Resolution to Eliminate Solicitor's, Elected Township Officials' Benefits Passes After Arguments

An otherwise quiet and uneventful township committee meeting quickly turned into a heated argument Thursday night over a resolution that aimed to eliminate township-funded health care for elected officials and the township solicitor.

The resolution, which was written by Deputy Mayor Len Daws, was slated at the end of Mayor Anna Docimo’s section of the agenda, where she immediately moved to table the resolution.

That’s when the controversy erupted.

In a sometimes-chaotic back-and-forth, Docimo, Daws and township solicitor Michael Angelini argued points of parliamentary procedure, before Docimo and committee member Donna Szymborski combined to table the resolution Docimo read.

A visibly upset Daws told the roughly 50 members of the public that, despite the fact that he wrote the resolution, it had been swapped on the meeting agenda.

“It was removed from my agenda and placed on the mayor’s at the last minute,” Daws said.

Docimo argued that they had discussed the change earlier in the day, but Daws maintained it belonged on his portion.

Daws then made his first order of business to introduce the original form of his resolution–the one that wiped out benefits to all current and future elected officials and the township solicitor–and got a second from committeeman Sean Kilpatrick.

Angelini argued that Daws was out of order on that point, but after further conversation between Daws, Angelini and Docimo, the resolution was passed for further discussion.

“I’m in favor of [a discussion],” Docimo said.

Daws noted that the resolution was nonbinding, and would require multiple steps to actually amend the township code to wipe out benefits for elected officials and the solicitor.

Docimo, who made a combined $103,282 in 2010 between her job as head of the county Division of Senior Services and her salary as West Deptford mayor, and Angelini, who has drawn as much as $213,000 in annual income from various government entities for his legal services and is a partner in the law firm Angelini, Viniar and Freedman, LLC, both currently receive health benefits from West Deptford.