Contract Approval Turns Into Party-Line Fight

What started out as a party-line approval of a new, $10 million five-year contract for sergeants in FOP 199 by the Gloucester County freeholders Wednesday night quickly dissolved into partisan bickering over the timing of the contract’s delivery.

Republican freeholders Larry Wallace and Vincent Nestore first tried to push the contract’s approval back two weeks, which was defeated in another party-line vote, and Wallace continued to argue through the course of the meeting that something needs to be done about getting more time to review major deals.

“This is at least the second time I’ve received a complicated, large package that leaves virtually no time whatsoever to digest it,” Wallace said.

He said the contract hit his desk at the end of the day Friday–the contract had been ratified by the FOP 199 membership the day before–and argued that left him a single business day to get answers or clarification on anything in the contract.

Wallace didn’t try to argue the merits of the contract, if only because he didn’t have all the information he wanted, and said he wasn’t comfortable approval a deal without being able to ask questions.

“I want to know what the hell I’m signing for,” he said.

Despite having his motion to postpone the vote defeated, later in the meaning Wallace again raised the issue of not having enough time to review the contract, touching off an argument between him and Freeholder Director Robert Damminger, who pointed out that, despite Wallace’s protestations, the contract had been in hand for five days before the board’s meeting.

“Every day’s a working day here–we don’t have business days here,” Damminger said, though he did acknowledge a need to get as much lead time as possible on major contracts such as this one.

And while Wallace questioned whether there would be any negatives in waiting two weeks, county administrator Chad Bruner said that waiting two weeks means living under the terms of the old contract that much longer, and the county would risk having to abide by any raises or bonuses that could crop up as a result of that old contract.

“There is some harm in waiting two weeks,” Bruner said.

Ratifying the contract now, Bruner said, means locking in the new terms, which include raises of less than 2 percent per year, as soon as possible.