By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Ambiguities in municipal consolidation law could have a chilling effect on the merger process of the two Princetons as the existing local governing bodies wait to see if they can legally make decisions for the future municipality.
Dorothea Burkhout, chair of the Transition Task Force Personnel Committee, during her report on Wednesday night at the Task Force meeting, said a key issue is to look at consolidation law, which is vague in its wording as to who has the power to deal with appointments and personnel issues.
”We need to look at the consolidation law because at this point the way it seems to read is that the two existing governing bodies do not have the authority to make decisions regarding personnel changes,” she said. “So technically any of the changes recommended cannot take effect until Jan. 1, 2013.”
But Task Force Chairman Mark Freda said a number of appointments will need to be addressed in the near future.
”You have people whose livelihood is going to depend on whether they have jobs or not,” he said. “When you have two people and there is going to be one position, one of them is going to hold the position and the other is going to move to deputy or some other position in that department and in some cases they may not have a position. You can’t expect them to wait until November or October or late in the year to find out if they have a job or not next year because they can’t deal with not having income suddenly without preparation.”
The chairman was also concerned with worrying people and the toll that could have on the municipal staff.
”Unless we come to grips with the fact that a lot of professionals are going to be affected unless some decisions are made in the very near future, we are almost encouraging people to say ‘I better look for a new job right now,’” said Mr. Freda. “That does us no good because we would loose our top professionals in the two towns and we won’t have anyone left to run the new town and I don’t think we want all new people in all the management positions, so this is a very, very critical item.”
Some process needs to be found to allow these decisions to take place, said Mr. Freda.
”You’ll find the Legislature didn’t think anything through completely when they adopted consolidation because there are conflicts within it,” said William John Kearns, attorney for the Task Force. “There are difficulties with a new governing body taking office on Jan. 1 and by Jan. 1 they have to have everything up and running.”
The Princetons are breaking new ground, Mr. Kearns said. He will research the issue and render an opinion on the law next week.
The state consolidation statue says all appointments terminate on the day the new governing body takes effect, said Mr. Kearns. The new governing body will have to make appointments after they are seated and those appointments may or may not be the same people who are in positions now, he said.
”We are making new law because the law is not totally clear,” said Mr. Kearns. “We are breaking new ground.”
For clarifications in the law, the Legislature would have to adopt the changes and the governor would have to sign them, which is not practical in the Princetons case, so the changes are going to be made by practice, “as best we can without violating the law,” said Mr. Kearns.

