Darby cops owed thousands in comp time

SECRECY IS what got Darby Borough into trouble in the first place.

Nine years ago, a Delaware County grand jury and then-District Attorney Patrick Meehan castigated the borough's police chief, politicians and auditors for letting cops collect massive amounts of accumulated comp-time payments with virtually no public oversight.

The police department's patrol-now, pay-later approach had saddled taxpayers with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unfunded debt and eroded the borough's pension system.

The payments came to a halt amid the grand-jury probe, but the secrets remain.

In fact, the borough's administration still refuses to reveal the extent of the hidden liability, referring questions to one official after another.

"That's public information," said Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, the Harrisburg-based government-watchdog group.

In a town where Police Chief Robert Smythe once handcuffed a councilwoman during a public meeting, and where political brawls have ended with bloody noses, some things seem never to change.

Paying 'tomorrow'

In June 2000, the grand jury found that Smythe had "done a grave disservice to the borough" by allowing the comp-time practice to continue under the radar of the Darby council - and by quietly building up a personal nest egg worth more than twice his annual salary.

Cops would bank accumulated overtime, comp days, sick days, vacations and holidays, then cash out years later when they left the department or retired - a process that risked inflating police pensions that are based on officers' last three years of income.

"There will be taxpayers of Darby Borough who will be paying tomorrow for police services that were rendered as many as 30 years ago," Meehan said when he released the grand-jury report.

Smythe told the grand jury: "We're putting it on the credit card today, and we'll pay for it tomorrow."

For Darby taxpayers, tomorrow hasn't quite arrived.

The borough still hasn't settled up with Smythe and four other officers for hundreds of thousands in comp time, and residents don't know when they'll have to pay.

Two sets of books?

"What was discovered during the investigation was almost a second set of books that were beyond the scrutiny of almost everyone," Meehan said. "Everybody in the borough was looking to pass the buck."

That comment, almost nine years old, reflects the situation in Darby, a blue-collar community just over the line from Southwest Philadelphia.

A new mayor and a new council are in place, and borough cops are now restricted in how they can accumulate and recoup comp time.

But the borough appears still to have two sets of books: those that Darby officials show their citizens, such as the yearly budget, and those that they keep to themselves, like the police department's unfunded debt, which Meehan said in 2000 was nearly $500,000.

That's a huge chunk of money for a town with a population of 10,000, where the median household income is $31,000 and the government doesn't have more than $21,000 a year to give to its historic library, which may have to close due to lack of funds.

Paying off the police officers could require a loan or a tax increase. Either way, taxpayers would foot the bill.

"Talk to my lawyer," Smythe said, when asked about the back pay that he and other officers have amassed.

Borough Finance Director Joseph Possenti, who had provided some information in November, referred subsequent questions to Darby Solicitor Raymond Santarelli, who declined to comment. Santarelli directed a reporter back to Possenti, who did not return e-mails or phone calls seeking information about the unfunded liability.

It isn't.

Mayor Helen "Doll" Thomas didn't return a phone call this week seeking comment.

On Feb. 13, a week after the Daily News requested the information under the state's open-records law - and months after the newspaper began asking officials - Borough Manager Mark Possenti, the finance director's brother, replied that the administration would need up to another 30 days to formally respond.

He said that was because "legal review is necessary to determine whether the record you requested is a public record subject to disclosure."

But Kauffman, of Common Cause, said the amount owed to the cops is public record.

"There's no question about that," he said. "They clearly have to disclose how much the borough is in debt to its public employees for outstanding hours worked."

He called the borough's refusal to disclose the debt figure "absurd."

Darby's public-information policy has come under fire before, including in 2004, when Santarelli began scrubbing his bills of all details about the services he provided. That was done before the public - or even the mayor at the time - could obtain them.

"They blacked out everything," said longtime Darby resident Louis Ricciuti Jr., 82, who requested Santarelli's bills under the state Right to Know Law and said he had received 70 "totally useless" redacted pages. "They wasted a lot of paper," he said.

The grand jury determined that Darby had paid $402,000 through 1999 in accumulated comp time to police officers who had left the department or retired. As of Dec. 31, 1999, the borough still owed officers $483,000 in comp time, or what would amount to about 13 percent of Darby's $3.8 million budget in 2000.

As of that date, Smythe personally had accumulated more than $125,000 in comp time, according to the grand jury's report.

In November, before he and other borough officials clammed up, Joseph Possenti, the finance director, said he believed that the amount owed to the chief was about $200,000.

"The officers and Chief Smythe understand that the borough doesn't have the money to pay them, but at some point in time they have to get it, somehow, some way," said Stanton Miller, attorney for the Delaware County Fraternal Order of Police.

Smythe, who has been chief since 1984, is paid $86,000 a year for overseeing the department's 16 full-time and 17 part-time officers.

Miller confirmed that Smythe, three active officers and a retired officer probably are owed about $383,000. "Certainly, the borough would know," he said.

But Darby Councilwoman Edna Stockley said she is unable to determine how much taxpayers owe the cops. "Why are they keeping that a secret, if he's owed that money and he's entitled to it?" she said.

Smythe declined to discuss the issue after last week's council meeting, claiming that the questions were originating with Paula Brown, the former mayor and his nemesis.

"I'm not going to play her game," he said.

The grand-jury report - which stemmed from a Brown-initiated State Ethics Commission probe into Smythe's use of his borough-issued cell phone - sharply criticized the chief for making "no attempt" to inform borough officials about the hidden liability in the police department and the possibility of inflated pensions. But it determined that criminal charges weren't warranted. Smythe has said he did nothing wrong.

In 1988, Smythe arrested and handcuffed Brown, then a first-term councilwoman, during a council meeting and charged her with aggravated assault and with disrupting the meeting. The charges later were dismissed. Brown filed a civil-rights suit, and won $25,000 in damages.

Now Brown is planning another run for mayor. She has raised the comp-time issue at recent council meetings, but says officials have stonewalled her.

"It's just typical Darby bull - - - -, is what it is," she said. "We have a right to know what we're paying for, how much, and to who."