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North Bergen officials paid attorney to do nothing, N.J. comptroller says in new report
TRENTON — An attorney for North Bergen made $18,800 a year plus health benefits, but township officials had no idea what he was doing, or whether he was even at work, according to a report issued today by the state Office of the Comptroller.
It was one of several examples of wasted taxpayer dollars Comptroller Matthew Boxer found after analyzing the legal billing practices of North Bergen, West New York, Medford Township, the Freehold Regional High School District and the Plainfield Public Schools.
"What we found were repeated failures to review legal bills and manage legal contracts in a way that looks out for taxpayers," Boxer said in a statement. "Public officials need to scrutinize their legal bills as if they were paying for them out of their own pocket, otherwise taxpayers are going to get ripped off."
The North Bergen attorney, who is unnamed in the report, resigned Jan. 17 after the comptroller asked about his work two days earlier. In a subsequent interview with the comptroller’s office, the attorney admitted he had not been assigned work by the township for years, but had still been paid and was frequently solicited by local officials for political donations.
According to the report, North Bergen officials said they were unsure whether the attorney was assigned to the township’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board or served as the tenant advocate, and later said they did not know what work he had performed.
After the attorney resigned, the report said, North Bergen officials told the comptroller he had received a salary for "unknown job duties without the consent of township officials" and that they had referred the matter to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office for review.
But the attorney said in an interview with the comptroller’s office that North Bergen hired him between 1988 and 1990 and he had been actively working until 2006, when he had a falling out with a township official and stopped receiving legal work.
Despite not being assigned work, the attorney told investigators that "throughout his employment with the township, he was routinely solicited to make political contributions to a local party committee, stating that his contributions in 2012 to this committee totaled $6,600."
In one instance, the attorney told the comptroller’s office, he was directly solicited by the township attorney, Herbert Klitzner, to contribute $1,000 to a political action committee opposing one of Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s political rivals. The committee returned the donation after questions from the comptroller’s office, the report said.
Klitzner did not return a call for comment.
The comptroller’s office said it referred the matter to the state Attorney General’s Office for possible criminal prosecution.
Paul Swibinski, a spokesman for North Bergen, pushed back on the comptroller’s report, saying the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office found no foul play after investigating the same matter.
"The prosecutor’s office found no evidence whatsoever," Swibinski said. "We are confident that the Division of Criminal Justice, when they review the same facts that the prosecutor reviewed, will reach the same conclusion."
At a news conference in Mount Laurel today, Gov. Chris Christie blasted Sacco, who is also a Democratic state senator and assistant school superintendent and makes nearly $300,000 a year from his three public jobs.
"It is just outrageous, the unchecked power and abuse of the citizens that the Sacco administration engages in. Outrageous," Christie said. "Now I’ll let acting Attorney General (John) Hoffman take it from here and I will stay back."
Among the other findings in the comptroller’s report:
• In 2011, Klitzner was paid a salary of $207,870 in addition to $16,469 in unused vacation time, far more than any other municipal attorney in the state as well as the state attorney general.
• Klitzner may have violated local ethics laws by assigning township work to a law firm with which he is affiliated, Chasan Leyner & Lamparello. Klitzner asked the state Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics about the issue in 1995, and the committee "determined that there would be nothing improper ... about the referral of legal matters by the municipal attorney to the firm with which he is associated, absent any conflict of interest on the part of the firm," according to a copy of the 1995 opinion provided by Swibinski.
• West New York paid one law firm at a rate of $150 per hour for administrative work performed by a secretary, including taking messages and photocopying, despite a contract barring such payments. Mayor Felix Roque said the firm was hired by his predecessor. "Once I found out they were overbilling, we terminated them right away," he said.
• Plainfield’s school board attorney improperly billed the Union County district thousands of dollars for routine administrative work, and the district failed to comply with state regulations to limit legal costs. The board did not respond to a request for comment.
Star-Ledger staff writer Salvador Rizzo contributed to this report.