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In wake of Comptroller report, Christie targets Sacco
MOUNT LAUREL – A state Comptroller audit released Tuesday that alleges improper spending in North Bergen spurred Gov. Chris Christie to lash out against a familiar target.
The governor blasted North Bergen’s mayor, state Sen. Nicholas Sacco, (D-32), following the release of an audit that found the township employed an attorney in a "no-work" job for years and paid its municipal counsel more than double what some of the state's largest cities pay their attorneys.
“It’s outrageous. I mean, do you see the crap that’s going on in North Bergen?” Christie asked at an afternoon news conference here.
“It’s bad enough that Nick Sacco gets paid $300,000 himself, now he’s got the highest paid in-house counsel?” he continued, adding, “And then I love the guy who’s been working there since 1988 but can’t tell anybody what he’s been doing.”
Christie lashed out against Sacco – a figure he often targets during town halls and other public events as a poster boy for triple-dipping public workers – after being asked if he read the report.
In addition to being mayor, Sacco is a state senator and an assistant superintendent of schools. According to records, he earns more than $300,000 a year.
In North Bergen, the audit conducted by Comptroller Matthew Boxer found that an attorney had been paid a salary of $18,800 for "years" and was included in the state pension system. The attorney received taxpayer-funded health benefits from the township costing more than $26,000 per year. However, township officials could not say what work the attorney actually performed, according to the Comptroller’s report. When Boxer's office pressed for information on the position, the attorney resigned.
“I understand the comptroller has referred this to the Division of Criminal Justice, a place that I believe this richly belongs,” Christie said.
Earlier today, North Bergen rebutted allegations in the Comptroller’s report.
North Bergen had been paying "no-work" attorney for years, audit finds
North Bergen had been employing an attorney in a "no-work" job for years and pays its municipal counsel more than double what some of the state's largest cities pay their attorneys, according to report released today by the state comptroller's office.
The findings were part of an audit conducted of five local governments and school districts to determine whether oversight of legal fees exists at the local level.
In addition to the findings in North Bergen, the comptroller found that West New York paid their legal counsel at hourly attorney rates for routine clerical work that should have been free of charge under the contract with the attorney and the Freehold school district paid 30 different attorneys from the same law firm to provide legal services in a single year.
In Plainfield, the school board attorney billed the district thousands of dollars for routine administrative work that the firm admitted should not have been billed, as well as for services such as attendance at school board meetings that should have been covered under the firm’s retainer.
In North Bergen, the audit conducted by Comptroller Matthew Boxer found that an attorney had been paid a salary of $18,800 for "years" and was included in the state pension system. The attorney received taxpayer funded health benefits from the township costing more than $26,000 per year. However, township officials could not say what work the attorney actually performed. When Boxer's office pressed for information on the position, the attorney resigned.
According to the report, the attorney told auditors that he had been hired sometime between 1988 and 1990 as the township's housing attorney, but was never provided with a job description and did not report to anyone at the township.
He said that until 2006 he received work as the housing attorney but the work stopped after a falling out with the construction official. He then had to make his own work, he told auditors.
The finding has been referred to the Hudson County prosecutor's office and the state Division of Criminal Justice.
In a separate finding, the comptroller found that in 2011, North Bergen paid its municipal attorney, Herbert Klitzner, $207,870 as well as $16,469 in unused sick time. According to information provided by the League of Municipalities to the comptroller, that salary made the attorney the highest paid municipal attorney in the state and was between 35 percent and 124 percent more than the salary paid to the attorney in the state's four largest cities.
The audit also questioned whether Klitzner violated ethics laws by referring additional legal work to lawfirm Chasan Leyner & Lamparello, P.C., where he is Of Counsel. In 2011, Chasan billed the township more than $370,000 for legal work.
Klitzner told the comptroller that he does not receive a salary from Chasan but is given office space and support service from the firm. According to the audit, Klitzner alone decides what work should be done in-house and what should be delegated to outside counsel and which lawfirm the work should be delegated to.
In 2011 The Record of Bergen County conducted an investigation of Klitzner and Chasan, finding that the company had billed North Bergen more than $1.8 million between 2004 and 2011. According to that report, a state ethics panel had advised Klitzner there was nothing wrong with referring work to Chasan, despite his relationship with the firm.
Both Chasan and Klitzner have been donors to Sacco and to the township's Democratic organization over the years. Since 1999, Chasan has donated at least $13,600 to Sacco's runs for office in both North Bergen and the state Senate, while Klitzner has donated $7,400 over the past four years to the North Bergen Democratic Committee.
Chasan Managing Partner Ralph Lamparello is the president of the state bar association.
As part of the audit, the attorney found to have a no work job claimed that he was routinely solicited for political donations to a local party committee and had donated $17,000 since 2009.
The attorney told the comptrollers office that three months before the audit, Klitzner had asked him for a $1,000 donation to a political action committee opposing a rival of Mayor Nicholas Sacco. Shortly after the comptroller inquired about the donation, the money was returned.
NJ comptroller finds North Bergen paying higher salaries than average to lawyers
STAFF WRITER
North Bergen taxpayers have been paying the salary and benefits for one attorney though officials did not know what services he actually provided, and paying a “substantially higher” salary to its township attorney than what the state’s four largest municipalities pay their senior counsels – and significantly more than what the state Attorney General makes – according to the State Comptroller’s Office.
In a report released today, the Comptroller’s Office singled out North Bergen and four other local government agencies for their legal spendings.
In the case of North Bergen, the Comptroller’s Office raised numerous red flags. It found that officials never did a study to compare the salary of its township attorney, Herbert Klitzner, to others in his field. Klitzner was the state’s highest-paid municipal attorney in 2011: His $207,870 salary far exceeded the $154,057 earnings that the city of Newark, the state’s largest municipality, paid its attorney, as well as the state Attorney General’s $141,000 salary.
The Comptroller’s Office also noted that Klitzner often referred work to an outside firm with which he’s affiliated, in possible violation of the Local Government Ethics Law.
Klitzner is Of Counsel with Chasan Leyner & Lamparello, which in 2011 billed North Bergen $371,407, the most of any of the township’s outside firms, according to the report. Klitzner does not receive a salary from Chasan but is provided an office and support services from the firm, he told investigators. His name remains on the company’s letterhead and he’s listed in the firm’s directory.
Klitzner reported that he checked with, and received approval from, the attorney ethics board to serve concurrently as township attorney and Of Counsel with Chasan. However, the Comptroller’s report stated that ethics standards for local government employees are different than those that apply to all New Jersey attorneys. The issue has been referred to the state Local Finance Board for possible ethical breaches.
The Comptroller’s investigation noted other deficiencies in North Bergen. Officials could not immediately explain the job duties of several of the township’s 10 in-house attorneys. None had written employment agreements or job descriptions other than Klitzner, though the township eventually provided documents concerning the duties of all but one attorney.
That attorney, whose name was not released in the report, was paid $18,807 in 2011, though township officials weren’t certain of his role. The attorney immediately resigned after the township launched an internal review, prompted by the Comptroller’s investigation. The township said he was paid without the consent of officials and that it would refer the matter to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.
The attorney disputes that he was paid without knowledge, however, saying he served as the housing attorney for many years and was active in this role until 2006 when he stopped receiving work because of a falling out with a construction code official and had to “create” his own work. He claimed that Klitzner took housing-related legal work from him and reassigned them to the Chasan firm on multiple occasions, the report stated.
Beside his pay, the attorney received more than $26,000 in health benefits from the township in 2011, and was enrolled in the state pension system as a North Bergen employee from 1988 to 2011. The Comptroller’s Office has referred the matter to the state’s Dvision of Criminal Justice for review.
Tuesday’s report also noted that North Bergen officials paid a senior partner at Chasan up to $25,000 for “non-descriptive billings” that did not specify the legal service he performed, the report stated. The attorney told investigators he intentionally kept the billing statements nonspecific so as not to disclose litigation strategies or politically damaging information. “This practice, however, hinders transparency [and] heightens the risk of improper payments,” the report stated.
The township also failed to follow the evaluation procedures it set forth in its request for proposals to award service contracts, lacked specific policy for how it would assign work to outside firms, and that it did not enter into formal written contracts for outside counsel, the report found. The township was billed about $60,000 from Chasan for handling landlord/tenant issues though the township had not awarded it a contract to perform such services, the investigators found.
In addition to North Bergen, the Comptroller’s Office reviewed the legal spendings of the town of West New York, township of Medford, and the Freehold Regional High School District and Plainfield Public Schools district.
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