James "Randy" Pace to say goodbye to Medford Township politics

When James "Randy" Pace was elected nearly three years ago, his small Pinelands community was reeling from a deepening financial crisis, a sex scandal involving its mayor, and two abrupt resignations on the exclusively Republican governing body.

But the upheaval in Medford Township was about to get worse.

Pace, a staunch conservative who was named mayor in January 2012 by an all-new Township Council, soon announced plans to raise municipal property taxes a walloping 30 percent. Voters were asked to consent, and residents packed meetings demanding an explanation. Then Gov. Christie weighed in, using a radio interview to urge voters to defeat the proposal.

The memory of the surprising outcome still makes Pace grin and shake his head in disbelief. In a recent interview, he looked back at the last three years while discussing his plan to resign Oct. 10, nearly a year after he won a new four-year term. His wife, Patti, an IT professional with Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, was offered a position with a new corporation in Tennessee, their native state.

"I'm brokenhearted that I'm leaving," said Pace, 52, a retired Navy chief petty officer and engineer. "Medford is the greatest community on the planet." The couple and their two children had moved to a woodsy neighborhood surrounded by lakes when the Lockheed job became available 11 years ago.

After he was elected, Pace served his first year as mayor and the next two as a member of the five-member, all-Republican council. In concert with the local GOP committee, the council is expected to appoint a replacement for the first year of Pace's unexpired term because Election Day is too close to let voters decide.

On a sunny day in April 2012, the voters in this mostly affluent Burlington County community of 23,000 resoundingly approved raising their own taxes, tacking $344 onto a municipal tax bill for property assessed at $333,000, the town average.

"The voters made a difference, giving the governing body the chance to right the ship financially," said Pace, who had never run for public office before.

The council, composed of political neophytes, had inherited a $6 million budget deficit that could have led to bankruptcy or a possible state takeover, he said. Council quickly laid off police officers, slashed parks and recreation costs, and then announced trash pickup would be eliminated if voters rejected the tax hike.

At the polls, many voters said they were unhappy about the increase but would trust the new council to fix the problems.

Later that year, council closed the budget gap. Over the next two years, taxes remained flat. Now, the town coffers have about $2 million in surplus and council is considering reducing taxes in the next year or two, Mayor Chris Buoni said.

"I think I leave Medford a better place," said Pace, who had teamed with Buoni and Frank Czekay to challenge the party-endorsed candidates in a primary in June 2011. During the campaign, they accused council of rewarding political donors with lucrative construction contracts and paying excessive legal bills to a politically influential firm. They scored the first upset in a Medford primary in decades.

"Randy is the one who started it all," Buoni said of the changes the new council had instituted. Joined by Jeff Beenstock and Chuck Watson, who were appointed when two members of council resigned in late 2011, the group soon adopted a strict anti-pay-to-play ordinance to rid political influence over contracts. The new council members also halved the town's annual legal bills.

"Randy did intense research - he does a ton of work - and was able to find problems" with the legal bills, Buoni said.

After filing numerous records requests, Pace analyzed the invoices and noticed overbilling, Buoni said.

Starting in 2009, Pace regularly attended council meetings and became a frequent critic. He also questioned Richard Hunt, the town's solicitor and an attorney with the Parker McCay law firm, about bills Pace said were improper or excessive.

Hunt, a shareholder with the firm, had dismissed Pace's allegations as untrue. Reached last week, he said he would have no further comment. "I want to think about it. If I change my mind, I'll call," he said.

Last summer, the state Comptroller's Office issued a report that found Parker McCay had billed Medford $579,000 in 2010, including $50,000 that should have been covered under its retainer. The comptroller said he singled out Medford and two other towns because they had "significant outside counsel costs" and a "higher risk for billing abuses."

A spokesman for Parker McCay said at the time the findings were "not based in reality . . .. All of our legal bills were highly detailed, thoroughly reviewed, and approved at every step."

Shortly after the report came out, council hired Legal Cost Control, a national cost-containment consultant based in Haddonfield, to analyze the legal invoices from 2005 to 2011. The company was paid $36,000 to conduct an audit to determine whether the town might recoup some of the money, Pace said. The findings are pending. "I regret I cannot see this through to fruition," Pace said. The invoices played a big role in sparking his interest in public service.

He said the five councilmen who took over in January 2012 had worked together as a team to bring open government to Medford.

In late 2011, former Mayor Chris Myers and Councilman David Brown resigned, paving the way for an all-new council. Myers, a married man and former congressional candidate, quit after a male escort made allegations and embarrassing photographs were circulated. Myers and Brown cited increased work pressures as their reasons for leaving. Brown had been a supporter of Myers.

During his tenure, Pace had a few detractors. When he ran in a primary last year, a party-backed challenger criticized him for accepting an annual stipend of about $5,000 for serving on council after promising not to take a salary.

Pace said he refused the stipend the first year when finances were tight, but accepted it the next year after the problems had abated.

Then Democrats who ran against him in November made an issue of police layoffs.

But Pace said he had no regrets about taking tough measures to control finances. "It had to be done," he said.

Asked to sum up his feelings about his public service in Medford, he struggled to find words. "I felt humbled," he said. "And rewarded. I was just a community member who believes in our form of government. I felt I had to get involved."

Will he jump into politics in Knoxville when he moves? "Perhaps on some level I will stay involved in how my government operates," he said. "That's really the basis of freedom in this country."