It’ll be interesting to see if the Borough Council decides that a full police force (currently down by three officers), along with training, equipment and supplies for the police officers and firefighters, are higher priorities for Borough taxpayers than a $200,000 line item for Eric Bernstein’s services as Borough Attorney.
For Attorney figures, see p. 11.
For Police Department figures, including budget cuts, see p. 17 – 20
For Fire Department figures, including budget cuts, see p. 21 - 26
I’m well aware of the austerity budgets being adopted all over the country, and especially here in New Jersey.
And I’m one of the millions of Americans convinced that money being spent on the war in Iraq would be better spent on infrastructure investments in America, including retrofitting American towns like North Plainfield for the upcoming green economy, and training the American workforce to do those green jobs.
So the Borough Attorney line item – up $75,000 since 2005 - sticks in my craw, especially in light of Chief Parenti’s patient explication to the Council Monday night about the impacts budget cuts are having on public safety and even grant eligibility in North Plainfield.
According to Parenti, $35,000 would be enough to put another young cop on the local force, which would also reduce overtime expenditures. And so long as the Borough is down three officers from the recommended number, our eligibility for up to $90,000 in annual “Safe & Secure” state grant money is at risk.
Bernstein is not a very good attorney.
He’s the guy who negotiated with Town & Country Developers on writing the Age-Restricted Condo ordinance. He’s the guy who advised Mayor Allen that four equals five, which led her to sign an illegal ordinance, which led to the entire Campbell lawsuit. He’s the guy who recommended appealing that decision, and he’s the guy who recommended thwarting the will of the petitioners who wanted a crack at citizen adoption of a new local ordinance to protect local health, safety and welfare from predatory corporate land development at Villa Maria and other Borough parcels. (I’m sure readers can think of other examples like these.)
Bernstein is, however, an extremely savvy businessman, because it many cases, it pays better to be a bad lawyer than a good lawyer, particularly when your clients judge you on loyalty rather than on competence. I haven’t yet got the OPRA information about how much Borough taxpayers have paid Bernstein to fight against our interests on Villa Maria, but I’m pretty sure it will run to tens of thousands of dollars.
Would his only local client – Mayor Allen – make different executive decisions if she didn’t have a $200,000 taxpayer-funded Bernstein line-of-credit to try to make her authority-overreaches stick in court?
Would Bernstein give such bad legal advice if he and his firm didn’t have access to regular payouts from that Bernstein line-of-credit?
Clearly, Bernstein has no incentives to make recommendations in the best interests of the Borough’s residents as a community.
His incentives are to generate costly litigation business for his firm, and keep his contract to provide those professional services, and I don’t fault him for taking full advantage of the profitable opportunities that regularly present themselves.
But so long as that line of credit is sitting there, Mayor Allen and future mayors have no incentives to seek better advice from better attorneys, or to act responsibly to identify and enact community priorities that may well run counter to their personal inclinations as politicians.
There are legal strategies in the best interests of the Borough as a community. One such strategy would be adopting and enforcing the Self-Government Ordinance, but that’s not the only one.
Then there are legal strategies that benefit only a handful of residents: politically risky, but still technically legal.
And then there are legal strategies designed to take advantage of gray areas in the law – strategies akin to “throw the spaghetti noodle at the ceiling and see if it sticks.”
Those are the strategies that have been guiding official action and inaction in North Plainfield in recent years.
What if Mayor Allen had to rely on her own self-representation skills and the generous voluntary contributions of residents to pursue her community-damaging strategies in court? She probably wouldn’t get very far.
On the other hand, if she and the Council really stood up for the residents and fought back against the forces that want to ruin the town, they might find a trickle of community support turning into a steady stream.
Reader comments on the proposed budget are strongly encouraged. There are a bunch of alarming salary and wage increases scattered around ($10,000 for Borough Clerk’s department, $37,000 for Financial Administration department, $8,000 in Construction, $25,000 in Streets and Roads, $7,000 in Health…) and, I’m sure, other interesting things awaiting careful reader analysis.
2 responses so far ↓
neosporin // February 27, 2008 at 2:25 pm |
Let’s see …
For all those apologists who claimed that recent pay increases were “misrepresented” on blogs, salaries and wages for the Department of Administration have been increased 28.4% in three years – darn nice work if you can get it.
Meanwhile, the single most thankless job in North Plainfield, crossing guard, has had its overall budget trimmed from $162K a year to $160K. Nice to know where the priorities lie.
And could someone please explain a budgetary leap under “streets and roads contracts/leaves,” which goes annually from $25,500 to $55,000 to $55,000 … to $180,000? Shouldn’t a 327% cost increase in one year be explained somewhere?
Dispatches from M.Emory Layne - Public Employees, Efficiency and Accountability « Grassroots Groundswell // August 18, 2008 at 12:52 pm |
[...] Note: See 2008-2009 Borough budget here. For Bernstein’s pay from the Borough for 2007, click [...]