Proposed Ordinance 2-2009 has been introduced to increase the number of police captains from four to five. In this time of fiscal restrain and needed municipal downsizing, the city can not afford to increase higher paid captain positions. It is not just the extra money, but the negative symbolic gesture it represents. City employees are being asked to sacrifice in hard financial times and the city actually wants to increase an already expensive and top heavy police management structure?   It is also a bad ordinance because it interjects City Hall politics into the police department.

This ordinance has only one purpose - to protect former Mayor Hackett’s Police Director appointee, Aric Webster, from losing pay and prestige on his return to the Orange police force.    Webster was a Lt before he was chosen as Police Director. He was not the most senior or the most experienced officer for the Director position but was chosen because of the strong backing of the City Attorney, Marvin Braker.

The Mayor and his administration have the option of selecting police captains from a pool of qualified candidates as positions become available. These selections may be made out of seniority but there must be justification and explanations when a candidate is passed over in seniority more than twice.  According to Mayor Hackett, Webster, although junior to other candidates for captain, was one of the top scorers on the State Department of Personnel list of superior officer candidates who were eligible for promotion.  It also did not hurt that as Police Director, Webster was in a position to, in effect, select himself for captain.    

The captain position issue gets murkier because Webster went on leave from the director’s position to occupy the captain position only long enough to hold his qualification as a captain under State regulations (three months, as I remember) should he ever return to the police force from his civilian appointed Director position. 

As it turned out, Hackett was forced to resign and Webster was not reappointed to the Police Director position. Under the city charter, there were no captain positions available to accommodate Webster’s return to the police force. Orange only has 4 captain positions and Webster “qualified” as a fifth captain. Aric Webster became a fifth captain without the required City Council approval - where he remains to this day.  He is junior in years on the police force (3 1/2 years) and junior in terms of time in the rank of captain.

The new mayor and his appointed Police Director, John Rappaport, inherited the five police captains but could not really do anything to rectify the problem. The BA and the City Attorney, holdovers and supporters from the Hackett administration, came to the rescue of one of their own.  They put pressure on the police department and the new mayor to retain Webster (and at the same time that Mayor Hawkins needed help defending his grab of the Fire Director’s salary).  City code specifies a maximum of four captains and the law should be enforced.

To his credit, Director Rappaport did not throw a legitimately selected and deserving captain under the bus to make way for Webster’s return.  He has also defended Webster’s job performance and has redesigned the police manning structure in order to make the most efficient use of his "extra" captain.  

I believe that Director Rappaport is sincere in his testimony before the City Council that increasing the number of captains to five will save taxpayer money – only not for the reasons put forth by Business Administrator Chen.

No matter how the BA wants to explain it, there is no cost savings realized by having an extra police captain on the payroll.  The savings come by avoiding the litigation expenses and damages that would surely follow if an existing captain were to be demoted to make way for Aric Webster’s return to the police force.  There is no way the city could win such litigation in spite of what convoluted arguments the City Attorney has been using to defend his captain position pick. Aric Webster is not downgrading in a police department cutback, he is returning to the police department from another job. The City Attorney, Mayor Hackett and ex-Director Webster overlooked holding an open position available for Webster’s return. The City Council should not rewrite city ordinances, at taxpayer expense, to shield mishandled opportunism.

The City Council and the taxpayers of Orange should not be used, once again, to cover for Hackett administration holdovers’ political meddling.  The mayor has the opportunity to do the right thing by now standing up to the City Attorney and directing the staffing decision be decided by the police department and their union lawyers alone.

The fact that there are lawsuits pending against Aric Webster for actions taken during his tenure as Director, and that there was disciplinary action imposed on him by the department for infractions to do with his support of Hackett, are not reasons to deny his rightful police seniority.

The reverse is also true. It is not right to impose super seniority by changing the rules after the fact and creating a job as compensation for Webster’s service and support of former mayor Mims Hackett. It is certainly unfair to make the long suffering taxpayers pay for it. 

Promotions and demotions in times of cut backs are regulated by seniority and union rules. The BA and the City attorney should not be attempting to dictate police union policy. It is for the police department alone to determine, who holds these positions. 

Bruce Meyer,

Chairman, Citizens Budget Advisory Committee