Remarks Reopen Festering Mood Over Cop’s Ouster

CAPE MAY – The Cape May City Council moved smoothly through its agenda Oct. 18 until the point where each member of council is given an opportunity to speak. 
On that day, Council member Roger Furlin, the newest member, took the opportunity to critique remarks made during public comment a month ago by ex-police chief Robert Boyd.
What he did was reopen the acrimony and controversy that had surrounded the forced retirement of Lt. Clarence Lear, a mayoral candidate.
The timing of Furlin’s remarks, coming just weeks before city voters go to the polls, seemed to many in the audience to be evidence of a political motive.
Furlin said it was not politically motivated but rather was the first opportunity he had to respond to Boyd, who does not attend every meeting.
Mayor Edward Mahaney, Lear’s opponent in the election, responded to one question by saying that if Furlin had told him of his planned remarks, “I would have advised him not to do it at this time.”
The controversy over Lear’s use of leave dates to a complaint filed in 2014. That led to an action by council to remove Robert Sheehan as chief of police. It also included a feud with the county prosecutor. The spectacle of the city taking the Prosecutor’s Office to court and the placement by the prosecutor of a monitor in the police department.
Further, it resulted in an attempted recall of the mayor, a still-open lawsuit by Sheehan against the city, the resignation of a council member whose seat would eventually be filled by Furlin, and a settlement of administrative charges against Lear, who retired after 37 years of service with the department.
This controversy has been an open wound in the city with a group of residents who never stopped supporting Lear and Sheehan in the dispute.
For many months the public comment period of most council meetings rehashed the controversy. Of late, the controversy has ebbed regarding its domination of public discussion at council meetings.
The occasional exception was Boyd’s set of remarks last month when he scolded council for the nature of the resolution that approved the Lear settlement, saying that it did not celebrate in any way 37 years of public service.
Oddly, Furlin was not serving during much of the period under debate. Furlin argued that there was no reason to comment on Lear’s long service.
The resolution in his words constituted “a dishonorable discharge.” In 20 minutes, with Lear in the room, Furlin said he was responding to Boyd, harshly criticized Lear with no reference to the open political campaign nearing its close.
Furlin said that Lear’s actions with regard to use of leave time were “illegal.” He said the contract Lear signed banned the use of compensatory time in language “a fifth grader would understand.”
He claimed that Lear had agreed to settlement terms in front of the hearing officer presiding over the administrative case and then “unilaterally” changed the terms.
He claimed that Lear would have used as much as “$80,000 of such time” except for the fact that “he was stopped before he cashed in the full amount.”
With some exchanges with Council member Shane Meier and the occasional outburst from some of the public, Furlin spoke for about 20 minutes. Throughout his comments both Mahaney and Lear remained silent.
As unusual as this was, it followed on the heels of a public meeting just weeks before when Monzo, an appointed professional, used the same comment period to chastise Meier, an elected official, over remarks Meier made to the media at a recent candidates’ night in the city.
Scott Maslow, a resident, rose during public comment to call for civility on the council and a return to a focus on important city business.
He lectured Furlin for comments in which Furlin criticized Meier for making a phone call following a closed session vote and then changing his vote in the public meeting.
Maslow reminded Furlin a vote in private session is at best a straw vote and is not binding. He also argued that a council member has the right, and even obligation, to seek as much advice as he or she needs before a vote, even by phone.
Maslow also criticized Monzo for his remarks concerning Meier’s comments in the press. He reminded Monzo that he is there to serve all of the council, not a select few.
Calling an elected member of the governing body a “liar” in a public meeting was, Maslow said, beyond the threshold of any proper role the solicitor should play.
What many in the public were most upset about was the timing of Furlin’s remarks. Lear’s case was not as simple and clear cut as Furlin’s remarks would make it.
Lear never agreed that he was even taking compensatory time and argued instead that it was flex time.
When Boyd asked Monzo if he, Monzo, had written a memorandum in which he acknowledged that Lear was entitled to flex time, Monzo’s reply was “I cannot recall such a letter.”
Caught on the spot by the question, that may have been his memory. However, the Herald has a copy of the letter in question in which Monzo wrote to the Prosecutor’s Office that Lear “is given the opportunity to flex his time off during the period in which additional time was worked or in the subsequent time period.”
That one letter does not prove Furlin right or wrong, but it goes to the heart of the complex issues involved when dealing with a practice that had been condoned by Lear’s superiors in the department for several years.
What many in the public complained about while council went into closed session was the one-sided nature of the attack by a city official just weeks before the election. “Does anyone here believe this was not politically motivated?” Boyd said.
The chronology Furlin put forth did not touch on many aspects of the long controversy including the comments by the Prosecutor in 2015 when releasing the results of his investigation.
That letter stated, “The allegation of improper earnings/accruing of comp/flex-time by Lt. Clarence Lear is not sustained by a preponderance of the evidence.”
The Prosecutor’s remarks were pointed to by members of the public at the meeting as the reason why they felt Furlin’s remarks were one sided.
Boyd brought up another example of the police department’s use of leave that was never singled out by city officials in the same way that Lear’s case was.
Under Chief Dianne Sorantino, the chief before Sheehan, detectives on call were “paid” one leave day a month because of the time they spent on call was otherwise uncompensated.
Those detectives did not work unless called and could be home for the entire “on-call” period, yet they earned that day a month and could “cash it out” at year end.
Boyd saw this as much different from Lear who “worked for every hour of flex-time, hour for hour,” he said.
Furlin’s claim that Lear “unilaterally” changed the terms of his settlement also rankled a number of those in attendance.
The city had to agree to any changes since no settlement was possible without both sides accepting it.
Lear has said that the reason the settlement language dragged on was the conceptual agreement with the hearing officer because the city wanted to “include language critical of Rob Sheehan and have me sign it.”
He said it had nothing to do with changing the basic terms agreed to. The eventual change in his retirement date came later after settlement language had been argued for weeks.
Jerry Gaffney, a former mayor, asked what purpose was served to raise all the issues surrounding a settled matter just three weeks before an election.
Dennis DeSatnick called Furlin’s remarks “reprehensible.”
For Boyd, they were “politically motivated garbage.”
For others, the remarks were “ill-advised” and “misinformed.”
There are those who support the mayor and council in their actions with Lear and Sheehan. There are those who are opposed.
At the candidates’ night, Mahaney responded to a question by saying the “city has moved on” from the controversy.
He was especially referencing the hiring of a new police chief.
Yet Roger Furlin’s perceived need, as a city official, to make his remarks so close to an election in which Lear is a candidate put to the test Mahaney’s assertion that the city has moved on.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.