From left, PBA-appointed trustee James Kompany and elected trustees Bruce Polkowitz and Ray Heck are sworn in as new members of the PFRS board.
SYSTEM CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33 compiled to grow it from here.”
pened to every cop and firefighter in New Jersey,” Donnelly con-
tinued. “If we dot our i’s and cross our t’s, we will be set up to
operate smoothly, effectively and efficiently.” All for one board
The PFRS Trustee Board had been selected and elected
during the previous three months, culminating with Polkowitz
earning the last spot in mid-January. His election put three PBA
members on the board, the largest contingent for a public safe-
ty union that is larger than the other three combined.
All that set the table for all 12 members to start coming to-
gether around this table in the first-floor room at the Division of
Pensions. The first order of business in doing so was electing a
chair and vice chair of the new board.
Heck motioned to nominate Donnelly for chair. The man-
agement members nominated John C. Glidden, the senior vice
president at Gates Capital Corporation and the mayor of Clos-
ter, for chair. The board had been set up with seven public safety
members for this reason, and Marc Morgan of the NJ FOP and
NJ PFANJ Rep Timothy Colacci joined the coalition casting sev-
en votes for Donnelly.
The process reset to elect the vice chair, and Polkowitz nomi-
nated Kompany. Glidden was nominated again and after a touch
of spirited debate, Kompany was elected, again by a 7-to-5 vote.
As Colligan noted, the board was set up to create this out-
come. But that is where the management-versus-labor, us-
against-them mentality seemed to end.
“We’re all one board, now,” the vice chair confirmed after the
meeting. “After today’s meeting, hopefully everybody will feel
better with their roles going forward.”
Donnelly voiced his feelings about the all-for-one posture by
confirming that under his watch, everyone will be treated fairly,
everyone will be listened to and everyone will be given the op-
portunity to engage as much as they want. And Heck surmised
how this will play out.
“One thing we want to make emphatically clear, is that there’s
no sides,” he appraised. “Whether it’s management or labor, it’s
one team now. We’ve got 12 members and they’re all working for
the same cause.”
If they all do work together, the PFRS Trustee Board could be
the most well-equipped compilation of fiduciary excellence of
any public pension system in the country. The off-the-charts
political, financial and leadership prowess that Heck, Kompany
and Polkowitz lend to this board has been well documented.
Colacci is a former chair of the PFRS board, and Donnelly is,
In the building
No red carpet was rolled out for the 12 strong who now make
up the PFRS Trustee Board, and once the appointed and elect-
ed members were sworn in, it was right to work. Clearly this is
not a glamour detail, especially considering the work ahead of
hiring up to six employees, starting and staffing actuary, audit
and investment subcommittees and continuing education for
trustees.
Kompany expressed what all trustees seemed to be feeling
as they grabbed their personal nameplates and found seats
around the table.
“I’m excited with a case of nerves at the same time in antici-
pation of what is to come,” he related. “But excited came first.”
Driving from Union County to Trenton that morning, Don-
nelly contemplated the long road. The one he traveled with Col-
ligan and PBA Director of Government Affairs Rob Nixon to get
the legislation to make PFRS independent from state control
passed was not as long as the road ahead.
Donnelly’s appointment as a trustee can be construed as the
duty to continue to lead this effort from the front lines. That
position was accentuated when the seven public safety board
members unified to elect him board chair as the first order of
business of the day. But he might have spoken for all PBA and
FMBA members and representatives who put in the sweat to get
this deal done when he noted how the past four years have been
the easy part.
“We got what we wanted; now we’ve got to build it,” Donnelly
professed. “This is the hard part. We have an opportunity here
to do things the right way. There’s going to be some growing
pains and a lot of learning along the way, but I signed up to get
this done.”
The first meeting agenda was packed with administrative set-
up, but that didn’t deflate the feeling surrounding the trustees
and those who came to witness this historic event. There were
some tense moments leading up to the start, but mostly an in-
tensity to get going dictated the all-business air.
“People are chomping at the bit,” Heck noted. “But we know
the work needs to be researched and information needs to be
34
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ FEBRUARY 2019