Belleville Mayor Demands Probe Into Payments To Code Official

BELLEVILLE, NJ — NOTE: This article has been updated with a statement from Mayor Michael Melham. It makes adjustments to figures quoted for an employee's salary during Tuesday's meeting. Our original article with the new figures follows below.

Belleville officials are investigating allegations that several questionable checks were cut to a well-paid municipal employee. And the ongoing financial probe may be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a lack of “checks and balances” over the town’s coffers, officials say.

During the Belleville Town Council meeting on Tuesday, township manager Anthony Iacono confirmed that a review has been launched into payments made from the municipal developers escrow account.

The fund – which contains fees charged to real estate developers looking to do business in Belleville – is regulated by state and local law. It’s often used to make payments to professionals such as engineers and planners, who do repeated business with the town at a previously established fee structure.

At the request of Mayor Michael Melham, Iacono started an initial review of the account, finding a “conflict of three employees receiving compensation based on being reimbursed for attending meetings, which there is no public authorization via ordinance or resolution to reimburse.”

Or as Melham later put it, town workers may have gotten checks to attend meetings they’re not supposed to get paid for.

According to Melham, documents he’s acquired show that one employee – who earns a salary of about $156,000 a year as a construction code official – is getting $17,292 above that for any extra services he performs apart from this normal workday. That includes attending any relevant municipal meetings, which take place in the evenings.

It’s a stipend that the council authorized in a 2019 resolution. But according to Melham, even though he’s already getting paid extra to attend the meetings, the employee has been submitting bills to the township finance department for them.

“This documentation shows that he regularly created his own invoices – $750 for special planning board meetings, $200 for planning board subcommittee meetings,” Melham charged. “He created his own fee structure, typed up invoices, and received checks totaling thousands of dollars.”

“I don’t think this is a ‘miscommunication,’” Melham alleged, demanding a full forensic audit of the account.

Melham – a member of the town budget committee – noted that he had to file an Open Public Records Act request to get the full documentation he’d sought.

The discussion was originally slated to take place during the executive session of the council meeting, away from public view, a common policy when personnel issues are involved. But in an unusual twist, the employees under discussion asked that the conversation take place in public, Melham said.

THE NEXT STEPS

Iacono said that the town’s review isn’t completed. Remaining questions include how many checks have been issued, as well as a key piece of the puzzle: How long have they been going out?

“I don’t know how far back, but I know for sure two years, maybe three or four or five,” Iacono said. “That’s what the review is going to show us.”

However, one thing is certain, he added: it’s clear that bills are being paid without the proper authorization.

“The planning board and the zoning board have a fiduciary responsibility to approve every single invoice, and they haven’t approved any invoices,” Iacono said. “There have been no checks and balances at all, and that’s a problem.”

For now, the town has suspended the escrow account. And nobody will be getting a dime from it until checks and balances are in place, he said.

“It’s unfortunate that we found out the way we found out,” Iacono said.

Watch a video of Tuesday's meeting below.

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