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Good Thursday morning!
Nobody would ve expected the 70+ percent approval rating Gov. Phil Murphy enjoyed in the early days of the pandemic to last this far into the crisis. So he’s got to be pretty happy with a Monmouth University poll the gold standard of New Jersey polling pegging his approval rating with state residents at 57 percent while 35 percent disapprove.
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An audit report released Wednesday by the Office of the State Comptroller found the Borough of Keansburg gave what it described as excessive benefits to its employees, including 11 weeks of vacation to the police chief in 2018.
“Keansburg’s police chief was granted vacation leave on the taxpayer’s dime for more than 20% of the work year,” acting State Comptroller Kevin D. Walsh said. “Eleven weeks of vacation is unreasonable and wasteful. Most New Jerseyans are lucky to get a few weeks of vacation each year.
Walsh added, Giving a public employee who is paid $208,000 per year 11 weeks of vacation in addition to paid holidays, sick leave and compensatory time isn’t illegal, but it should be. The Legislature possesses the power to stop this sort of waste and abuse and has used it in the past to protect taxpayers. In the absence of legislative changes, these sorts of outrageous abuses will continue.”
Police chief got 11 weeks vacation, other cops, employees got ‘excessive’ payouts, audit says
Updated May 06, 2021;
Posted May 05, 2021
Keansburg Borough Hall, once a bank building that was given to the municipality.Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media
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Keansburg, a small, blue-collar Monmouth County town on Raritan Bay, came under sharp criticism by the state comptroller Wednesday for paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in “excessive benefits” to its employees.
Those benefits included 11 weeks of vacation time to a former police chief, who was not named in the report.
Some employees were provided with compensatory time that could be sold back, while the borough paid out a total of $451,000 in so-called longevity payments in 2017 and 2018 essentially a yearly bonus for length of service the comptroller found in its 20-page audit.
Credit: Rachelmarie/Pixabay
File photo
A long-standing loophole in workers’ compensation policy shifted “substantial” costs onto New Jersey’s already strained public employee pension system, according to a new report from a top state financial watchdog.
A precise estimate of the financial impact could not be determined, but the findings released on Thursday by the Office of the State Comptroller suggest insurance companies benefited the most from the loophole.
At the same time, the report determined the loophole effectively shifted more costs onto the pension system, which as of last year, was operating with a nearly $130 billion unfunded liability, according to estimates disclosed in recent state bond documents.