Falling On Deaf Ears

Yesterday evening, I was one of about a half-dozen citizens speaking on the matter of the proposed Trenton Salary Raise Ordinance. All spoke against the proposal, including myself. Most spoke on behalf of themselves. Paul Mitsis also spoke on behalf of the Glen Afton Civic Association. Most spoke well. One, Daryl Brooks, spoke incomprehensibly, of how when Donald Trump is elected President towns like Trenton will be governed well, He also self-promoted a new TV show he will be on. SMDH, my friends. SMDH.

None spoke in favor. Despite the clear expression of public sentiment on the matter, which apparently fell on deaf ears, the Clowncil voted to approve the First Reading of the matter.

Second Reading, which will include a public hearing on the ordinance, is scheduled to take place at their September 15 meeting.

This is Trenton. I’m sure a lot will happen between now and then to provide further context for this proposal. This being Trenton, I doubt much of it will be good.

My comments, as delivered, are below.

Good Evening, Mr. President, Councilmembers – I am here to oppose Resolution 16-50. In the city’s present condition, and after a series of failures of management and leadership to date by the Mayor and many of this Administration I strongly feel that the 3-year 15% raise that is under consideration tonight is inappropriate.

Tonight’s proposal is presented to you as cost-of-living increases. I don’t oppose nominal adjustments for cost-of living, say in the 1-2% range from current rates. There is no realistic way we can afford to catch up a dozen years of frozen salaries in the next three. Anything over 1-2% from current salaries constitutes de facto merit increases for the Mayor, Council, and others, as does making these increases retroactive to January 1, in a prior fiscal year. Not only can this city not afford merit raises, in my opinion the current Mayor and senior Administration officials simply do not deserve them.

“Leadership does cost money,” the Mayor tells us. That may be so. However, the lack of leadership has already cost us much, much more money. We have been paying so much out due to the failures of management and bad decisions by this Administration that we cannot afford the kind of “Leadership” Mayor Jackson proposes.

To be sure, competitive salaries are helpful for recruiting and retaining quality managerial talent to head Departments. I once worked for a company whose President told the New York Times, “We have the best employees in the business, for the money.” No one wants to feel they are the bargain basement talent. And no one wants to recruit in the basement. I get it. I get it.

But it is at least as important for recruits to Trenton’s government to feel they are coming to a city that is well and competently managed, with good morale and clear policies and procedures that are consistently and fairly applied. Instead of the situation that we actually have now. “You couldn’t pay me enough to get involved with that” is a phrase that I have heard, many times, applied to the City of Trenton, by those inside and out of the place. Don’t try to tell me you haven’t heard, or used, variations on that theme yourselves. To many, it’s a literal truth. For a lot of people a lot of the time, especially those who choose public service, it’s not just about the money. It’s about the job.  We’d certainly like to do better by people, but here, now, cost of living is all we got.

Regarding his own position, the Mayor told the Trentonian,“A chief executive officer of the capital city, that’s what I am.” Since many of this country’s CEO’s over the last few decades have, through their management and corporate policies, been greatly responsible for gutting the American economy from the inside, don’t compare yourself to a CEO and ask me to be impressed. Far from it.

As a brief aside, for a self-described municipal CEO, Mr. Jackson continues to have ongoing CEO-type issues with his mayoral campaigns. Campaign finance reports due with the state for his 2010 run were outstanding as the 2014 race got under way. After public and press criticism on that matter were made by me and others, Mr. Jackson hurriedly caught up on his reports in time for the most recent campaign. However, with that election behind him and comfortably installed in City Hall, old habits apparently came back. The last legally-mandated quarterly report was filed with NJ ELEC in November 2014. We’ll probably see the next batch of filings delivered in Spring 2016. Or next week, if the press picks up on this tidbit this evening. This action-only-in-response-to-public-spotlight kind of thing makes one think more of CEO Donald Trump rather than CEO Steve Jobs. Don’t try to pass yourself off as a CEO, Mr. Jackson.

Just be a Mayor. Try to be a good one.

The posted salary for the mayor’s job didn’t deter Mr. Jackson from aggressively seeking this job in both 2010 and 2014, nor did it keep all the many others from running in both of those years. Salary wasn’t an issue in either election, and I don’t see how it’s become one of a sudden. What, will this, or another future Mayor, tell us: “I’d really like to take the offer, but Princeton is offering a better salary and more vacation time?” Really?

In the Mayor’s 2015 State of the City Address, he told us, about his governance strategy supported by eight pillars, among which were: Communications, Accountability, and Transparency. The actual record of the Jackson Administration to date is full of publicly documented instances where those “pillars” have been either ignored, or distorted beyond all imagining, not just by the Mayor but throughout the Executive Branch.  The promulgation of these “pillars” by Mr. Jackson proved to be no more than lip service for a citizenry desperate to think we’d put the bad days of Tony Mack behind us. We’ve been sadly disabused of that over the last couple of years. We don’t need a 3-letter agency to come in and tell us so. A lot can be wrong even if it’s not illegal.

Example: The City selected as its Information Technology vendor a company that submitted the third most expensive proposal out of 12 submitted companies. The winning company did not come with the experience, depth and credentials of its competitors, nor was it of a size that included the kind of overhead to justify its extremely high cost structure. Since its selection, the IT processes and infrastructure has experienced   frequent and debilitating problems, and costs much higher than they needed to be.

Example: In September of last year, the US Department of Justice listed Trenton “a high-risk grantee of Federal funds” due to its failure to make required changes in its operations to cure problems discovered in audits of past grant programs. This kind of judgment is never lightly taken and was a major critique of the city’s quality of management and leadership at all levels. This announcement that didn’t get the attention it deserved, lost as it was in the background noise of other events at the time.

Example: This summer, the City contracted with a company to manage the City’s swimming pools. Due to bad communications from both sides throughout the entire process, this company and the City parted ways, mid-way during the summer. Another, far more expensive vendor has been brought in to finish out the season. This vendor, in turn, is imposing – on its own initiative – additional costs on the City in excess of the conditions outlined in the original RFP, and the City is paying those costs. Due to Trenton’s miscues and the mismanagement of its vendors, this summer the City is now spending 65% more than 2016’s original contract amount, and about 50% more than the 2014 contract. Allowing a 50% increase in costs over two years for what is, however valuable and desirable, a non-essential service is unacceptable.

Final Example: The final example, of course, is Innovative Payroll Services. There is not enough time in the entire evening to review what an unbelievable disaster this has been. I will simply summarize in the three main phases of this scandal the Administration’s past and ongoing Management and Leadership failures.

FIRST –  From no later than April 2015 to the end of that year, and possibly much earlier, multiple and frequent notices from State and Federal tax authorities were sent to Trenton, notifying the City of late and missing tax deposit payments. These notices usually led to communications and inquiries between a City analyst and IPS, correspondence that throughout were copied to the City’s Chief Financial Officer and known to her, at least, from April to the end of the year. From all the public statements and city documents released to date, there is no evidence that these frequent, serious red flags led to any investigative or corrective action at all on the part of any Senior Manager in the City of Trenton. In fact, on two occasions during 2015, in June and December, the City actually extended the contract with IPS, despite the existence of these red flags from the tax authorities.

SECOND – The period from roughly December 2015 to February 2016 describes the period during which the City finally realized the problem for the emergency it obviously was. This is the time when attention was fully paid by the Administration, when law Enforcement on the state and federal level was involved, and when the matter was first revealed to the public. During this time, several public statements were made by officials including the Mayor and the President of Council that described the problem, its timeline, and the actions taken by the City that are at serious variance to documents that have become publicly available since that time; namely, copies of the tax notices and emails, and court documents filed against IPS and its principles. The discrepancies between those public statements and the documented record have not yet been publicly reconciled, from then to now. Which leads to,

THIRD – In the aftermath to this scandal, after the change of payroll vendors, after the criminal complaint and indictments, after the civil lawsuit, the dust settled. The Mayor announced in March that the City was “taking an internal audit, [and] we’re having an outside legal firm look at the processes that not only took place during that period, but the organization that’s set up so we can avoid having similar things.” Since March 14, we have heard nothing more about either the City’s internal audit, or this outside review. Neither the Mayor nor any other Administration official have made any more statements on the matter. Council has not been involved with any effort. And we know of neither any personnel nor policy or procedural changes instituted by the City to prevent someone else from again swindling Millions of Taxpayer Dollars from under the noses of our public officials. We have no assurance that anything is happening in this regard. Five months on, the Mayor’s announced  “audit” and “legal review” and his promises to keep Council and the Public informed look to be as credible  and legitimate as the legal review of Bridgegate commissioned by our Governor.

In this respect, the aftermath to IPS represents to me the worst – and still ongoing to this day – Failure of Leadership on behalf of Mayor Eric Jackson and his Administration. What happened to Communications, Accountability, and Transparency? His Eight Pillars are Eight Empty Promises.

Even Tony Mack didn’t lose Five Million Dollars! For all his faults, Tony was just a penny ante crook, remarkable only in that he betrayed so much public trust for such little illegal personal gain. We’re in the Big Leagues now: Five Million Stolen by just one scheme.

So, a 15% raise over the next 3 years for those during whose watch this took place? Please!

If they were perfectly honest with us, and with themselves, the Mayor and his Administration would tonight say to us, paraphrasing William Shakespeare and Edward R. Murrow, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our compensation packages, but in ourselves.”

In summary, Mr. President, I want to state again my strong opposition to Resolution 16-50, in its specific terms and in general to the idea of any Merit raises for the Mayor and the named officials over and above nominal cost-of-living adjustments as of July 1, 2016.

As an alternative plan, I would suggest looking into a variation of the 27^th Amendment for Trenton, in which any proposed raises would not take effect until after the next new Council/Mayoral term of office begins.

Let current officeholders, including yourselves, stand behind their action on this issue when they seek re-election. Thank you.