The Jersey City Independent "

As Jersey City continues to grapple with a massive budget shortfall, Mayor Jerramiah Healy on Monday asked the City Council to consider a cost-saving measure to fold the Department of Public Works (DPW) into the Jersey City Incinerator Authority (JCIA). But several council members raised questions about the details, and one says the mayor has the right idea, but is closing the wrong agency of the two.

The move, which Healy projects will save $5 million annually, would result in the shedding of 80 municipal employees, via early retirement offerings and layoffs based on performance reviews.

The mayor is proposing that JCIA’s current executive director, Oren Dabney, remain in his position, with DPW director Rodney Hadley moving into the deputy director position. He asked the council to get behind the merger in order to get it done by the start of next year.

“A new budget will be on us soon, and we have to do everything we can to prevent us from having to hit our taxpayers anymore than we — anymore than I — have over the past few years,” Healy said. “One of the things we can do to help us along is the consolidation of services.”

Several council members expressed concern over the plan at Monday’s caucus, mostly due to a lack of detail regarding the projected savings, how the layoffs would be carried out and by whom, and how the new organization would be structured. 

“I would want a complete breakdown of where those savings come from [in the merger],” Ward D councilman Bill Gaughan said. “We talk about this number [of $5 million saved,] but I haven’t seen anything that nails down how that is going to happen.”

Gaughan said that he wants to ensure that the merger doesn’t disproportionately hurt the city’s working class, particularly at a time of economic uncertainty.

“We absolutely cannot balance this project on the backs of employees — their pensions and ability to hold a job. It’s important that the city consider this first,” he continued. “Union issues and pension issues are paramount for me. If you’ve worked for a company for 18 years and all of a sudden you’re thrown out of state pension because now you’re in JCIA, that’s not fair.”

Gaughan’s point was echoed by council president Peter Brennan, who said the council needs to “stop picking on people making less money” in city agencies.

“I don’t want to be picking mostly on laborers,” he said. “I’d like to see some heavy staff eliminated if we can — assistant department directors, those heavy jobs … the $80,000-$90,000 [a year] jobs.”

But as the proposed organizational chart of the consolidated agency shows, that would not be the case — 78 of the 80 layoffs would come from the lowest levels of workers.

Under the plan, the DPW would be folded into the JCIA, since a contract with JCIA employees prevents them from being terminated with less than a year’s notice, Healy said. In addition, the mayor pointed out that restrictions in the civil service code prevent certain DPW employees from having to perform anything but expressly designated tasks. Healy argued that these two factors make folding the JCIA into the DPW near-impossible.

But Ward E councilman Steven Fulop, leveling the strongest criticism of the plan, disagreed. He said that the city should eliminate the autonomous agency (the JCIA) rather than the one under city control (the DPW).

“There’s an easy way to do it and there’s a right way to do it that is good for the longtime health of the city,” he said. “The proper thing to do is eliminate the autonomous agency.”

As Fulop pointed out Monday, an outside law firm hired by the city to study the issue agrees with him, and in July recommended the city fold the JCIA into the DPW.

“It is the author’s fervent belief that the most appropriate option as to the consolidation of the JCIA and the Jersey City DPW would be to eliminate the JCIA and merge the functions it is currently handling under the auspices of the city’s DPW,” Eric M. Bernstein wrote in a July 30 memo. “This would eliminate all of the civil service layoff issues and the issue of an autonomous agency handling what would have previously been city functions. The JCIA board would no longer exist and the costs of running the autonomous agency would equally be eliminated (attorney, board counsel, special counsel, auditor, insurance broker, etc) at a savings to the citizens and residents of the city.”

But the administration points to an earlier report by Bernstein, issued in May, that said the best option, “legally speaking,” would be to merge the DPW into the JCIA.

“The city has been studying and deliberating the consolidation of the DPW and JCIA since 2007, as reflected in the EMA report of 2007 that gives the JCIA higher rankings as an agency. Eric Bernstein was asked to perform a legal analysis on both possible courses of action,” city spokesperson Jennifer Morrill says. “Although good arguments can be made for either dissolving the JCIA or the DPW, the administration ultimately agreed with the rationales expressed in the May memorandum because of the time and costs savings that moving the DPW services into an autonomous agency that is free of the restraints of civil service allows.”

Not surprisingly, Fulop sees things differently. He argues that the May report was more theoretical in nature, laying out more the questions that need to be answered, and that the July report has a much firmer conclusion.

“We have untangled what would need to happen legally to make it happen (give one year formal notice but in the interim we can already start layoffs and consolidation),” Fulop says in an email. “Bernstein is very clear in his final assessment.”

Dubbing the autonomous agencies “patronage pits,” the Downtown councilman also suggests that the mayor’s choice to instead consolidate DPW into JCIA is a matter of political convenience, and that it would allow the politically connected to keep patronage jobs.

“Is it fair to have two political appointees [Dabney and Hadley] arbitrarily choose who to keep?” he asked on Monday. “There’s no performance reviews. They’ll sit and choose who they like and who they don’t like. Is this a fair way to go about it?”

But Healy bristled at the suggestion that the move is politically motivated.

“They do an annual performance review. To say their decisions will be based solely on politics is inaccurate and somewhat insulting,” he said of the agencies. “Not to me — I don’t get insulted — but to Rodney and Oren and all the people involved here.”

The City Council will vote on whether or not to introduce the ordinance at Wednesday’s council meeting.

Jon Whiten contributed to this report.

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