$417K In Extra Compensation For Top Union Co. Officials Was Unlawful, State Says

UNION COUNTY, NJ — Union County violated state law by paying its county manager and two other top officials $417,772 in extra stipends and tuition reimbursement without following the proper process, state officials said. The county is disputing the state comptroller's findings, according to an attorney providing legal counsel on the matter.

The Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) announced the results of a financial investigation into the county on Tuesday. The investigation "found that the County’s approach to compensating its highest-paid staff is inconsistent with state law," the comptroller's office said Tuesday.

Under New Jersey's Optional County Charter Law, compensation of high-level county officials must be set through an open legislative process, with the proper public notice and hearing before a vote on the amount.

The state comptroller said that County Manager Edward Oatman and two department heads—the director of public works and the director of finance— "received compensation on top of their six-figure base salaries that did not follow this public process."

“Giving these top officials extra compensation without going through the required public process was unlawful," Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh said in a statement. “Residents should not have been deprived of the opportunity to weigh in.”

According to the OSC investigation, the county's finance director received a total of $303,299 in tuition reimbursement and stipends from 2019 through 2022 that did not go through the required public process. The finance director received money every six months for providing financial management and project management services for the Union County Improvement Authority, the OSC said.

And, the OSC said that the county paid the public works director a total of $97,973 in supplemental payments from January 2019 through August 2022, on top of his base salary of more than $150,000, that were not adopted by ordinance. The additional money was to assist a municipality’s public works department, officials said.

A letter sent to the board of commissioners did not name these officials; the county website lists Joseph Policay as the acting director of public works, and Dr. Bibi Taylor as the director of finance.

The OSC directed the county to create a corrective action plan for how it will comply with state law for the $417,772 in stipends and tuition reimbursements that have already gone out.

Deborah L. Gramiccioni, outside counsel for Union County, said the county "categorically disputes" the comptroller's findings, conclusions, and process in the investigation.

"OSC proposes a confusing and expensive solution in search of a problem and attempts to rewrite a 50-year-old state law without involving the NJ Legislature," she said in a statement. "Last we checked, it is the Legislature who makes law, not an unelected acting Comptroller. Had the acting Comptroller found the time to meet with us at our repeated requests, we would have asked him why he chose to target only one of several counties for not anticipating OSC’s novel and impractical statutory analysis."

"Union County simply followed the law transparently and as written following public notice and meetings, and could not have predicted that OSC would subsequently rewrite the statute to find fault with legally supportable practices that are followed among all OCCL counties," she said.

Click here to read the full news release from the state.