{"id":1082,"date":"2014-09-22T22:31:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T02:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2014-09-23T00:28:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T04:28:00","slug":"brick-mua-eliminates-employees-council-candidate-claims-politics-behind-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2014\/09\/brick-mua-eliminates-employees-council-candidate-claims-politics-behind-layoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick MUA Eliminates Employees; Council Candidate Claims Politics Behind Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

The commissioners of the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority laid off two employees from the agency\u2019s engineering department and eliminated their job titles Monday night, a move a Republican candidate for township council says was motivated by politics. Other officials said the move was meant to save money by trimming staff.<\/p>\n

The employees, whose names Shorebeat is voluntarily withholding out of respect for their privacy, had worked for the BTMUA as project managers for four and 12 years, respectively. They were let go after both defended their jobs in closed-door hearings during an otherwise contentious public meeting of the BTMUA commissioners. Two commissioners, Allan E. Cartine and Thomas C. Curtis, voted against eliminating the positions.<\/p>\n

The BTMUA Board of Commissioners is currently led by Democratic appointees, who were accused of eliminating the positions for untoward reasons by Domenick Brando, a former Republican township council member and current council candidate. Brando is also a former BTMUA employee, whose own job was eliminated by the commissioners earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou people are pulling the same antics you pulled in the early 2000s,\u201d said Brando. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to see what engineering firm will be coming in here and getting the contracts for the work these people were performing. It\u2019s wrong what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But James Fozman, a Democrat who serves as BTMUA commissioner as well as a township councilman, brushed off the idea that politics was behind the layoffs, saying they were part of an overall effort to reduce spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were good employees, but we\u2019re just cutting back,\u201d Fozman said after the meeting. \u201cAs [Executive Director] Mr. [James] Lacey said, if the time comes and we need the workers, we\u2019ll get somebody. Right now, there are no projects, so we\u2019re cutting down the work force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two employees will not be replaced, Fozman said.<\/p>\n

Stephen T. Specht, director of the BTMUA\u2019s engineering department, said he sent a memorandum to the commissioners on Sept. 14, coming out against eliminating the positions, and asking how the manpower loss would be replaced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no feedback on my memo,\u201d Specht said, explaining that he had already reduced the engineering department staff from 11 to 7 employees, and worked to improve efficiencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m losing two family members tonight, and it really hurts me,\u201d Specht told board members near the end of the meeting. \u201cPlease give me your feedback on this. This is serious \u2026 I had my conversations with you, and I\u2019m sorry it fell on deaf ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contentious Exchange<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point during the meeting, Fozman took offense to Brando\u2019s hinting that the employees were laid off for political reasons \u2013 especially to funnel work to an outside contractor \u2013 saying, \u201cWatch what you say here, this is all being recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t like to be accused of corruption by a former councilman, a former employee of the authority,\u201d Fozman later said. \u201cIt just seems like sour grapes to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brando held the position of emergency management coordinator at the BTMUA before his own job was eliminated by the commissioners earlier this year. The previous purge of MUA employees also included Lisa Lau, an active member of the township\u2019s Republican organization, and Frank Pannucci, Jr., the former chairman of the Brick Republican organization who is now a member of the Board of Education.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wanted to get rid of me earlier this year? That\u2019s fine, chalk it up to politics,\u201d Brando said. \u201cYou have people who can\u2019t pay their bills, they\u2019re lined up outside in the daytime here, and you people are buying out contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cbuyout\u201d refers to Pannucci, who held an employment contract with the authority that lasted through Dec. 31, 2017. The BTMUA ultimately reached a buyout agreement with Pannucci, who held the position of Director of Customer Accounts. That led George Cevasco, the chairman of the board, to accuse Cartine \u2013 a Republican \u2013 of suggesting the buyout to begin with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe termination was your idea!\u201d Cartine replied. \u201cThe buyout was a compassionate move by myself and the other commissioners to keep some people from hitting the unemployment lines. It had to be negotiated, and I was not part of that negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brando also hinted that the decision to promote BTMUA employee Gary Vaccaro to a director role at the water-sewer utility was politically motivated. Vaccaro is a former candidate for Lacey Township committee who is currently president of the Lacey Township Democratic Club.<\/p>\n

Vaccaro vigorously defended himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started the same time [Brando] did, and he knows damn well how hard I work,\u201d said Vaccaro, who now holds the position of Director of Compliance, Safety and GIS. He was appointed to the senior position in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I ran for office, that has nothing to do with my job,\u201d Vaccaro said, adding that he was appointed unanimously by a Republican-controlled MUA board. \u201cI work damn hard, and I think Domenick would know better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the latest positions to be eliminated, Benjamin Montenegro, board attorney, said both would be terminated as of Oct. 31. The duties of the employees who held the positions would be \u201ctransferred and reassigned through the Department of Engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BTMUA board will hold its next meeting Oct. 27 at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

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The commissioners of the Brick Township Municipal Utilities Authority laid off two employees from the agency\u2019s engineering department and eliminated their job titles Monday night, a move a Republican candidate for township council says was motivated by politics. Other officials said the move was meant to save money by trimming staff. The employees, whose names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[316,24,269,318,317,315],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-allan-e-cartine","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-btmua","tag-domenick-brando","tag-george-cevasco","tag-jim-fozman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/btmua.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-hs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}