement raises. The first is: How does he know the fight is getting too expensive?

Repeated requests for the amount of money the city has spent on the five-year legal battle have been rebuffed with the response, "We don’t know."

It doesn’t seem entirely out of the question that the city wouldn’t have readily available a set figure of what has been spent over five years at the drop of a hat, but if cost is going to be the basis for ending the fight, it would only make sense to know what has been spent.

The other question raised by the mayor’s statement is: When did it become apparent the city would lose?

If that occurred only in the last few weeks, perhaps the city should consider the advice it is getting from its legal counsel in the matter.

It probably would not be too hard to find cases similar to Hornick’s in the state’s court and labor decisions.

It’s reasonable to assume there would be some consistency in those cases, and a reasonable decision on the city’s chances for success probably could have been made much sooner.

That, of course, is all water under the bridge.

Hornick is back, and the city is no longer fighting the case. Hopefully, some lessons have been learned.

The only real question left in the matter is what the city paid to get to this conclusion.

Officials should know.

And so should you.