Editor’s Note: Pet Projects, Public Cash from NJ Spotlight News details how New Jersey lawmakers direct millions to projects, often with little public scrutiny over how that money is spent. Today’s stories focus on the few rules that detail what lawmakers can ask to spend — and that many don’t follow.
New Jersey legislators can add money to the state budget for their employer. They can direct state funds to an organization where they might be a board member. They can add money for groups where a family member draws a paycheck or might have some other financial relationship.
The only requirement: Legislators must disclose those relationships by checking a box on a form.
After several scandals, including two that sent lawmakers to prison, individual legislators are required to disclose when they seek to add money to the state budget for a specific project or organization. That form requires them to say if they or a family member receives compensation from the recipient of the funding. That checked box is the only easy way for the public to know about potential conflicts of interests for lawmakers in New Jersey, where being a legislator is a part-time job.
NJ Spotlight News reviewed several hundred of those requests from some 90 current and former legislators, including some requests that were not ultimately funded. In all those requests, only one lawmaker checked that box, and she probably didn’t need to, NJ Spotlight News found.
That analysis discovered several other budget resolutions where legislators may have been required to make a disclosure. A couple of lawmakers said not making the disclosure was an oversight. But several others –– including Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin — declined to say why they did not disclose possible conflicts of interest.
‘…you have to wonder how many other rules and procedures are treated as optional.’
“This serves as yet another example of how broken the budget process has become,” said Sheila Reynertson, senior policy analyst with the progressive New Jersey Policy Perspective. “Even when rules are in place, they are often not enforced. If it’s this easy to avoid something as simple as checking a box, you have to wonder how many other rules and procedures are treated as optional.”
Past scandals
In the mid-2000s, two sitting state senators were convicted following public-corruption scandals.
Then-Sen. Wayne Bryant, a Camden County Democrat who chaired the Senate and joint budget committees, ultimately served 40 months in federal prison. He was found guilty of using his legislative power to obtain an essentially no-show job at a South Jersey medical school while also getting state funds for the school. And former Sen. Joseph Coniglio, a Bergen County Democrat who sat on the budget committee, served 20 months in prison for providing millions of dollars to Hackensack University Medical Center in exchange for a $5,000 monthly fee as a consultant.
After Bryant and Coniglio were charged, lawmakers added the disclosure requirement on the budget resolution forms.
“State lawmakers can and should do everything in their power to limit potential conflicts of interest and ensure decisions are made for the many and not a select few,” Reynertson said.
The conflict-of-interest provision is minimal. Legislators need only check a box if they or a member of their families receives compensation from the proposed recipient of their budget request. Legislators are also required to make that disclosure if they hold any other business relationship with a group, such as being a member of its board. There is nothing in the legislative rules to prevent lawmakers from seeking state money for groups they’re connected to or for their employers. They simply must disclose that connection.
But they don’t. And if lawmakers are not making the proper disclosures, it’s likely because there are no consequences.
‘There must be a transparent process with meaningful oversight and accountability.’
Lori O’Mara, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, said no one in that office “reviews the budget resolutions for completion or accuracy.”
The rule regarding budget resolutions does not specify any penalty for not disclosing a relationship between the legislator or his family and the recipient of the funding.
Oversight, accountability
Beth Rotman, director of money in politics and ethics with Common Cause, said the only way to protect the spending of public money and promote public trust in elected officials is transparency.
“There must be a transparent process with meaningful oversight and accountability,” she said. “A transparent process would include searchable disclosure of the lawmaker requesting the earmark and the recipient, their relationship, and any relationship the earmark may have to the elected official’s family, employer or business.”
Credit: (William Wyckoff)Only one of the hundreds of budget resolutions reviewed by NJ Spotlight News had its personal disclosure section completed. It was for a $113,000 appropriation to the Alice Paul Institute for a statewide initiative commemorating the anniversary of women’s suffrage called NJ Women Vote: The 19th Amendment at 100. On the resolution, Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Burlington) stated that she has been a member of the board of directors of the institute named for the women’s rights leader, an unpaid position, since April 17, 2019.
“I’m a big transparency person,” Murphy said. “I believe that as long as it’s not a conflict, per se, with my ethics and people know I’m on the board and I’m fighting for that as a member, and I didn’t get on the board based on getting the money, then I don’t think it’s a problem at all.”
Need to disclose — or not?
The NJ Spotlight News analysis of more than 600 budget resolutions submitted over the last three years found several where lawmakers had direct connections to the groups for which they sought — and were approved — state tax dollars.
Sen. Nicholas Sacco (D-Bergen) sponsored a resolution giving $10 million to the North Bergen School District for a “property acquisition.” Sacco is North Bergen’s mayor; he was formerly an administrator in the district and retired in 2017. His most recent financial disclosure form indicates he received more than $50,000 from the school district in 2020, part of $269,000 in unused sick days he has been paid for over the last five years, according to The Jersey Journal. Sacco did not indicate this relationship on the budget resolution requesting the money, which was added to the current fiscal year budget.
A spokesman for the Senate Democrats declined to comment on any specific lawmaker’s situation. However, one high-ranking staffer with knowledge of the process in the office who spoke on condition of anonymity said Sacco didn’t need to check the box on the resolution seeking the $10 million for the district because the money he received was essentially retirement pay and he doesn’t work there anymore. Sacco did not return requests for comment.
The resolution form that lawmakers must complete when they are seeking to add money to the budget states that an individual needs to indicate whether the legislator or a family member “receive any compensation from the intended recipient of the funding” and then indicate whether that was an employment relationship or other business relationship.
Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez (D-Camden) is director of constituent services for Camden County. She sponsored budget resolutions giving $30 million — $15 million a year for the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years — for the Camden County Improvement Authority, for the demolition of about 300 vacant properties. Cruz-Perez does not work for the improvement authority, but its most recent audit calls the authority a “component unit” of the county. In 2020, she also sponsored a resolution (for the 2021 fiscal year budget year) — providing $250,000 for “Camden County Flood Planning and Mitigation,” which did go to the county. None of the resolutions noted that she is employed by the county.
Checking the box
Richard McGrath, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, said that since Cruz-Perez does not work for the improvement authority she did not need to indicate a relationship in sponsoring the money for the property demolitions. However, in sponsoring the resolution for flood planning and mitigation funding, he said Cruz-Perez should have checked the box indicating there was a relationship, adding that her not doing so was “an oversight.”
A spokesman for the Assembly Democrats declined to comment on any of its members’ resolutions.
Credit: (NJ Spotlight News)Assembly Speaker Coughlin (D-Middlesex) got two payments of $1.5 million apiece for Woodbridge in the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years. His financial disclosure forms show that Coughlin, a lawyer, received between $10,000 and $25,000 in income from Woodbridge township each year for at least the last three. The stated purposes of the funds were improvement to special needs recreational facilities and a special needs student education facility. It appears at least some of that money went toward replacing a fire-damaged handicap-accessible playground at an elementary school that is used by a summer program for autistic children and the other funds built a new fully-accessible recreational complex with ballfields and courts. Coughlin did not indicate his pay from Woodbridge on the resolutions he sponsored. Kevin McArdle, a spokesman for Coughlin, declined to comment.
Assemblyman Roy Freiman (D-Somerset) sponsored a resolution giving $1 million to the Hillsborough School District in the 2019 fiscal year budget for “building maintenance and HVAC rehabilitation.” He did not note on the resolution that, at the time, his wife worked for the district as an elementary schoolteacher.
Freiman said the school his wife worked in still doesn’t have air-conditioning; the money put AC in the high school. But he would have checked the box if he had known he needed to do so.
“Candidly, it must have been an oversight, being relatively new with the process and having new staff,” he said. “I come from a compliance background, having worked with Prudential for 25 years where compliance was critical. I believe in it. I believe it makes sense. If there was an error there, it was an oversight.”
‘I think it’s a great rule. I take full responsibility for not checking the box.’
Sen. Troy Singleton (D-Burlington) sponsored resolutions giving Rowan University $2 million each in the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years for its Center for Research and Education in Advanced Transportation Engineering Systems. In 2017 and 2018, when those budgets were approved, his financial disclosure reported that his wife received a small amount of income — less than $10,000 — from Rowan College of Burlington, which has a relationship with the university. In 2019 and 2020, Singleton’s wife received income from Rowan University itself, as well.
Singleton, who sponsored a law — at present on hold due to a federal judge’s injunction — requiring so-called dark-money organizations to disclose who’s bankrolling them, said he should have checked the boxes on his resolutions and that there is “no correlation” between his wife’s employment teaching political science at Rowan and the money the college received for an unrelated program.
“It was a total omission on my part and not done for any nefarious reason,” Singleton said, adding he supports the disclosure. “I think it’s a great rule. I take full responsibility for not checking the box.”
— John Reitmeyer contributed to this story.
