Four police officers in Somerset County’s largest town earned more than $250,000 last year, using a combination of union work and overtime to swell their salaries to astronomical levels, an NJ Advance Media investigation shows.

In addition, 22 other Franklin officers logged overtime or comp time on the same day they took a paid day off for union business on at least 220 occasions since 2016. Often, it meant taxpayers footed the bill for hundreds of hours of pay when officers weren’t policing and then paid them overtime for other work they did on the same day.

Franklin Township officials previously acknowledged “dozens of officers” abused its policies on union leave, an obscure paid time off policy meant to compensate union officials and their “designees” for time spent conducting union business.

The policy was meant to grant the few officers who needed to conduct work for the PBA the time to do so without forcing them to do it on off-hours, but it spread well beyond that in recent years. More than half the force logged “union time” — some of them using it for vacations or to attend golf tournament fundraisers since 2016, records showed.

No officers have been reprimanded, according to an internal memo, but newly obtained data points to a carefully crafted system in which officers used both the union leave and overtime to add hundreds of thousands of dollars to their paychecks. They earned so much that some officers earned nearly double the salary of New Jersey State Police Superintendent Patrick Callahan, the highest-ranking police official in the state.

The 100-member police department has been in public turmoil since April, when an officer overdosed on the job. In June, the county prosecutor’s office quietly took control of the department. Franklin’s top police officials — Chief Richard Grammar and Capt. Gregory Borlan — then abruptly resigned.

It’s too soon to tell whether the takeover has curbed the union time/overtime practice, which has grown precipitously in recent years, data shows, from 38 instances in 2016 to 130 last year. In the first six months of 2019, officers took overtime and paid time off for union work on 81 occasions, and six officers were on track to make more than $300,000, according to the most recent records available.

The overtime practice has cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in the past two and a half years. State records show the median base salary in Franklin is about $112,000, making the department’s officers among the better paid in a state that has some of the highest police salaries in the nation.

Here’s how it worked for one officer, Mark Rossman, the local PBA president.

On Nov. 27, 2017, Rossman took 10.5 hours of union leave during his normal 9 p.m.-to-7:30 a.m. shift. He was paid overtime for a dispatch shift from 7:15 a.m. to 7 p.m.

If you do the math, that means he was paid for working 22 hours straight.

Rossman, who declined to comment for this story, previously contended the union time was used instead of paid overtime so that officers could participate in “community events and initiatives.”

And on paper, the union hours and the overtime hours generally do not overlap. But in reality, it’s difficult to see how that could be true.

According to the NJ Advance Media analysis of public records, more than half of the union time granted was conducted during midnight shifts, which in Franklin run from 9 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.

The PBA contract is vague when it comes to what constitutes paid time off for union business. It says it can be used for “PBA business on the state or local level,” including attending state or county conferences. It’s unclear how that union work would be conducted during the overnight hours.

Franklin’s police union contract even nods to the fact that union work isn’t done on these shifts. “If regular scheduled tours of duty are between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. the day after the meeting then, at the delegate’s option, he/she shall be entitled to his/her choice of day off,” the contract states.

The practice allows some officers to earn upward of two-and-a-half times their regular salaries on any given day.

When presented with NJ Advance Media’s findings, Vincent Del Castillo, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said, “It sounds like corruption.”

“You expect people who are given a public trust to be able to fulfill that trust, and in the case that you’re describing, it sounds like an abuse of it,” he said. “Unless there are explanations.”

Sgt. James Holzheimer Jr., who also serves as the local supervising officers union president, earned $342,310 in 2018, including $189,497 from overtime or other sources, data shows. Holzheimer did not return a request for comment to his cellphone, office phone or an email.

Rossman, the local PBA president, logged 102 days of “union time” on days he also earned time and a half for either overtime or comp time since 2016. He documented what union business he conducted on only one day, a “negotiations meeting” on May 8, 2019.

For at least a dozen of those days, Rossman, who works the midnight shift, put in overtime to work security in the township’s municipal court during the day. On 41 occasions, Rossman earned overtime for “dispatch training,” records show. He also billed the town for more than 20 hours in a single day 11 times in the three-year period analyzed by NJ Advance Media.

Records also showed Rossman working 37.25 hours in a single day, logging 24 hours of union time and 13 hours of overtime.

When NJ Advance Media contacted township Administrator Robert Vornlocker Jr. to clarify whether that entry could be attributed to a clerical error, he initially refused to speak with the reporter on the grounds it was “alleging criminal activity.”

“I suggest you convey your concerns to the Somerset County prosecutor,” he said.

In a follow-up email, Vornlocker said “common sense would dictate that no one is scheduled to work 24 hours straight so if an entry stated someone took 24 hours of consecutive union leave it is clearly an error, given the longest scheduled shift is 10.5 hours.”

NJ Advance Media requested interviews with Somerset County Prosecutor Michael H. Robertson and Chief of Detectives John Fodor. While representatives of the office met with reporters to collect Excel spreadsheets containing the media organization’s findings, they refused to comment on the record.

It’s certainly possible that some officers who took time off for union work conducted PBA business during their normally scheduled shift and returned to work to put in for overtime. But most of the time off for union work was approved by the department administration without any explanation as to what the officer was doing.

Grammar, the former chief, and Borlan, the former captain, did not return requests for comment to their cellphones.

The union contract allows the PBA president to take 10 days off a year for union business, and those days don’t roll over. In 2018, Rossman took 73 days, which would appear to be a direct violation of the contract. That same year, Rossman, who is a patrolman, was one of the highest-paid officers, earning $254,557 in total compensation (the police chief earned $222,594 that year). Nearly half of Rossman’s income came from overtime earnings ($66,200) and outside jobs ($55,153), according to public records.

While the PBA contract limits the president to take 10 days off, the contract includes ambiguous language that allows the state delegate, who was Sgt. Kenneth Daly, to appoint a designee in his absence to conduct union business and attend meetings. So it’s possible Rossman was acting in the capacity of the designee during a bulk of the days he was off.

Holzheimer took 58 days off for union work, 30 of which were in 2018, while also receiving overtime or comp time since 2016. He gave an explanation where he was on nine of those days.

In 2018, 14 officers earned more than $200,000 in total compensation. Of these officers, six took a union day on the same day they logged overtime or comp time.

The state PBA said in August that the approved union time was “authorized and monitored by the administration,” adding that it was used instead of paid overtime for community events and initiatives.

But in some cases, officers took union time off for PBA events and also billed the township time and a half for overtime or comp time for being at those events.

Township officials already have conceded “there has been a substantial abuse of the practice of granting union leave” to officers in the police department. NJ Advance Media reported in August that the abuse of the obscure policy cost the township at least $470,000 since 2016.

In August, the town council voted to adopt a new civilian police director position, and county prosecutors say they are performing a top-to-bottom review of the department’s policies. The findings from that review have not been made public, but an internal memo regarding the union time investigation was published on Facebook by Darrin Russo, a former Franklin police officer, during his campaign for county sheriff.

Russo, who won the election, claimed the internal memo absolved the officers who took the time off.

“It does not appear there has been any criminal conduct or administrative policy violations committed by any individual officer who submitted applications for ‘union time’ that were subsequently approved,” the memo said. “This matter as an Internal Affairs review may now be considered closed.”

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Stephen Stirling may be reached at sstirling@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @sstirling. Find him on Facebook.

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