Union County Governments Secret CLM

06/20/2020
Bruce Paterson
325 Willow Ave
Garwood, NJ 07027

email: araceengineering@aol.com

Letter to Patch
Ref: Union County Government's secret CLM

The week of June 1st, while the nation was involved with the BLM, (Black Lives Matter) Justice movement, our Union County Government decided to embrace their own special CLM (Cronies Lives Matter). While I was participating and helping to chronicle my local town's rally, the county was sneaking around abusing our tax money. Do they really care about BLM and justice, or just rather give it lip service, and instead work toward enriching another one of their politically connected soldiers, Bruce Bergen, with an undeserved $175,000 county counsel position thru their contrived CLM.

I stood at the microphone at the June 4th Union County freeholder meeting and noted that in giving their BFF Bergen this counsel position, it would give him a free $30,000 padded pension for life after 2 years at the position. I questioned the integrity of that, since there are at least 100 lawyers in the county legal department with scads more county experience than the interloper they planned to install at the head position. I noted Bergen had minimal to no true county related experience. The freeholders could have easily promoted someone within, proudly promoting a POC or a woman, but they pushed that idea aside for their CLM. Freeholder Mirabella, who took umbrage at my statement, called this political chicanery, and then explained that Mr Bergen had 17 years as a municipal attorney, and after just stepping down from being freeholder, was immediately hired for the past year to work for the county as an attorney. (Another CLM action we weren't aware of!). So, one year experience is the criteria for CLM and enrichment for life. Mirabella never did answer why they didn't promote from within.

The Union County Watchdogs, an investigative journalist for the last 15 years, covers much apparent county waste and corruption on their "countywatchers" website. They researched my claim and in their latest website article corrected my pension calculation based on the gaffe mistakenly given out by Freeholder Mirabella in his defending remarks of Bergen's work years. Their astounding findings are that even with Bergen's minimal county legal experience, in 3 years at the patronage job, he will receive at least an $80,000 annual pension, 2 1/2 times more than my claim of $30,000. If Bergen was so great at lawyering as Mirabella says, why would he need an extra free $80k a year?

Boy did Mirabella make a defensive error, proving even worse apparent CLM corruption of pension padding. One item that makes Mirabella's remarks superfluous, is that he, himself, took full advantage of the CLM, increasing his annual pension from $15,000 to $90,000 annually in 3 years with a patronage job as town manager of Scotch Plains. He had no experience for that job and getting hired over a war veteran that did have the proper experience. Heck, he even had to hire a subordinate to help him out in his new town manager job. I have to laugh at his ironic charge of political chicanery toward me.

And while we are on Mirabella and his CLM, since the county funds Union County College to the tune of $15 million a year, he was able to leverage that to get his wife a job as Communications Director at the college. She was an insurance agent before that. She now makes $100,000. Include our county manager who was just an aide to Union County Democrat political boss, Senator Scutari, and who is his BFF, with no experience in managing anything larger than a senator's small office landed the plum job of Union County manager and increased his pension from $10,000 annually to at least $50,000 and counting in 3 years. He popped into the county and leapfrogged over the deputy county manager who is a woman and should have been promoted. The countywatchers website exposes a lot more examples of CLM as the county priority.

While the BLM Justice movement, the women's right movement, the equality movement struggle to assure minorities at least have a quality of life and living wages, the Union County government's secret CLM (Cronies Lives Matter) enriches those sycophants, minions and operatives who show no real integrity or leadership, but just good political connections. The CLM end up with unwarranted riches guaranteed for the rest of their lives, for which these same struggling factions actually have to foot the bill. Isn't it time to dismantle Union County's CLM.

Very Truly yours,
Bruce Paterson, Garwood NJ

CC 06/25/2020 file