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Saudino said he hoped that Donovan “will seize this opportunity to finally do the right thing and stop wasting the taxpayers’ money on frivolous litigation” by paying the union members their rightfully-bargained increases.
“It’s simple,” union President Marcelo Hagopian told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “The Supreme Court denied her a stay. She has nowhere else to go now.
“We’ve gone through a lot, both in financial terms and in the stress that this has caused our members,” Hagopian said. “We have worked hard to keep morale high in the department, especially with steps being frozen because people were denied increases.
“We are pleased that every court has ruled in our favor and that our faith has been rewarded. Now it is time for our members to be paid.”
Jeanne Baratta, Donovan’s chief of staff, said county officials “will abide by this ruling and will be submitting an implementation plan to the Sheriff and the PBA on the over-$8 million increase (the contract will cost $25,637,119.83 over 5 years).”
Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino, Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan
Baratta also said the county executive “has mixed feelings about the ruling.”
“First, she is disappointed that the stay for the raises has been denied. Bergen County Sheriff’s Officers are some of the highest paid in the country,” she said. “Second, she is pleased that the court has allowed the amicus briefs from Morris County and the broader policy arguments will proceed — namely, that the County Executive should be a participant in these negotiations on behalf of the taxpayers.”
The Supreme Court refused Donovan’s request for a stay of a state appeals court decision in May that ordered her to finally relent.
This came after Superior Court Judge Joseph Conte in Hackensack refused to consider any more of her motions, saying that taxpayers “will be served, not harmed” once Donovan delivers the agreed-upon raises.
The Supreme Court supported rulings by Conte and the Appellate Division that only the sheriff himself can negotiate contracts with his officers.
In doing so, they rejected her argument that she should have had a seat at the bargaining table with the local, which represents more than 400 officers.
“In ruling against a stay, the Supreme Court has sent a clear message that the county executive is unlikely to succeed based on the merits of the case,” the sheriff said this afternoon.
Sheriff’s officers welcomed the outcome.
“As a dedicated 20 year veteran of the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office, I applaud the Supreme Court’s ruling. But to say our battle with Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan is over is far from the truth,” said Timmy Lindsay, administrator of a Facebook group with nearly 7,500 members seeking Donovan’s ouster in the November election.
The Supreme Court also found that the Donovan legal team erred in its application for certification.
“As a result of this mistake, the taxpayers of Bergen County will likely have to pay for a reapplication to the court and the preparation of a new brief, all of which will substantially add to the already enormous legal expenses the County Executive has incurred for the taxpayers of Bergen County in her attempt to change the law through judicial activism,” Saudino said.
“I call on her to honor the law, honor the courts, and honor the contract by standing down and not re-filing the case at the taxpayers’ expense,” he said.
Saudino noted that only the County of Morris and the state P.E.R.C. (Public Employment Relations Commission) sought to become parties to her fight. However, the court “denied these outside attempts to interfere in a Bergen County decision, ruling that these two entities will only be allowed to file Amicus Curiae briefs, and those only regarding the law and facts presented in the Appellate Decision (which was decided unanimously for the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office).”
Attorneys for Donovan argued that the executive, along with the sheriff is a joint employer of his employees, which thereby gives her the right to “negotiate contracts for the county subject to [freeholder] board approval; make recommendations concerning the nature and location of county improvements and execute improvements determined by the board…,” under a state court ruling.
Local 134 and Saudino, however, pointed to a statute approved by lawmakers in Trenton that applies to public contracts.
As an elected official who commands an office, and not an appointed department head who must answer to the executive, the sheriff has the authority to set salaries, they argued.
As CLIFFVIEW PILOT was first to report, Conte ordered the county executive on in December 2012 to honor the contract negotiated by Saudino and Police Benevolent Association Local 134.
The judge determined that nothing gave Donovan a seat at the bargaining table, as she had insisted.
Saudino — as the head of a government office and not a department — bears that sole right, Conte ruled.BCSO1
“[T]he negotiated agreement is valid,” the judge wrote. Donovan, he said, “violated the Sheriff’s Office its contract right in refusing to implement the contract at hand.”
Applicable law “is clear in that the sheriff has the power to fix the compensation,” the judge found. “[N]o intervention of the County Executive was required.”
What’s more, the freeholders approved the pact, which Conte said dismisses Donovan’s claim that the county was prevented from participating, he said.
Donovan incorrectly “relies heavily” on a New Jersey case, Prunetti v. Mercer County Board of Chosen Freeholders, in refusing to pay the raises, contending she should have been at the bargaining table with the union as the chief executive of the county, the judge said.
Following the Prunetti case, lawmakers adopted a state statute reversing its effects, Conte wrote.
According to the state Employer-Employee Relations Act: “The sheriff shall select and employ the necessary deputies, chief clerks and other personnel. The sheriff shall fix the compensation they shall receive in accordance with the generally accepted county salary ranges and within the confines of the sheriff’s budget allocation set by the governing body.”
That statute “was enacted with the clear legislative intent of giving the Sheriff the power to fix the compensation of its employees, and made no mention of the County as being a joint employer for purposes of collective bargaining.”
As a result, Donovan’s “reliance on the holding in Prunetti is not persuasive,” Conte wrote.
Donovan then contended that the judge didn’t have jurisdiction to decide whether Saudino and Local 134 had the right to exclude her from negotiations. That authority, she argued, rested with the Public Employees Relation Commission.
Conte, however, agreed with the union and Saudino that the issue before him wasn’t one of unfair labor practices, which is governed by PERC, but “a question of law” concerning the roles of the sheriff, freeholders and executive.
That law “is intended to give the Sheriff the exclusive power to negotiate contracts for its employees,” he ruled.
The judge emphasized that PERC “has never been provided with the jurisdiction to rule upon statutes that exclusively relate to relationships and inter-relationships between County Sheriffs, local Boards of Chosen Freeholders and County Executives.”
Rather, PERC has the authority to “prevent unfair practices, adjudicate unfair practice charges and issue remedial orders,” specifically in disputes between public-sector unions or individual employees and their employers, Conte wrote in his decision.
Donovan countered that a different law applied, one that gives the county executive the right to “negotiate contracts for the county subject to board approval; make recommendations concerning the nature and location of county improvements and executive improvements determined by the board….”
Conte, however, sided with the union and the sheriff.
Donovan relied on a “more general statute relating to the power of the county executive to negotiate local public contracts laws, and it does not [in] fact govern the roles of the sheriff’s office in negotiating collective agreements with the County PBA Local 134,” the judge ruled.
The union has argued that the salaries increases negotiated are “well within the confines” of the budgets for the past two years for other departments. In fact, the pay hikes are “substantially less than the salary increases negotiated by the County and the Prosecutor with other law enforcement negotiation units,” the local said.
Attorney John McCann, the general counsel to the sheriff, said that Conte rightfully ruled that the sheriff is the sole employer for collective bargaining purposes, not the county executive, and that state courts — and not PERC — retain jurisdiction in such cases.
Local 134 sued after the Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) reversed itself on a previous finding that the sheriff is the sole employer. The sheriff joined in the litigation as an interested party.
“The Court recognized that the [L]egislature changed the statute for the purposes of putting the Sheriff in charge of setting the compensation which, of course, was completely ignored by PERC and the County Executive’s attorneys in their previous rulings and arguments,” McCann said.
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