University Gave
No-Show Job to Legislator,
U.S. Reports
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI,
NYTimes on the Web, September 19, 2006
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Mel Evans/Associated Press
State
Senator Wayne R. Bryant leads the budget committee. |
TRENTON, Sept. 18 — One of New
Jersey’s most powerful legislators had a no-show job at the state’s medical and
dental school that paid him $35,000 a year “to lobby himself,” according to a
report by a federal monitor, an accusation that could lead to a possible
criminal investigation on corruption charges.
The legislator, State Senator Wayne R. Bryant — a Democrat from Camden who is
the chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee — worked at the
School of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of
New Jersey from 2003 to 2006. During that time, the school’s financing
from the Legislature rose to more than $4 million annually from $2.8 million.
Mr. Bryant, 58, has for years been unapologetic about the fact that he has held
as many as four government jobs simultaneously — in addition, family members,
including his wife, sister-in-law, two brothers and a son, who died this year,
were on the public payroll at various times — but he resigned from the medical
school this year after federal investigators began examining his role at the
university.
United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, who has made the prosecution of
public corruption the top priority of his office, declined to discuss the
matter. But his spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said federal prosecutors
would review the findings of the monitor, Herbert J. Stern, very closely.
The harshly worded report about Mr. Bryant’s involvement with the troubled
medical school comes just three days after a former State Senate president, John
A. Lynch Jr., once the most influential Democratic Party boss in the state,
pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Mr. Bryant is one in a long line of
New Jersey officials accused of using a public position to enrich himself.
It is also the most striking example yet of the role politics played in the
financial irregularities at the medical school. After federal officials
threatened to prosecute the university for Medicaid fraud, officials there
agreed to let a federal monitor investigate its finances. That inquiry,
led by Mr. Stern, a former judge and United States attorney, has found evidence
of tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid fraud, wasteful spending and no-bid
contracts awarded to vendors with ties to elected officials or former trustees.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine — whose inaugural call for a change in the state’s political
culture was greeted with a testy response from Mr. Bryant — said that he was
troubled by the report’s findings but that only legislators had the power to
force the senator to step down from his post on the budget committee.
Mr. Corzine said that as leader of the party, he was suggesting that Democratic
legislative leaders review the file and take decisive action. “There are
many precedents where people step aside while an investigation goes on, " he
said.
Mr. Bryant refused to be interviewed by the federal monitor, and has not
responded to questions from reporters. He did not return repeated calls to
his office requesting comment on Monday and, although he had been scheduled to
appear at a college groundbreaking ceremony in Bloomfield on Monday, he did not
attend.
The monitor’s report said that Mr. Bryant first approached the president of the
university, Stuart Cook, in 2002, at a time when the state was considering a
plan to merge the medical and dental school with Rutgers University, and
suggested that the university would have to pay taxes if it opened a branch in
Camden. Shortly afterward, Mr. Bryant asked for a job, the report said,
and in 2003 he was given a position that had not been advertised.
“Senator Bryant reminded U.M.D.N.J. that it was being threatened and could use
some friends in the Legislature, and soon enough, he was hired there," said John
Inglesino, an investigator for the federal monitor.
During Mr. Bryant’s tenure at the university, its windfall in state financing
included $800,000 a year for the Center for Children’s Support and millions of
dollars in state subsidies for the school’s operating expenses.
At the school itself, however, Mr. Bryant’s duties were a mystery..
“By all accounts, Bryant performed little to no work at the school; spent less
than his required one day per week at the institution,” the report says, citing
interviews with 35 administrators and employees at the university. “No
reports, memoranda, e-mail communications, correspondence or evidence of work by
the senator were found or produced by U.M.D.N.J.; and no one in the
administration of the School of Osteopathic Medicine while Bryant was employed
by U.M.D.N.J. recalls supervising what the senator was doing or supposed to be
doing.”
The report suggested that Mr. Bryant pressured the university to give financial
help to his political allies, prevailing upon school administrators to donate
$20,000 to a designated driver program at the Tweeter Center, an entertainment
complex that was run by the wife of the chairman of the Camden County Board of
Chosen Freeholders.
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