McGreevey, After
Criticism, Quits as Lawyer
for Meadowlands Mall
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN,
NYTimes on the Web, April 30, 2005
New Jersey, April 28, --
Former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey announced yesterday that he would
no longer work for the developers of the $1.4 billion Xanadu retail and
entertainment mall after environmentalists and other critics said it was a
conflict of interest for him to be paid by a project he was so closely tied to
while in office.
Mr. McGreevey, who resigned as governor last fall after he revealed he was gay
and having an extramarital affair, spearheaded the lucrative deal for Xanadu's
developers to bring stores, an indoor ski slope and what the state estimated was
40,000 jobs to the Meadowlands in East Rutherford. A few weeks ago he
began working for the same developers as a lawyer and was put in charge of
overseeing a job-training program for Xanadu's future work force.
Though other state officials who had worked on the project would have been
prohibited from doing the same thing, state ethics rules are not as clear on
what governors can do once they leave office. Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey
is now saying he will change this.
"The governor wants to close that loophole," said Kelley Heck, a spokeswoman.
"There's a lot of ethics guidelines for when the governor is in office.
But the rules are a little more vague when it comes to what the governor can or
cannot do after office."
Because of this controversy, which was first reported in several New Jersey
newspapers, Governor Codey is pushing his legal staff to come up with tougher
rules regulating governors after they leave government, Ms. Heck said.
Mr. McGreevey, who has maintained a low public profile since stepping down in
November, did not return phone calls for comment. Instead, he released a
one-sentence statement yesterday saying, "I am removing myself from the Xanadu
project to ensure compliance with both the letter and spirit of Acting Governor
Codey's pending action."
Mr. McGreevey has been working as a lawyer for the law firm of Weiner Lesniak,
run by State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a powerful Democrat from Union County.
The well-connected firm, based in Parsippany, has been representing Xanadu's
developers since they won a bidding war in 2003 to bring the project to the
Meadowlands.
Part of the development agreement calls for a job training program, and it was a
coincidence that Mr. McGreevey was the one assigned to oversee this, said
Michael Turner, a spokesman for the Mills Corporation, one of the two real
estate companies financing Xanadu. (The other is Mack-Cali.)
"It is ridiculous to think of this as payback," Mr. Turner said. "I mean,
it's lot for him to go through just for this."
Though Mr. McGreevey's reincarnation as a lawyer for the Xanadu project provoked
criticism, it appears not to have broken any laws, several ethics experts said
yesterday.
State ethics rules specifically prohibit state lawmakers and high-ranking state
officials from working on any deal that they had been "substantially and
directly" involved in as a "state officer." But that law does not apply to
the governor because the governor is not defined as a state officer, said Al
Porroni, legal counsel to the State Legislature.
And while the governor's own code of ethics, adopted by Mr. McGreevey in 2003,
"prohibits conflicts that are substantial and material or that may bring the
governor into disrepute," the code does not say anything about work after
leaving office.
Alan Rosenthal, professor of public policy at Rutgers University, said Mr.
McGreevey's position would be a lot more questionable if Mr. McGreevey had not
resigned so suddenly.
"If he knew he was going to leave office on a certain date and then entered into
a deal with a company that he was going to work for as soon as he left office,
well, then, there would be a lot of raised eyebrows," Dr. Rosenthal said.
"But that doesn't apply to this case. McGreevey didn't think he would be
leaving office so soon."
Still, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, which opposes the
Xanadu project because the group contends it eats into sensitive wetland areas,
said the arrangement was shameful.
"The fact that he's backing down now is good," Mr. Tittel said. "But the
question is, what happened six months ago? Did McGreevey have something to
gain when Xanadu's lease was signed? I still think there should be an
investigation."
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