This was first published by the Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

The township of Montclair just did something that we’ve almost never seen: Apparently, it tried to stifle a critic by slapping her with a subpoena.

It’s outrageous behavior, an attack on her First Amendment rights, and the ultimate responsibility for the office sits with Mayor Sean Spiller, a man with ambitions to run for governor.

“They’re trying to intimidate people who are speaking out,” says attorney Nancy Erika Smith, who now represents the local activist.

This comes on top of accusations that Spiller illegally took health benefits he wasn’t entitled to, a charge he answered by pleading the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination, and another charge that he signed off on an illegal, no-bid contract to a politically connected firm to investigate alleged racial bias in the fire department.

He also appears blind to conflicts of interest between his role as mayor, his job as president of the state’s largest teachers’ union, and his political ambitions. All of which makes us question his ethics and fitness to run for governor. Now, add this latest scandal to the list.

The target of the subpoena, Sarah Avery, is a retired auditor who lives in town and is one of Spiller’s fiercest critics. “You have not heard the last of this,” she vowed at a recent council meeting. “You think my comments mean nothing, but I have been making these comments in public comment sections. It is all recorded. I am a whistleblower, and I cannot be ignored. How are you going to retaliate against me, Mayor?”

Days later, her doorbell rang, and she got hit with a subpoena demanding that she go to Morris County and be deposed – even though she’s just a member of the public who says she has no personal knowledge about the case. It’s a whistleblower lawsuit brought by the town’s former Chief Financial Officer that accuses Spiller and certain other officials of misconduct and retaliation.

Now, Avery credibly claims that she’s being retaliated against too. All the documents that she has are from public records requests and publicly filed court papers, she says. “It’s anti-democratic,” she told us. “He’s the guy spending NJEA teachers’ dues to promote himself as someone who’s protecting our democracy, but then he’s the same guy who’s trying to censor and silence people who speak out critically of him.”

She’s referring to the regular TV ads that Spiller stars in about protecting our democracy – paid for largely by the NJEA dues that fund his dark money group. But what about protecting democratic values in Montclair?

Spiller’s presenting himself as an innocent bystander who had no role in this bullying. That’s pure nonsense.

“I have never shied away from criticism or discouraged any resident from fully and freely making their voice heard,” he said in a statement to the Montclair Local.

But when asked directly, he had no opinion on whether this subpoena was right or wrong. He’s ok with it, apparently. And of course, the way this plays out is that the citizen criticizing him gets targeted by the township attorney for an interrogation. The signal here is that this may happen again to anyone who messes with the mayor. Is this what we should expect from a future Gov. Sean Spiller?

The idea that a council and mayor have no control over the township attorney, currently Stefani Schwartz, is also absurd. They hire her, pay her salary, and can fire her. Try this thought experiment: If she filed suit to support Donald Trump’s 2020 election claims, would Spiller throw his hands up and say he could do nothing? Would he offer no opinion on such a suit, as he has on this subpoena?

For his part, Councilor David Cummings told us that he “wholeheartedly” disagrees, and called the Avery subpoena “disgraceful.” He finds it striking that the one resident who consistently comes to council meetings to complain about ethics, and the mayor in particular, has been targeted. “It’s a bad look, it doesn’t make any sense, and I’m ashamed of it,” he says.

So why isn’t Spiller speaking out too?

Spiller took the Fifth when asked about pilfering illegal health benefits. We still don’t know which specific questions he refused to answer because he’s fighting the release of the transcripts of that interview. Now, when asked about this most recent scandal, he once again dodges questions.

Without evidence to the contrary, it sure looks like harassment of the mayor’s loudest critic. How can he square that with his preachings on democracy?