Camden City residents protest their government at the September 10 meeting of the Camden City Council. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
With chants of “Fed up! Fired up!” and “Shut it down!” a group of Camden City residents ground Tuesday’s council meeting to a standstill, boisterously forcing elected officials into an unplanned recess.
By a four-to-one measure, with Council Person Chris Collins the lone dissenter, the governing body had just approved modifications to Chapter 44 of its municipal code: Defense of Officers and Employees.
The measure, first adopted May 10, 1979, establishes a process to reimburse city employees for cases in which they must be provided with a legal defense, and “the Municipal Personnel Defender” cannot fulfill that need.
Tuesday’s action concerns Article II of that same statute, the Nonmandatory Defense of Employees and Officials, first adopted March 28, 2002. That regulation outlines a process for defending any current or former employee or public official “on account of an act or omission in the performance of his or her duties.”
The ordinance covers “reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs” for retaining outside counsel. Eligibility for these services is determined at the discretion of the City Attorney, who must be notified within 10 calendar days of the employee having been served with a “summons, complaint, process, notice, demand, or pleading.”
It also allows the City Attorney to decline to continue defending the employee, and seek reimbursement for the costs of having done so, in the event that the defendant is found or pleads guilty.
Nonetheless, members of the community fear that the measure could exact a limitless financial toll on taxpayers, many of whom hadn’t seen the language of the ordinance prior to the council meeting.
Specifically, they expressed anxiety that the bill would be used to pay for the defense of former Camden City Mayor Dana Redd, who was indicted this summer on corruption charges alongside insurance broker George Norcross.
Antoinette Miles, New Jersey Director of the Working Families Party and a Pennsauken resident, said that she was “concerned about fast-tracking payment of bills for civil and criminal defense of city officials.
“This is about a history and a pattern in the city government in which we double down and try to use city resources at the expense of residents,” Miles said.
“We understand there are scenarios in which current and former employees can be defended and receive reimbursement for their legal fees by the city,” she continued. “The concern here is that there are sections of this ordinance that means city is paying those legal fees pre-acquittal.”
Camden City Assistant Municipal Clerk Yenise Valdez, Council President Angel Fuentes, and Counsel to Council Howard McCoach. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
Ronsha Dickerson, Executive Director of the Camden Parent & Student Union, urged the council to withdraw the ordinance from consideration and table their votes.
“It speaks volumes to the way you see the city,” Dickerson said.
“It speaks volumes to the way you see residents.
“You all voting yes is a stamp to say that we’re going to continue business as usual,” she said.
Susan Stukes called out that the measure was among the first official actions taken by Council Member Arthur Barclay, who faces charges for seriously injuring a pedestrian while allegedly driving with a suspended license, as New Jersey Globe reported.
“I think he should recuse himself from voting because of pending legal matters,” Stukes said of Barclay
“Dana Redd is one issue; there are a lot of other city officials that could be drawn into this,” Stukes said. “How do you plan to pay for it? Are we going to have to have cuts to our city services?”
Stukes criticized the city government for the lack of transparency to his process, and Barclay for
failing to connect with community leaders in her neighborhood of Lanning Square, which he represents.
“He’s yet to reach out to any of the community, but yet we hear his first official action is to present this amendment that is something that, for all we know, he could benefit from,” she said after the meeting.
“We really have to accept the fact that we don’t have much representation,” Stukes said. “So it is incumbent upon us to come to city council meetings and stay engaged as much as possible.”
Resident J. McRae called the measure “a corruption tax.”
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“That money you’re trying to allocate for somebody’s ignorance should be put into education so when [city children] get older they’ll be smart enough to vote for people who truly care about their well-being,” McRae said.
After the public comment period concluded, the measure passed 4-1. Council Member Collins, the lone dissenter on the governing body, said the new measure had too many loopholes for him to endorse.
“How do past employees and current employees know that this service is available to them?” Collins asked. “Will we sent out a mass mailing to notify people that this service is available to them?
“I have no issue with raising the attorney fees,” he said. “I have an issue with the fact that there is no cap; no limitations. My decision is not based on any particular person in mind, but my decision is no.”
Council Members Falio Leyba-Martinez, Nohemia Soria-Perez, Barclay, and Council President Angel Fuentes all voted in the affirmative, and the measure passed.
Camden City 2nd Ward Council Person Christopher Collins. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
The vote set off an outburst from the crowd, with Dickerson leaving her seat to lead those gathered in call-and-response chants that derailed the meeting.
The officials on the dais fled to chambers for an unscheduled recess while Dickerson and others pushed back at top volume.
When they left the room, she quieted the crowd and addressed them directly.
“Today is the day we said we had enough,” Dickerson said. “We are not talking because we are organizing.
“There’s a space where we live that believes that Camden City residents don’t have a voice,” she said. “There’s this abuse that’s happened for years. We took it, from our seniors to our babies to our Black men. We took it for a long time.
“Camden is playing with democracy because democracy looks like this,” Dickerson said. “If they wanted us to have our full power back, we wouldn’t have a state-appointed schoolboard. We wouldn’t have DCA over our government officials.”
After the interruption, Fuentes tried to restart the meeting, and was chanted down again.
“We will not shut it down,” the council president said, as Camden County Metro officers approached Dickerson multiple times before she finally agreed to leave the proceedings of her own accord. Most of the crowd filed out behind her.
“This is the people’s house,” Fuentes said. “We understand that. They have the right to speak like anyone else, but there still has to be respect back in this chamber.”
After the meeting concluded, Fuentes was dodgy about the perceived impact of the revised ordinance. If the new revisions wouldn’t apply to Redd or Barclay, who had been charged in their respective matters months ago, why not calm the crowd by saying so?
Camden City First Ward Council Person Arthur Barclay. Credit: Matt Skoufalos.
Instead, the council president deferred to an upcoming review of the new regulation by the New Jersey Division of Community Affairs, which oversees the governing body.
“If the state take a look at this ordinance and feels like we are in compliance, then they’ll support it,” Fuentes said.
“If they have some questions, they have the right to veto it. Let’s wait two weeks or three weeks from now, and we’ll find out.
“This ordinance has been on the books for 30 years,” he said. “Anyone can get sued.”
Fuentes added that the money for the legal defense of employees and officials already exists in the $214-million 2024 Camden City municipal budget, which appropriates $1.344 million for attorney salaries and $780,000 for other attorney expenses.
