The Republican Party controls every lever of power in this coastal township of 95,000 souls. You would hardly know it watching them try to govern.
What has unfolded here over the past year is not merely political disagreement but a full-blown civil war, complete with walkouts, personal insults, dueling legal opinions, and a government so thoroughly gridlocked that residents might be forgiven for wondering whether anyone is actually in charge.
The fighting has consumed everything it touches. Police staffing. Legal representation. Health benefits for utility commissioners. Even the basic question of who gets to speak at public meetings has become a battleground.
“We’re using that money to continue putting boots on the ground,” Mayor Daniel Rodrick said during one particularly contentious exchange about a proposed police staffing ordinance. “Interviews are underway to replace recent retirements. When we are through, there will be more patrolmen in town than ever before.”
The council majority, however, had other ideas. They passed an ordinance requiring the township to maintain 162 sworn officers and fill vacancies within 90 days.
Rodrick promised a veto. The cycle continues.
On one side stands Rodrick, his administration, and three council allies: Harry Aber, Craig Coleman, and Lynne O’Toole.
On the other hand, four council members have made it their mission to check the mayor’s authority at every turn: Council President David Ciccozzi, Robert Bianchini, Clinton Bradley, and Thomas Nivison.
All are Republicans. All claim to want what’s best for the township. The distance between them has grown so vast that they can no longer agree on basic facts, let alone policy.
The mayor calls his opponents the “Mo Hill gang,” a reference to the previous administration whose allies he believes are determined to undo his reform agenda. The council majority insists it is merely exercising its legislative authority under the Faulkner Act form of government, which separates executive and legislative functions.
What the charter giveth, gridlock taketh away.
The conflict reached peak absurdity over the question of who gets to advise the township on legal matters.
Township Attorney Jonathan Penney, appointed by Rodrick, says members of the council majority have simply stopped talking to him.
“Council President David Ciccozzi, Council Vice President Thomas Nivison, as well as councilmen Bianchini and Bradley, have never once come in to discuss legislation with me,” Penney said. “I’ve made it clear to them that I’m here to serve the town and that I’m available every day.”
Instead, the council majority has been drafting its own legislation with help from an outside attorney whose identity Council President Ciccozzi declined to disclose. Rodrick suggested the mystery lawyer is a workers’ compensation attorney with little municipal experience who may be moonlighting against firm policy.
“They have zero municipal experience,” Rodrick said. “So they don’t really understand how municipal law functions.”
The council previously attempted to hire its own independent attorney, a move that would have created two parallel legal voices for the township. That proposal died, but the distrust it represented lives on.
During the Feb. 25 council meeting, Ciccozzi told Penney to “be quiet” when the attorney tried to weigh in on legal questions surrounding the police ordinance. At the March 11 meeting, he made clear Penney should not speak unless directly asked. Later that evening, Councilman Bradley referred to the township attorney as “demonic.”
The personal nature of the attacks suggests something deeper than policy disagreement. It suggests a breakdown so complete that the ordinary courtesies of governance have been abandoned.
The public has taken notice. Meetings have become spectator sports, complete with audience members shouting from their seats and council presidents calling recesses to restore order.
In January, Rodrick walked out of the year’s first council meeting entirely. His offense? New rules approved by the council majority could fine members up to $500 or jail them for 90 days for repeatedly leaving early.
“These rules are designed to force council members to sit through hours of orchestrated attacks from the same small group of political allies and loyalists who show up meeting after meeting to shout, insult, and intimidate,” Rodrick declared before exiting. “The goal is not public comment. The goal is exhaustion. The goal is submission.”
Ciccozzi told him he was free to leave. Rodrick replied: “So you’re not going to arrest me?”
“No,” the council president said.
Council Vice President Nivison pleaded with the mayor to stay. “We want you to stay so you can hear public comment,” he said. “These are the people who elected you.”
Rodrick left anyway, accompanied by his council allies and the business administrator. Shouting erupted from the audience.
Afterward, Nivison tried to walk back the implications of the new rules. “No one is going to be sent to jail,” he told reporters. “That’s ridiculous.”
The clarification did nothing to heal the underlying wound.
The conflict extends beyond the council chambers into the township’s independent authorities. Rodrick has made dissolving the Municipal Utilities Authority a personal crusade, calling it a “patronage pit” whose commissioners receive $45,000 in annual health benefits for attending one 30-minute meeting per month.
He estimates dissolution could save taxpayers $2.5 million annually. The authority operates with a $25 million budget and has allocated $1.5 million for health insurance this year alone.
The council rejected his dissolution proposal in December, 4-3. A sister ordinance to create a locally controlled wastewater utility failed 5-2.
“Pretty clear that this council is bought and owned by the same political interests,” Rodrick said after the vote, as audience members shouted him down.
Councilman Nivison suggested a compromise: restructure the authority rather than eliminate it. “If there’s as much redundancy as the mayor says with engineering and legal, why don’t we just trim the fat?” he asked. “Do the engineering in-house. We have legal. But keep the entity.”
The question hung in the air, unanswered, like most questions in Toms River these days.
The civil war spilled into the streets last year when a grassroots effort attempted to oust Rodrick from office. Organizers claimed they gathered enough signatures to force a recall vote. The mayor called them “scam artists” and “fake Republicans.”
The effort fell about 1,500 signatures short of the roughly 18,000 needed by the January deadline. But the fact that it happened at all, less than two years into a four-year term, speaks to the depth of animosity Rodrick has generated.
“Some of the people that are leading the recall have been some of Rodrick’s greatest critics, and they said, ‘Look, more people signed this petition than actually voted for him in the last election,'” Asbury Park Press reporter Jean Mikle told NJ Spotlight News. “But he disputes that. He says that’s not true, and they’re scam artists.”
At a council meeting, several residents spoke against the mayor. Rodrick responded by calling some council members and residents “fake Republicans.”
“He’s basically saying that the people who were leading the recall are supporters of the last administration, and that he came in and really shook things up,” Mikle said.
The conflict followed Rodrick to his day job.
The Middletown Township Public School District, where Rodrick worked as a middle school teacher for more than two decades, filed tenure charges against him in 2025. The district accused him of taking personal phone calls during instructional time, conducting mayoral business during the school day, and misleading administrators about his grading practices.
Administrators said students requested transfers out of his classes, prompting an investigation. In one instance, the district alleged, Rodrick left sixth graders unattended for more than 11 minutes while he took a personal call.
“Leaving sixth-grade students unattended and unsupervised for any amount of time over 11 minutes in this case while attending to personal business is unacceptable,” the filing read.
Rodrick called the charges a “political witch hunt and retaliation” tied to his mayoral battles. He noted that the district had evaluated him as effective just two weeks before filing the charges.
“Just two weeks before these charges, the district evaluated me as effective and made no mention of any shortcomings in my performance,” Rodrick said in a statement. “This is a political vendetta by the members of the Middletown School Board, whose paid political consultant, Art Gallagher, was fired from his no-show job at Town Hall.”
Gallagher, a political consultant, had been hired by the township under former Mayor Maurice “Mo” Hill and was fired after Rodrick took office. He also ran election campaigns for members of the Middletown school board.
Rodrick filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming violations of his civil rights and political retaliation. He now works as an assistant principal in Irvington.
The Faulkner Act was designed to create checks and balances between a strong mayor and a legislative council. It assumes good faith, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to governing.
It does not account for what happens when the parties involved cannot stand to be in the same room together.
In Toms River, the checks have become roadblocks. The balances have become standoffs. The ordinary work of municipal government passing budgets, setting policy, serving residents has become guerrilla warfare conducted through parliamentary procedure.
The police staffing ordinance passed at the March 11 meeting. Rodrick has promised a veto. The council will likely override it, assuming they can muster the votes. Then the courts will likely get involved. Taxpayers will foot the bill for all of it.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what goes on going forward because I’m not sure how much work is actually going to get done,” reporter Jean Mikle said.
That was in February. The prediction has proven prophetic.
The Republicans of Toms River control every lever of government. They just can’t seem to make any of them move in the same direction. And while they fight, the town waits for decisions on police staffing, on utility rates, on the basic functions that make a municipality work.
In a democracy, voters expect their elected officials to govern. In Toms River, they’re learning that sometimes the fiercest battles are fought not between parties, but within them.