BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The Bloomfield Board of Education resolution approved Aug. 9, which returned school board elections to April from November, has been invalidated by Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin.
In an Aug. 22 statement, Durkin gave two reasons for his decision. The first was that the deadline for candidates’ petitions for the November 2019 elections was July 29 and consequently the election process was “well under way” before the school board resolution was approved.
“I have no authority to cancel an election,” he said. “They can go to a judge.”
His second reason was that N.J. law states school board members shall be elected at annual school elections.
“Therefore, a school board election must be held every year,” he said. “I must follow the law.”
The Bloomfield school board vote took place during a special 11th-hour meeting scheduled abruptly for a Friday night in August. It was the intention of the board that if the resolution were approved, the board could notify Durkin by Monday, Aug. 12. It was believed by board members that the deadline for notifying the county clerk’s office of a resolution changing elections from November to April was 85 days before the November election. That would have been Aug. 12.
But according to Durkin in a telephone interview, that belief was wrong.
“There’s no such law that speaks to 85 days before a general election,” he said. “There’s no such thing. They made it up. It’s 85 days before an April election. I don’t know where the 85 days before a November election came from and took root.”
The Bloomfield BOE could still possibly have April 2020 elections, Durkin said. His press release cited, in part, NJ school election law NJSA 19:60:1-1.
“For a change from the first Tuesday in November to the third Tuesday in April, notice must be given to the county clerk no less than 85 days prior to the third Tuesday in April to take effect for that year’s election.”
Durkin understood the statute to mean notification had to be received by the county clerk in the year the election was to take place. In the Bloomfield BOE scenario, that would be 2020 since it wanted an April 2020 election. Consequently, to have an April election the Bloomfield BOE will have to notify him between Jan. 1, 2020, and 85 days before the intended April election date. In that way, the requirement that school boards hold annual elections would be preserved.
But, according to Durkin, Bloomfield was following a plan devised by the Clifton Board of Education, which had successfully changed its elections from November to April.
The Clifton BOE passed its resolution June 6, 2018, to skip the November 2018 election and have an April 2019 election. Although a judge upheld the decision, Clifton did not give notification in 2019, the year the change was to take place. They gave notification the previous year, on June 6, 2018.
“The Clifton case is fraught with inaccuracies and bad decisions,” Durkin said. “There’s no basis in law for what they did. But Bloomfield was more wrong because the election process had begun.”
Bloomfield BOE President Jill Fischman said the statute is open to interpretation.
“The county interpreted it differently than our inside and outside legal counsel,” she said.
She said moving the elections was not an easy decision from the start, but it was also a disappointment having someone else decide what the board could or could not do.
But Durkin did not seem to think it was a question of interpretation but of understanding.
“I think it was a misunderstanding of the 85-day rule,” he said. “I think people misunderstood it to be 85 days before the general election.”
Durkin was advised by Essex County Counsel Courtney Gaccione. The Bloomfield School District counsel, Nicholas Dotoli, could not be reached for comment.
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