Now, days after installing their own leader, the new leadership is promising to cost county residents even more money than their policy initiatives will burden taxpayers with.
They are pushing for the creation of new positions. New, high paying positions. Positions that spread some of their own responsibilities, such as oversight, to people other themselves.
In several areas, the liberal Freeholders want to create new bureaucratic positions that they intend to fill through the time held tradition of patronage.
To make matters worse, the new regime is trying to replace existing county employees, who are Republican, with fellow Democrats simply because they are not Democrats.
That is not unheard of in the world of partisan politics, but what is a bit of real impropriety, is that they are trying to replace those who hold jobs that are classified as civil service positions. Individuals holding civil service positions can’t be removed from the job without just cause yet something as menial as the law is not getting in the way of the Democrats. Without any proof or evidence, they are trying to claim that some of these civil servants have been insubordinate and inept. Proving that is going to be hard, especially since such charges were not levied by Democrats until they took control of the process.

Liberal State Party Boss, Assemblyman Joe Cryan
To add insult to injury, the new liberal Freeholders have left the decision of who to hire in Monmouth County up to Joe Cryan, an Assemblyman from Union County who represents the towns Elizabeth, Kenilworth, Roselle and Union, New Jersey. Even more important than his Assembly leadership, or lack of it, is the fact that Joe Cryan is the chairman of New Jersey’s Democrat State Committee.
So not only have Monmouth County Democrats kicked off their reign with increased spending and a patronage driven direction, they have relinquished authority to a state party boss from a different county. Assemblyman Cryan’s own legislative chief of staff confirms this and admits that the Assemblyman has contacted state personnel departments and Rutgers’ Eagleton Institute of Politics about finding candidates for the Monmouth County positions of chief financial officer, directors of the human resources and human services departments, and the newest new post of inspector general.
Isn’t this great. Not only is a state employee of a state legislator using state time to respond to political party business, his liberal party chief boss is appointing people to posts in a county that he neither lives in or is elected or hired to represent.
But at least the Democrats running Monmouth County’s Board of Freeholders will win favor with the state liberal party chieftain. I mean so long as the needs of party politics are being fulfilled, the citizens of Monmouth County will be taken care of.
Or will they?
The games being played by county Democrats prove that the people of Monmouth are not the priority. Nor are the problems that need solving or the future troubles that need avoiding. Politics is what these characters have shown us to be their priority and as such, we have to hope that the state liberal party boss, Assemblyman Joe Cryan from Union County cares as much for the people of Monmouth County as he does for the people living in the towns of the district that he represents.