New Jersey transparency headlines
From Sunshine Review
This article is a list of transparency related news from New Jersey.
 | ||||
| Report It • | The Good • | The Bad • | The Ugly | |
Kenny admitted to meeting the government informant on two separate occasions; March 23rd and 30th of 2009. At the meetings, Kenny was deceived into believing that the government informant was a real estate developer who had an interest in promoting a condominium project. The government informant offered Kenny two payments of $2,500 on the condition that Kenny would use his political clout to work on behalf of approvals for his buildings. Kenny accepted both payments. He then donated the money to his campaign fund [1].
In April, Kenny was appointed to fill a vacancy on the city council. He was subsequently elected to the position in May. He was not charged until October. [2].
TRENTON, New Jersey: The New Jersey State Auditor's Office has expressed concern about the apparent lack of transparency state officials have had about the state's $17 billion share of stimulus funding. In an effort to increase transparency and encourage accountability, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included provisions for states to demonstrate their transparency about how the state funds are spent through creation of informative web sites.[3]
However, according to the non-profit research group Good Jobs First, most states are not doing well. In a recent study, average state websites rated 28.2 out of 100 in terms of transparency, with only 6 states above 50. Among the features that were evaluated were jobs data, project and program status, spending flows, distribution of funds within the state, contract award processes, and user friendliness of the sites. Less than half of the state sites provided detailed information about stimulus projects and only 4 states included information about jobs created.[4] [5]
Last week, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, 32, was arrested and accused of taking $25,000 in bribes. Friday he resigned, less than a month after he was sworn in.
There were 40 people arrested in the ground breaking New Jersey scandal after a federal probe uncovered the political corruption, human organ sales and money laundering linking New York and Israel.
The public officials accused in the scandal face charges of taking bribes in exchange for helping to get permits and projects prioritized and approved. They are also charged with steering contracts to the witness.
"Regrettably, it has turned out that the controversy surrounding the charges against me has become a distraction to me and an impediment to the functioning of Hoboken government," Cammarano, a Democrat, said in his resignation letter.
"I am innocent of any criminal charges and I intend to fight the allegations against me."
The corruption scandal connected money laundering operations between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. There was an alleged tens of millions of dollars filtered through Jewish charities that rabbis controlled in New York and New Jersey.
Prosecutors utilized an informant, a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago, to help them ascertain corrupt politicians by having the informant pose as a crooked businessman. The informant then paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other New Jersey projects.[6]
Bryant was a Camden County Democrat senator who served for 25 years. He was convicted of fraud and bribery for taking a low-work job at the School of Osteopathic Medicine at UMDNJ in exchange for siphoning $10.5 million in state funding toward the Stratford school as head of the Senate Budget Committee.
The former senator was also convicted of pension fraud for sending law firm associates to work as a solicitor in his stead for the Gloucester County Board of Social Services. He acquired about $50,000 a year for this function, done by these lawyers.[6]
Tina Renna of Cranford, NJ was refused information by Union County because they would not recognize her March 13, 2006 e-mail as a valid means of asking for the public information. Renna sought a copy of a government resolution, Union County Resolution No. 42- 2005.[7]
"The state's medical university, which spends more than $1 million a year for pagers and cellular phones, cannot account for many of them, according to a confidential internal audit.
The auditors, whose report was obtained by The Star-Ledger, found the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey was paying for cell phones still held by terminated employees, and also was paying for expanded services -- such as cell phone picture messaging -- that the auditors questioned. Their report also said the university is not tracking personal phone usage by its employees -- a violation of Internal Revenue Service regulations."
"The state Supreme Court last week struck another blow against open government in New Jersey. That should hardly surprise us in a political environment that so greatly favors secrecy.
At issue was the request in Bergen County of nearly 8 million pages in land title records dating to 1984 by a company that creates electronic databases for the information. The cost of providing all the requested copies would have been about $19,000. But the high court gave permission to the clerk to charge more than $460,000 to block out Social Security numbers on the documents."
"A North Jersey county clerk is allowed to charge a company more than $460,000 to block out Social Security numbers on 22 years of land transaction records, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.
At issue is a request to the Bergen County clerk for 8 million pages of land title records dating to 1984 by Data Trace Services, a technology company that operates land record databases in 25 states and sells electronic access to the data it gathers."
"The state's highest court told Bergen County yesterday to release 8 million pages of real estate documents -- including mortgage information -- to fulfill a request filed under the state's public records law, but that Social Security numbers included in them must be kept private.
The justices also said the company requesting the information should pay the $460,000 it will cost the county to remove the Social Security numbers from records spanning more than two decades."
[edit] See also
| |||||||
Cite error:
<ref> tags exist, but no <references/> tag was found
