On October 4 of this year, a civil suit was filed in Mercer County Superior Court by local attorney George Dougherty, on behalf of two employees of the Trenton Water Works (TWW), Edmund Johnson and Timothy London. Johnson and London are suing the City of Trenton as well as Mayor Tony F. Mack, “Acting” Business Administrator Anthony Roberts and “Acting” Director of Public Works Harold Hall individually and in their official capacities, in connection with disciplinary actions taken against them in their City Employment, up to and including the loss of their jobs.
This case has already seen some results. A mere three days after the law suit was filed, Superior Court Judge Darlene Perekstra granted a temporary restraining order to restore Johnson and London, as well as one other employee not part of the case, to their jobs at the Water Works until the case comes to trial.
The two plaintiffs allege that their treatment at the hands of the City and the three defendants is personally directed to them as retribution for their testimony given to prosecutors and a Grand Jury about illegal activities at the Water Works, which resulted in indictments and criminal charges against the Mayor’s half brother Stanley Davis and two others.
The allegations in the brief filed by Dougherty are serious and potentially extremely damaging to the Mayor and his Administration. If they are proved, this case may likely do terminal damage to the careers of each of the defendants. All of the worst features of Tony Mack’s Mayoralty are on display here: incompetence of senior appointees, personal payback and retribution, disregard for proper laws and procedures, nepotism and more.
“They say my brother is going to be a one term mayor, but we are going to get all we can.” – attributed to Stanley Davis in the October 4, 2011 brief, Johnson/London v Trenton, Mack et al, Paragraph 37
Rumors of illegal, off-the-books business conducted by Davis and others using Water Works property and while on the Water Works payroll predate Tony Mack’s tenure as Mayor. But in the early months of Mack’s term, the scale of such activities allegedly increased, and as the result of an investigation by the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office Davis and two others were arrested in December of 2010, and indicted on nine charges in January of this year. These indictments were handed down after days of Grand Jury testimony by several people including Johnson and London, as well as Trenton City Council Members George Muschal and Marge Caldwell Wilson.
The whistle-blowing testimony of Johnson and London, then working as Licensed Water System Technicians for TWW, did not go unnoticed at the Water Works. According to the allegations in the civil complaint,
[Johnson] was frequently warned by Stanley Davis that his job was in jeopardy because of his whistle-blowing actions, making no pretense of his intention to make use of his brother’s power. – from the Brief (ibid), Paragraph 46
The suit charges that this threat was carried out in August of this year, when Johnson and London were given their layoff notices, to become effective September 16.
“Hold on,” I hear you saying. “Hundreds of other City Employees, including 108 cops also got their layoff notices the same day. How come the layoffs of Johnson and London are payback and retribution, and the other hundreds aren’t?”
Good question. The best answer is that, “The layoffs of Johnson and London MAKE NO SENSE other than as retribution and payback!”
To understand this, some important context:
The Trenton Water Works, although part of the City’s Department of Public Works, serves more customers in Mercer County outside of the City than in. Its status as a public utility makes its safe and professional administration of great interest to citizens all over the County. As we’ve seen in the last year, the reputation for safe management of TWW has been under fire from the townships and from agencies of the State of New Jersey.
As a partial result of the recent service record of TWW, twice this year the State specifically asked the City to exempt TWW from citywide furlough and layoff plans affecting other departments. On August 5 – four days after Johnson and London got their pink slips, the State’s Assistant Commissioner of Water Management wrote a letter to the city that “strongly urged” the city not to lay off experienced licensed technicians – such as Johnson and London – citing a specific impact to the City’s ability to “provide a safe, dependable water supply to the City and its surrounding communities.” (Brief, Para. 15)
Serious stuff. You may recall, that as far back as February, in order to insulate TWW from layoffs and insuring safe, dependable service to the entire customer base, City Council introduced an ordinance that would have reorganized City administration so that TWW would have been folded into a department of Public Utilities. This ordinance sat on the shelf until August, when as a result of the layoff plan, Council dusted it off and passed it, 4-3. Mayor Mack, however, vetoed the Ordinance.
Why in the world did he do that?
TWW is operated under its own budget, as it services customers throughout the County. The Water Works generates a significant annual contribution for the City’s general budget, calculated as 5% of its expenses. If people are laid off from the Water Works, expenses go down; so does the income paid to the City.
That’s one of the main reasons the citizens of Trenton voted down last year the proposed sale of the suburban assets of TWW: we like the dependable income from TWW for our general budget. But laying employees off, as Johnson and London were released, doesn’t make sense. As the State argues, it threatens the ability of the TWW to provide safe, dependable water. It also loses the City money.
But Mayor Mack vetoed the ordinance which would have helped preserve all those good things. How come? It may be too much to suggest that signing the ordinance would have prevented the payback layoffs of Johnson and London, but one can’t help but think that may have possibly been part of the Mayor’s reasoning.
What happened next with Johnson and London, after they received their pink slips? A tour through Trenton’s Muncipal Carousel of Human Resources.
TO BE CONTINUED