Lonegan: Sitting in on a Sussex County Commissioners' meeting an eye-opener

ditor’s Note: Steve Lonegan was a Mayor for 12 years. He took a town that was nearly bankrupt and turned it to an efficiently run success story. When Lonegan left office, his budget was lower than the budget he inherited 12 years earlier.
 
Lonegan’s reputation for finding fraud, waste, and abuse in a public budget was such that other towns in northern New Jersey hired him to review their budgets and make recommendations. Lonegan not only achieved savings and efficiencies for taxpayers, on two occasions he uncovered criminal activity that resulted in the arrests and convictions of four public officials.
 
Lonegan serves on the Sussex County GOP’s candidate screening committee. He is also chairman of the Cost Cutting & Savings Committee. It was in the latter role that he visited last evening’s meeting of the Sussex County Board of Commissioners. What follows are his observations.
 
By Steve Lonegan
 
The first thing I noticed is that the Commissioners lacked an understanding of Robert’s Rules of Order. They know enough to ask for a motion and a second before each agenda item, but it disappears after that. Two moments are noteworthy:
 
When neither the Board nor the County Administrator could explain why a $1.6 million no-bid contract was handed to an out-of-state election machine company that has made national headlines with its problems, Commissioner Herb Yardley quietly suggested that the contract be held for further review. Yardley’s suggestion was drowned out and then ignored by others on the dais. Can you imagine members of Congress shushing each other like that?
 
The correct procedure would have been to ask Commissioner Yardley to make a motion to table, ask to have it seconded, and then vote on it. Now, the Board will have itself – and the County Administrator – to blame if something goes wrong in the next election, the way it has in the last two elections in Sussex County. This “nothing to see here, move on” attitude towards election integrity is all too familiar but nevertheless tragic.
 
The second incident was when Commissioner Carney wanted to end Sussex County’s mask mandate for county buildings. In the “new business” section of the meeting, Carney noted that other counties had done away with their mask mandates. He was immediately interrupted by a board member who said “I think that there’s discussions going on within administration on that” – that’s right, when you lack political courage, punt it to the bureaucrats. Blue state Governors and Mayors are ending mask mandates all across America, but in supposedly red Sussex County the Commissioners go a wimpy shade of violet when the idea is raised.
 
Commissioner Director Anthony Fasano called ending the mask mandate “a topic the Board is interested in pursuing” – suggesting the Board needed the eventual approval of the County Administrator – to which Carney replied, “Well, if there’s not a problem, why don’t you do it now?”
 
Fasano replied with a sort of “Mooo” and Carney pressed him with, “What’s the hold up?” Then Commissioner Sylvia Petillo jumped in with the claim that it was the County Administrator’s call, not the Board’s call (which is just stupid). The correct procedure would have been to have a motion for a vote, ask to have it seconded, and then vote on it. Put every Commissioner on the record as to where he or she stands in ending the mask mandate. That’s how it works in a representative democracy.
 
Taxpayers can only see who the county pays after the checks have been cut.
 
A double-dipping scam has been taking place in Sussex County. It works like this: A favored worker can retire in their 50s, start collecting a pension, and then get rehired to their old job as a temp through a temporary employment agency.
 
Christina Marks is the President of the CWA union representing most of Sussex County’s day-to-day workers. She asked the Board about the absence of a detailed Bill List in the agenda. This led Freeholder Director Fasano to admit that taxpayers cannot review the county Bill List prior to the Commissioners voting on it.
 
When I was mayor, we always included a detailed list of everyone we were going to pay and posted it 48 hours before a meeting. This is common practice throughout New Jersey and most everywhere else. Sussex County doesn’t do it that way. Instead, they just post totals being paid out but not to whom or for what or any line items at all.
 
Apparently, four of the five Commissioners don’t get to know what bills they are voting for because only the Commissioner Director has the detailed Bill List in his “binder”. This is a terrible system because it allows scams like the one just mentioned to go on. If nobody catches the fact that the county is paying a temp agency, then nobody will know to ask questions.
 
There is also the gross lack of transparency to consider. Let’s look at two counties named Sussex. If you live in Sussex County, Delaware, and you want to know where your tax dollars are going, you simply access this page…

https://sussexcountyde.gov/bills-approval-list

 
Then you click on an individual meeting/approval date and up comes this…
 

https://sussexcountyde.gov/sites/default/files/bills/Invoices%20Paid%20Through%202.11.22.pdf

 
If you live in Sussex County, New Jersey, you fill out an Open Public Records Act form and hope their email system hasn’t crashed that day. Maybe they’ll get back to you in a couple weeks with an acknowledgement and maybe you’ll get an answer some time after that. Or maybe you won’t.
 
This lack of transparency raises the question: What are they hiding?
 
For a local representative democracy to function, the involvement of those the people have elected to represent them is of primary importance. That’s important to keep in mind when judging the efficiency of county governments. Our committee is continuing its review and I will keep you informed of its progress.   

Steve Lonegan is the Father of the Conservative Movement in New Jersey.