THE TENAFLY COUNCILMAN AND 40 BAGS OF HEROIN

IT was around 1:30 on an afternoon last November, prosecutors say,
when Jeffery Romano, a councilman from Tenafly, pulled his 2006
Chevrolet Corvette up to the Joseph P. Bradley Court housing complex,
a notorious collection of 20 dreary, low-slung brown brick buildings
on the outskirts of Newark.

Mr. Romano had a passenger with him by the name of Jerome Yelletts, a
47-year-old man from Orange who lived with his parents and had a
record for assault and criminal mischief. Mr. Yelletts got out of the
Corvette and walked into a building. He emerged a few minutes later
and got back in the car. Mr. Romano pulled away.

Unknown to either man, members of the Essex County Narcotics Task
Force were nearby watching. Not long after Mr. Romano and Mr.
Yelletts pulled away, they were stopped by the task force, who said
they found 40 small bags of heroin valued at about $400 in the car.

The 43-year-old Mr. Romano, a divorced father of two sons, flashed
his municipal badge, but it did not do any good. He was arrested and
later charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute and
official misconduct for identifying himself as a councilman. Mr.
Yelletts was charged with possession of narcotics and conspiracy to
distribute them.

Prosecutors crowed about catching a man from a comfortable suburb.
"We got a white councilman in a brand-spanking-new Corvette in front
of this housing complex," the Essex County prosecutor, Paula T. Dow,
declared in December. "If he didn't stick out, then who does?"

"I hope this arrest sends a message to the next suburbanite," she
added. "If I catch you, I will charge you, and you can tell your
story to our Essex County jury."

The arrest of Mr. Romano, a Democrat who had just been elected to a
second term, unleashed surprise, disappointment, shrugs and cynicism.
Later, when Mr. Romano proclaimed his innocence and refused to step
down from his council seat, there was embarrassment in this
comfortable town of 13,800 about six miles north of the George
Washington Bridge, where crime is low and houses can cost millions.

"I think he shouldn't be in office," said Jack Roditi, 60, a real
estate agent and father of two. "He's supposed to set an example for
people in town, especially for the kids. He's a role model."

But as he added: "New Jersey has, unfortunately, a whole slew of
politicians who have gotten themselves in trouble. Of course, you'd
like to think that people you put in are a cut above the rest, which is naive."

Indeed, there seems to be a recent rash of elected officials behaving
badly -- above and beyond the official misdeeds of bribery,
extortion, kickbacks and assorted shenanigans that have become the
background music of everyday life in New Jersey.

In Morristown, a drunk councilman who the police said sucker-punched
a bar owner in January later apologized but would not step down. A
councilman in Teaneck who later admitted that he had anonymously
posted abusive comments about the town's fire department on an
Internet chat board resigned last month under pressure.

As for Mr. Romano, even if voters wanted to institute a recall, they
could not do so until 2007, according to a state law that prohibits a
recall of an elected official until that official has served at least
one year of a new term.

"I haven't been indicted, and I don't even have a court date yet," he
said in a recent interview, "and there are rules in New Jersey. I
don't have to step down until I've been convicted."

Early on, the town seemed to rally behind Mr. Romano, who grew up
here and is generally well liked. Statements from both sides of the
political aisle offered words of encouragement. "I will go out of my
way to support him and help him through this and wait and see what
the court says," Robert Thompson, a Republican councilman, toldThe Record.

But the mood around town seemed to change in the new year.

In normal times, Tenafly troubles itself with such things as
maple-sugaring programs for children and making sure that signs
downtown conform to code. In his State of the Borough address, Mayor
Peter Rustin dwelled for some time on the need to preserve trees in town.

But at the borough reorganization meeting last month, Charles Lipson,
a Republican councilman, pre-empted the swearing in of Mr. Romano and
announced in a scathing statement that he and the two other
Republicans on the six-member council thought it best that Mr. Romano
not take his oath of office. Skip to next paragraph New York Region

"He has, at least for the time being, lost the confidence of the
people," Mr. Lipson said between boos and jeers, "and any actions he
takes will inevitably be looked upon as inherently tainted."

When asked about the Republicans' call for Mr. Romano to step down,
the local Democratic chairman, Michael Barnes, was circumspect. "We
don't reject outright what the Republicans had to say," he said.
"You're innocent until the state proves you're guilty. That's how
this country works. He's entitled to defend himself."

It is a delicate political situation, and as other politicians noted,
if Mr. Romano steps down, it will probably be perceived by residents
as tantamount to a confession.

Mr. Romano is a slight man -- the police report lists him as 5-foot-9
and 160 pounds -- with close-cropped hair and a soft voice. He
graduated from Tenafly High School, and along the way was a Cub Scout
and played Little League baseball. Many residents remember him behind
the counter of the family diner on West Railroad Avenue, flipping
hamburgers and chatting with customers.

His mother, Ramona Freese, 67, who now lives in Florida, said in an
interview said that her son would often help down-and-out types who
frequented the diner, much to her chagrin.

"Him and I didn't get along in the diner," Ms. Freese said, "because
I'm from the old school. I ran it one way. He'd give food out for
free. That's what he used to do. I'm trying to run a business, and
he's trying to be a good guy. With the help, he was over-lenient."

Mr. Romano acknowledged in the interview that he had used heroin and
abused alcohol in the past but insisted that he had been "clean and
sober" since 1993, when Ms. Freese said she dropped him off at a
rehabilitation center.

Although Mr. Romano talked about his drug and alcohol use in a
newspaper interview in 1994, no political opponent ever used this
against him in his two council races.

In 1997, the family diner and other properties were purchased by a
company formed by Dr. Joseph Gartner, a gynecologist in Wyckoff, for
$1.5 million, and around the same time Mr. Romano began managing
properties with the doctor.

"He manages 15 properties I know of," Ms. Freese said, adding that
her son worked as a "legman," finding the properties to manage for
Dr. Gartner's company.

In the last few years, Mr. Romano began driving stylish cars. In
addition to the Corvette, in the last week there was a black Ford
Mustang GT convertible in the driveway of the house that he bought in
2001 for $410,000, according to tax records.

"Jeff's got very expensive cars," Mayor Rustin said.

Although his mother was a lifelong Republican, Mr. Romano broke into
politics as a Democrat. He became the president of the borough's
Chamber of Commerce and helped to start a summer concert series in
2000 aimed at promoting the newly renovated downtown. He also started
helped to promote an annual Fourth of July fireworks display and a
helped to start the borough's recycling program. In 2002, he was
elected to his first council term.

Mr. Romano insisted that there was an explanation for what happened
in Newark but that he could not say yet. "Believe me, I want to say
my side," he said after a recent council meeting.

Mr. Rustin said that he had been told by Mr. Romano that he often got
his cars serviced in the Newark area and that he was doing a favor by
picking up a mechanic -- Mr. Yelletts -- that night. According to Mr.
Rustin's version of events, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I've lived in this town for 43 years," Mr. Romano said. "I've
invested a lot of my time to get to the council, to get to the
position that I'm in. And I feel that in the end, as I've indicated,
I won't be an embarrassment to the town, and I'm just not going to
throw away everything I've worked for."

He said that little had been written about Mr. Yelletts, but he did
not offer much in the way of explanation.

Mr. Yelletts, who lives with his parents in Orange, not far from
where the police in Newark picked up him and Mr. Romano, was arrested
in West Orange in 1997 and convicted of assault, criminal mischief,
resisting arrest and cruelty to animals, stemming from an incident in
which the police said he illegally entered a woman's house, destroyed
some furniture and killed a parrot. He was fined and sentenced to two
years probation and alcohol counseling.

While many people in Tenafly may have been shocked to learn about the
Romano case, others seemed to have become jaded by scandal.

"Corrupt politicians?" said Deborah Leary, a saleswoman at a
Womrath's Bookstore here, clapping her hands to her cheeks in mock
surprise. "No!"

Her colleague, Gabriel Kutik -- whose father owns the bookstore and
is the town's Chamber of Commerce president -- put it this way: "To
me, people were feigning surprise, but I'm like, 'We live in New
Jersey, come on!' What, no one's ever done drugs? No one's ever
cheated on their wives?"

Mr. Kutik cited as an example his former assistant principal in
Demarest, James. L. Lumley, who was also a councilman and the police
commissioner in Haworth. Mr. Lumley was caught in 2000 with marijuana
in his desk and child pornography on his school computer. He
subsequently pleaded guilty to the pornography charge in Bergen
County Superior Court, and the drug charges were dropped.

"Stuff's going down all around," Mr. Kutik said.