Sheriff’s Election results may be challenged

With Tuesday’s election, Republicans took control of the Freeholder Board – at least for a little over a year.  The Democrats would have retained a majority had it not been for the premature and disgraceful exit of their former leader, Lou Magazzu. The D’s won three of the four seats, and while it can’t be called a landslide, the margin was wide enough to preclude any challenge.

Not so with the Sheriff race. There are still provisional ballots to be counted.

While the provisional ballot count will not affect any of the close township committee races, Cumberland County Republican Party Chair Bob Greco has stated he may request a recount in the sheriff election depending on how close the provisional ballots draw the two candidates.

Greco and the county GOP are mulling similar options in regard to the race for sheriff.

Democratic incumbent Robert Austino beat Republican Michael Barruzza by a vote of 11,592 to 11,107 — a difference of 485 votes.

While there are not enough provisional ballots to turn the election, ever were Barruzza to get 100% of those votes, they could narrow the margin enough to cast doubt on the original count. As I reported on MWatch.com a couple days ago, there was a problem with some of Vineland’s voting machines on election night. That is cause for concern considering Cumberland County’s recent bout with a tampered voting machine computer. There is no paper trail with our machines, and a 12-year old using a $29 piece of hardware could easily tamper with any of our voting machines, and nobody would ever be able to prove it.

I also firmly believe that every provisional ballot needs to be challenged. Names need to be checked against the voting books at each district to ensure that nobody attempted to vote twice. Residencies need to be confirmed. Each vote needs to be scrutinized. In the end, it is what it is, and it will be what it will be.

 

Another vote of no confidence for Austino

The News of Cumberland County Editorial Board  on November 3, 2011, endorsed Mike Barruzza in the most positive way.  This paper is usually leans towards protecting Lou Magazzu and his regime, so this is a surprising endorsement, to say the least.

Former sheriff Michael Barruzza served three terms, during which he instituted new safety programs for officers, offered new community outreach efforts and established fresh efforts to support local police departments in patrolling high-crime areas.

We thought he did an excellent job in the role and believe he should return.

While we were happy with incumbent Robert Austino’s handling of the office in the last three years, we never really saw a need to replace Barruzza in the first place.

Barruzza was swept out of office in the Democratic tidal wave of 2008. The only real issue in that campaign was that the Democratic candidates for surrogate and sheriff vowed to take pay cuts if elected. We didn’t think that was enough to justify changing sheriffs.

While we don’t know if Barruzza’s proposal to eliminate the position of county jail warden and bring the jail back under the control of the sheriff — as it once was — is the best move, we like the idea of trimming big county salaries. His idea deserves serious consideration and public review.

In addition to eliminating the warden post, he also seeks to eliminate the public safety director position, and proposes to assume those duties, too.

Like any business or public entity, top-heavy management costs can topple an organization. We have laid off county workers and furloughed the survivors, so it makes sense to lighten the administrative load.

Heck, if we are going to seriously consider selling Cumberland Manor, we should at least consider Barruzza’s plan. We should be certain all options for consolidating administration have been explored before letting go of the Manor.

Barruzza has always been big on saving dollars where possible. The penny pinching never appeared to come at the expense of officers or public safety, but simply involved making the best use of the resources he had.

As an example, Barruzza spoke in 2008 about how his undersheriff installed equipment in sheriff’s vehicles, reducing the need to pay an outside business to perform the work.

Under his proposal for taking over the jail, Barruzza believes administration of these new duties could be accomplished with existing personnel, meaning savings from eliminating the warden’s position would not be wiped out by the need to hire new support personnel.
We need that spirit across our entire county government today.

Barruzza’s approach to cutting costs strikes the right tone and we believe he is the best choice to lead the sheriff’s office through the next three years and beyond.

Bob Austino gets a vote of “No Confidence”

Sheriff Bob Austino gets a vote of “No Confidence” from the Cumberland County PBA’s. The law enforcement of Vineland, Millville, Bridgeton, County Jail and County Sheriff’s department are putting their support behind Mike Barruzza. Under Austino, morale in the Sheriff Department is at an all-time low. If our Sheriff deputies don’t like the way the department has been mismanaged, why should the voters support this the current administration?

Austino has done nothing for three years. He has abdicated his responsibility, and hired an extra under-sheriff at taxpayer expense to take over his responsibilities. I can only assume this is because he fully understand his own incompetence.

It is only in the past three months, during election season, that Austino has done anything. Most of what he has done has been insignificant, feel-good public appearances, and stating the obvious.

Sign Pettiness

This is just a peek into how petty Bob Austino’s team is. Jody Farabella, Millvilel Police Officer, is running for Freeholder. He owns a few properties in Millville, and has placed his own signs on his own properties. On Jody’s properties, on different ends of town, his signs have been stolen, and Austino signs erected in their place.

I Bob Austino has ANY sort of integrity, he would insist that this petty nonsense immediately cease.  But Austino has a history of lying to the local press, with a straight face, all the while holding official court documents in his hand that plainly proved his lie. It takes an audacious and accomplished liar to pull a stunt like that.

Sheriff Bob Austino emphatically Endorses Lou Magazzu

Bob Austino, on a trip paid by who? at the NACo conference, giving Lou Magazzu his full support, and stating that he has known Lou “for quite a few years.” With this sort of judgement, should this man be allowed to hold the highest law enforcement position in the county?

Best Sheriff Ever

There was a letter to the editor in the Daily Journal about the best sheriff ever – guess what, it was not about Bob Austino

As an experienced law enforcement officer, Mike Barruzza had done an outstanding job for the citizens of Cumberland County when he was our sheriff for nine years. Mike had instituted many innovative programs for school-age children and senior citizens.

Among the many were: Buck, The Buckle Up Dog (a program in all Cumberland County elementary schools that teaches students why it is important to sit in the back seat and buckle up); Child Safety Car Seat Giveaway program; Get Hooked on Fishing Not on Drugs fishing tournament; Project Firearms Safety with the National Rife Association (promotes firearms handling, storage practices, and gun locks); Free Cellphones for Senior Citizens (a joint collaboration with the county Office on Aging); K-9 Division (with trained officers and dogs in the detection of explosives and narcotics); DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) Awareness “Fatal Vision” demonstrations, and the Sheriff’s Traffic Safety program — a committee of concerned citizens helping to make our highways and communities safer.

As you can see from the above programs, when Barruzza was our county sheriff he was committed to providing many needed services to all the citizens of Cumberland County and support for all law enforcement agencies.

In the three terms Barruzza was our Cumberland County sheriff, he received about $1 million in grant money. Due to his ability to control his budget and spending, he returned about $500,000 in unused funds back to the county treasury.

He either received (grant money) or returned (unused funds) a total of about $1.5 million in his nine-year tenure as Cumberland County sheriff.

We, the citizens of Cumberland County, were very fortunate to have had Barruzza as our law enforcement leader for nine years.

The voters now have the opportunity to bring back the best sheriff Cumberland County has ever had.

Without a doubt, Mike Barruzza deserves to be elected to the office of sheriff of Cumberland County on Nov. 8.

David Levin

Austino unveils his big plan – do nothing!

The News of Cumberland County covered the political forum held Tuesday night. And as much as I take issue with the overall agenda of Millville First, this is one event they they do on a regular basis, and they do an excellent job of moderating.

Read the entire article, and I am sure that there will be video online of this forum, if history repeats. The interesting part in The News account was the answers given by the two candidates for sheriff on what they would do to save money.

Q: Both served as sheriff. Why vote for you?

“I propose to have the sheriff’s office take over the county jail and the 911 Center, saving the county about $200,000 per year,” said Republican Michael Barruzza, who previously served as Cumberland County sheriff for nine years until his defeat in the 2008 election by Democrat Bob Austino.

He later added, “As a fiscal conservative, I do want my job back. I’m serious about the jail and the 911 Center, and to do that we’re going to have to have a majority on the freeholder board. My batteries are recharged and I’m ready to go.”

Q: What specific steps will you take to reduce department costs and increase efficiency?

“I addressed the issue of overtime, in part, by asking the freeholders to change the meeting dates to Tuesday, when the courthouse has to be open anyway for the meetings going on there, saving us a bundle of money,” said Democratic Cumberland County Sheriff Bob Austino. “For vehicles, when they need repair we don’t take them to a body shop anymore; we take them to (Cumberland County Technical Education Center) for the students to work on. I only have to pay for parts, and no labor costs.

“I’ll continue to look for savings if re-elected.”

Mike Barruzza came out earlier in his campaign proclaiming that he would eliminate two positions whose sole purpose is to reward political lackeys with pensioned jobs. The savings would be around $200,000 a year.

And our sheriff? He rested on his laurels – he has students repair the sheriff’s vehicles and changed the Freeholder meetings from Thursdays to Tuesday, saving “a bundle of money”. He didn’t give his definition of “a bundle”, so we have no real clue where the savings are. We do know he hired an extra Undersheriff, at a cost of more than double what he said he would save taxpayers by taking a cut in the state mandated pay.