Thursday, March 20, 2008

Reports: Hellwig is Acting Police Director

To the readers:
I wrote the item below before setting out for a 6:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall. And what should I discover online when I got home at 9 p.m. that the acting civilian director and the director of Public Affairs and Safety will indeed be one and the same! Rather prescient of Plaintalker, don’t you think?

March 19 marked the last of Wednesday council meetings. On March 31, the City Council will hold its first agenda session in the restored Mondays-only schedule. Maybe then we shall see who the administration wants to put in charge of the Police Division. The person would have to be voted on April 7 to be in place by the April 11 layoff date of Chief Edward Santiago.

Meanwhile, a spin through the state Department of Personnel’s job title listing did not turn up the title of police director. The answer to an e-mail query was that the title was no longer in use. The “jobspecs” response said that the write believed the uniformed version of the function is a police chief and the civilian title version is Director of Public Safety.

Excuse me, don’t we already have one of those?

The ordinance states that the Director of Public Affairs and Safety may also serve as Police Director. The Police Director needs approval of the Director of Public Affairs and Safety to carry out his recommendations.

Maybe a chat with the man in the mirror while shaving will suffice if these two entities are one and the same.

Because the e-mail response was informal, I called Assemblyman Jerry Green’s office to see whether the language in the ordinance had been vetted by the state Department of Personnel, because Green has stated several times that he checks everything out with that agency to make sure the city is on firm footing with job titles. Green did not return the call.

--Bernice Paglia

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Green has stated several times that he checks everything out with that agency to make sure the city is on firm footing with job titles."

If this was the case, then what happened with all the hoopla that started this mess causing the Chief's suspension when he would not place the PBA Presidents wife in charge of the commications section? If he checked, he would have advised the Mayor that she needed a few years of experience under her belt first before she told the Chief to hire her as the supervisor.

11:24 PM  

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