TENAFLY EX-COUNCILMAN GETS PROBATION FOR HEROIN POSSESSION

NEWARK -- Jeffrey Romano, a former councilman from Tenafly, N.J.,
who was charged with heroin possession in November and has admitted
continuing to use the drug, was sentenced on Tuesday to five years of
probation.

Until he pleaded guilty on May 23, Mr. Romano had insisted that he
was innocent and had refused to resign from his Council seat. He told
the prosecutors who prepared his presentence report he continued to
use heroin regularly until he entered a substance abuse program in
June, according to Judge Ned M. Rosenberg of State Superior Court.

"I just wonder what you were thinking," the judge said. "I would have
thought, that for someone responsible, that what had occurred, that
you would have enrolled in some kind of program" soon after the arrest.

Mr. Romano, 43, a divorced father of two sons, did not speak in court
except to answer questions from the judge. He stood stolidly in his
charcoal-gray suit but sweated profusely inside the chilly courtroom
as Judge Rosenberg admonished him.

In addition to probation, Judge Rosenberg ordered Mr. Romano to
perform 150 hours of community service and to pay $1,205 in fines.
Mr. Romano will also have to submit a DNA sample to the state and to
undergo regular drug screenings.

"Nothing that I can do would increase the embarrassment you have had,
first, in front of your family," the judge said.

Just before the arrest, Mr. Romano pulled his 2006 Chevrolet Corvette
up to the Joseph P. Bradley Court housing complex, a notorious
collection of 20 dreary low-slung brick buildings on the outskirts of Newark.

A passenger, Jerome Yellets of Orange, got out and walked into the
building. He returned a few minutes later and got back in the car,
and it pulled away. Soon afterward, members of the Essex County
narcotics task force who had been watching the building pulled them
over and found 40 small bags of heroin valued at about $400 in the
car. Mr. Yellets is to be sentenced on July 21.

At the time, the Essex County prosecutor, Paula Dow, sought to call
attention to the arrest. "We got a white councilman in a
brand-spanking-new Corvette in front of this housing complex," she
said. "If he didn't stick out, then who does?"

She said then that she hoped the arrest "sends a message to the next
suburbanite: If I catch you, I will charge you, and you can tell your
story to our Essex County jury."

Mr. Romano agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the
prosecutor's office. Thomas S. Fennelly, an assistant prosecutor,
said the deal was consistent with those offered to other defendants
facing similar charges.

"The public awareness was much higher because of who he was, but it
is not unusual for someone else with those charges getting the same
sentence," he said.

Mr. Romano, a real estate manager, had been arrested several times
before, Mr. Fennelly said. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to possession
of narcotics in Orange County, N.Y., and received probation. Also in
1991, he was arrested in Kirkwood, N.Y., and pleaded guilty to
forgery charges and was fined $331. In 1996, he pleaded guilty to
petty larceny in Vestal, N.Y., and was fined $100.

Mr. Romano's lawyer, Robert L. Galantucci of Hackensack, said that he
was pleased with the judge's decision and that his client would
continue to seek help for his drug addiction.

"Mr. Romano has to confront this problem every day," he said.

Mr. Romano was elected to a second term on the Tenafly Council three
weeks before his arrest.

In his resignation letter, he said he was proud of his work and hoped
his actions "did not have an adverse affect upon the operation of the town."

Jonathan Miller contributed reporting for this article.