Housing for Somerset County Parks’ Employees

In yesterday’s posting, I discussed the notion of winning and losing in politics, and of how the results are rarely decisive. Some of the rationale was based on an essay entitled “How to Understand Politics,” by Harvey Mansfield. (See previous post.)

Despite the proposed evaluation of rental levels for commission-owned property – in one case, there is no rental charge – the anticipated adjustment of rental levels still may not meet normal criteria for establishing rents at fair market value. That is, not unless there is a paradigm change regarding such benefits in Somerset County Government, both at the Freeholder level, as well as at the Parks Commission.

As Mansfield explains, the reason for this is straightforward: “Politics is not an exchange between the bargaining positions of a buyer and a seller in which self-interest is clear and the result is either a sale or not, all without fuss.” If the proposed transaction between buyer and seller – in this case, between the Parks Commission as property owner and the employee as lessee of the property – is not on the open market, then politics get in the way of free-market workings and alter the outcome.

With regard to Parks Commission property, it’s arguable whether the commission should even own housing for rent to its employees, at any price. There is too much room for actual or perceived conflict of interest.

That the Parks Commission owns homes is simply an accident of its land acquisitions for open space and for recreation. The current situation is not the result of a direct intent to purchase housing for employee rental – at least we all should hope it isn’t.

Inadvertently ending up with a stock of publicly-owned homes situated on recreational and park property creates the problem of what to do with these assets. Such a situation makes it much too easy to find reasons for why a few Somerset County Parks’ employees have been offered these homes at below-market rents – properties which otherwise might be used in the public interest or disposed of.

And it becomes just as easy for the commission to make claims for why one or more of these rentals may have been part of negotiated packages when employees were hired. At least one tentative reason put forth in the press is that the salary (or salaries) of employees may have been discounted, as part of an arrangement which included housing. If this is the case, there should be written employment contracts on file which definitively state that, as well as what the higher imputed salary would be in the absence of such a rental.