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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST (10:25 p.m.): The Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders tonight rejected an ordinance dissolving the 89-member county police department, giving a victory to Executive Kathleen Donovan and effectively ending talk of a super-department run by the county sheriff. The vote was two in favor, three against and two absentions — which proved to be the difference-makers.
“I’m not going to vote for the ordinance because we have learned today that no one even knows what it means to dissolve the county police,” Freeholder Maura DiNicola said during a public meeting tonight.
“There is no plan,” added Robert Hermansen, a Republican. “I don’t believe we should do something on a whim.
“This is wrong,” he added. “We should sit dowm and decide how to do it, and do it right, because it’s the right thing for the people.
“The easiest thing is not the easiest way of doing it, and the hardest decision you make is the one you look back at and you say, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”
Throughout the back-and-forth over whether or not to keep the Bergen County Police Department, no one has presented concrete details on exactly how the county would be policed, how special squads would be assigned or how much money could be saved by the move.
For that reason, Freeholder David Ganz said he joined DiNicola and Hermansen in opposing the move, which called for immediately canning the county police, shifting functions to the Sheriff’s Office and having Donovan handle the logistics — a proposal that she deemed “idiotic” earlier today.
Freeholder Chairman Mitchell approved the ordinance, along with Freeholder John Felice, both of whom, like Donovan, are Republicans.
Although Mitchell didn’t speak, Felice was emphatic: “You never have all the information,” he said. “It’s about duplication of county services, and reducing the cost of county government…. I believe it’s time to vote.”
In the end, it was two freeholder who didn’t take a stand who cinched the decision: John Driscoll and Joan Voss, although present, refused to cast a vote either way.
The final tally, then, ended up 3-2 to keep the county police, with both the Republican Driscoll and Democrat Voss essentially sitting it out.
In August, CLIFFVIEW PILOT wrote in an editorial that the decision could rest with Driscoll who, although elected by voters to represent the county, has abstained from several important votes (SEE: Public now gets to weigh in on whether to dissolve or keep Bergen County Police Department).
Yet, while he didn’t commit either way, Driscoll criticized all involved, saying that county officials are “working in silos.”
“We need to start working together,” he said. “We need to have a plan in place.”
The freeholder postponed the vote last month after approving a referendum question asking voters next month whether the BCPD should be folded into the Sheriff’s Office.
Ganz said he hoped the additional time would offer an opportunity for numbers crunchers to produce realistic savings projections.
Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino presented a plan today, under which his office would take control of the bomb squad, merge both departments’ K-9 units and move more than three dozen officers into “Homeland Security” duty — serving papers and conducting random park patrols.
Saudino proposed putting both the county communications center and the Office of Emergency Management under civilian control, with a minimal number of officers assigned to both.
The sheriff also saw no need for Civil Service waivers, suggesting instead moving BCPD officers into his office’s pay scale — in other words: $30,000 a year pay cuts, on average, for those who ended up working for the Sheriff’s Office.
Factoring in those moves, along with attrition, Saudino put the potential cost savings at $19.5 million over two years.
Meanwhile, County Police Chief Brian Higgins was blunt in his assessment of the freeholder’s moves.
“The only area of compromise seems to be whether the officers of the Bergen County Police department will be allowed a blindfold and a cigarette,” Higgins said, adding that his invitation to speak at freeholder work session earlier today “was kind of like being asked to dinner where you find out that you’re the main course.”
Donovan was less glib.
“This farce in which you have been engaging in for the last year has no weight and will not stand,” she told the freeholders earlier today.
The county executive also went at it with Saudino, insisting he give “yes-or-no-answer(s)” to her questions.
“I don’t see any judge’s robes on you,” the sheriff countered.
Donovan last month asked a Superior Court judge in Hackensack for a temporary restraining order to stop the freeholders from taking tonight’s vote or from posting the referendum question. While denying her request, the judge emphasized that Donovan could take immediate steps to stop it from becoming law once they did.
“I don’t see the irreparable harm,” Superior Court Judge Menelaos Toskos said during his ruling last week. “You still have an opportunity to challenge the freeholder action.”
Thomas Scrivo, an attorney representing Donovan, argued that the freeholders don’t have a role in making changes to county departments under the county executive form of government.
Toskos, however, ruled that the freeholders can participate in changes including reorganizations, and dissolutions, but only in concert with Donovan (SEE BELOW).
Mitchell, the freeholder chairman, previously pointed out that the panel’s will on what should be done about the structure of policing the county was indicated by a pair of 4-2 votes — one in favor of introducing the dissolution ordinance and the other approving the referendum question.
Donovan, in turn, said she went to court to stop a “few misguided freeholders [who] have no legitimate argument,” while accusing them of trying to “move policing powers out of a professional police environment and into a political one.”
“Politicizing critical police functions is wrong,” Donovan said. “It jeopardizes public safety and people know it.”
“The Sheriff’s Department, although an integral part of county government, is not a police organization. Their core functions are to oversee the Jail, Courthouse and serve process,” she said. “On the other hand, the Bergen County Police provide valuable services to every citizen and to every town in Bergen Country.
“The Bergen County Police provide very specialized functions, SWAT, Bomb Squad, K-9, Scuba, patrolling our vast county park system, providing safety and security at our county educational facilities, in addition to their expanding role in assisting local police departments with patrol work.
“Calls to the Bergen County Police from local police departments have increased by 23% this year,” Donovan added. “The help from the Bergen County Police prevents the need for local departments to hire more officers and is the single biggest reason why local governments have been able to keep a 2% tax cap on property taxes in place.”
The state of law enforcement throughout the county has been in tumult, with some local departments insisting they should remain as they are, and the police union for the sheriffs insisting that Donovan is acting in her best interests, not those of taxpayers.
Donovan has pointed to the potential cost savings of folding the smaller departments – with their individual administrations and operating costs – into the larger existing county agency.
Her predecessor, Dennis McNerney, set the wheels in motion for the titanic power struggle by hiring a consultant to review policing in Bergen.
The well-publicized $623,000 study by New York-based Guidepost Solutions recommended that county police keep its canine unit, the bomb squad and the SWAT team, among other moves while either merging remaining functions with the sheriff’s office or turning them over to the county prosecutor.
Battles have raged since then, particularly between Donovan and Sheriff Michael Saudino.
“If this is going to save the taxpayers millions of dollars and we are not compromising officers’ safety and public safety, what offical wouldn’t be in favor of it?” Saudino told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Saudino emphasized that the current conflicts should have no bearing on decisions that carry well into the future.
“If this actually does happen, then 10 years from now — when I’m not here and Brian Higgins isn’t here — there would be one agency providing services and everyone will be getting along fine.”
Higgins, in turn, said Saudino’s $17 million savings estimate is off.
“Our budget is less than $17 million,” Higgins told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “The only way to save $17 million is to completely eliminate the county police, including the bomb squad, the SWAT team, the K9 unit, all of the security guards in all of the county builddings and our county schools and in our county parks.
“There’s no way he can save that money by merging the two agencies. It’s just a transfer of power.”
Ganz tonight said the Guidepost study should be “thrown in the garbage.”
Voss, meanwhile, said she had given the matter careful study and “does not believe it will save a lot of tax money.”
Aiming to settle the dispute, Donovan empaneled a committee to suggest how best to protect Bergen with the least overlap (SEE BELOW).
The group rejected most of the Guidepost solutions, saying that consolidation would give the elected sheriff too much unchecked power. It instead suggested eliminating or restructuring smaller units in each agency and urged municipalities to join the county emergency dispatch service out of Mahwah.
“Much has changed” since Guidepost’s study was released, the panel contended.
“There exists pending legislation on pension and benefit reforms, municipalities are experiencing an increased level of retirements, and the state mandated 2% caps on municipal spending and taxes posed replacement and manpower challenges.
“Informal discussions” with various law enforcement professionals “reflect that the BCPD is being relied upon as a force multiplier and mutal aid responder…. Therefore, the task force considers a significant reduction in force … ill-advised at this time.”
Nowhere does the Guidepost study address additional costs for training officers, transferring vehicles and supplies, renovating offices and “perhaps most importantly, legal fees related to the resolution of contract issues,” the report says.
In fact, it says, county police are also exempted from FICA but wouldn’t be if they were absorbed into the sheriff’s office: That could mean an extra $568,000 the county would have to cough up for Social Security payments the first year.
Bumping rights would also come into play, leaving an agency with “junior members being pushed out at the bottom” and a staff “that is disproportionately made up of senior members, whose normal transitions based on retirement and promotion are artificially delyaed or hastened.”
The committee also questioned “whether having an elected official in charge of what will arguably become the largest law enforcement agency in the county is advisable.”
The proposals put forth in the Guidepost study would collect “all county law enforcement and specialized functions, in addition to house security, foreclosures, process service, all correction functions and the administration of the jail under one person: the Sheriff,” the task force said. “Since the Sheriff is a constitutional officer, other branches of government would be limited in their ability to provide checks and balances.
“Given the constitutional requirement that the Sheriff must stand for election every three years, continuity of law enforcement decisions within this newly expanded Sheriff’s Office could shift dramatically,” the panel added.
The task force did urge county police, the sheriff’s office and the prosecutor’s office to immediately freeze all hiring and promotions until they can reduce staff. It also said they should all take a harder line in negotiating fringe benefits in public employee contracts.
Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli joined the fray earlier this year when he said he would “recodify” the authority of municipal police chiefs so that the county PD can’t expand into their jurisdictions without formal agreements.
This was unnecessary, Bergen County Police Chief Brian Higgins said, because his department wouldn’t do such work without a signed agreement.
For instance, the county police department earlier this year entered into an agreement with Teterboro to patrol the section of town that previously had been handled by Little Ferry.
Talks are also underway in Demarest (SEE BELOW).
This comes after Elmwood Park’s governing body officially rejected a merger and a potential deal with Carlstadt fell through when the Borough Council received concessions from its police union to help curb costs.
Molinelli said his concern was over individual towns trying to hash out their own private arrangements. His goal, he said, was to officially vest police chiefs with the authority to oppose any attempts at consolidation by civilian officials, such as mayors and councils.
Higgins, meanwhile, said runaway property taxes in Bergen County will only increase the need for his department to assume policing in more towns.
Mitchell said that the will of the people was already quite clear, and that the move to disband the department should be swift and certain, during a meeting that attracted roughly 100 people — including state Sen. Gerald Cardinale, who favors consolidation.
Hermansen said he had a problem with the referendum’s wording, in that it limits voter choices, somewhat tilting the odds in favor of its proponents.
DeNicola deemed the move a “back room deal.”
Hermansen and DeNicola left last month’s meeting because they believed the referendum proposal and the resolution to disband the department were illegally added to the agenda at the last possible second.
This left the board without a quorum — drawing charges of obstructionism and political posturing by those opposed to keeping the county police.
That same day, Higgins met with Demarest Police Chief James Powderly to discuss absorbing the local department into the county force.
Under the plan, which Higgins said they spent the entire day hammering out, county police would patrol and protect Demarest — Cardinale’s hometown.
Three months ago, Cardinale pledged to submit a proposed bill in Trenton that would abolish the county police, forcing the department to merge operations with the Sheriff’s Office. But he pulled it back when he couldn’t get bi-partisan support.
He first announced it at a Demarest council meeting called to discuss disbanding that municipality’s department in favor of being policed by the BCPD.
Talks with Demarest continue, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned.
CLIFFVIEW PILOT Publisher/Editor Jerry DeMarco contributed to this story.
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