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8 Comments:
The Department of Corrections is the 2nd largest Department in the State. It is also a part of the law enforcement arm of the State.
The leadership of that Department should be beyond reproach.
The present nominee George Hayman is anything but!
At the beginning of this year it was either he or his Chief Of Staff Charles Ellis who falsified official pension paperwork for their friend, the fired Asst. Commissioner Carrie Johnson. This issue went to the AG 's office and no one has heard a thing. Please ask the Governor why he would nominate a law enforcement Cabibnet official with this question still unanswered.
There are potential ethical and legal issues here.
His nominee for DOC Commissioner George Hayman had been the Asst. Commissioner in charge of the Department at the time of the Construction Bid Scandal that is currently being investigated by the Ag's office.
The investigation has publiclly reached as high as the Asst. Director. In the chain of command the next person is the Director and then the Asst. Commissioner( Hayman).
Please ask the Governor if this matter should be cleared up before the nomination since it would be embarrassing if wrongdoing was found later.
There is concern that ethics rules are only meant for the " point of service" worker and not for the high level Administrators.
IN the Department of Corrections this week all employees are being given a 12 page " plain language on ethics" policy that must be read and signed.
But at the same time there are questions about bid scandals, pension paperwork falsifications,and political shenanigans involving the multi-million dollar Life Skills Academy debacle which never seem to get answered and never seem to result in penalties for those high level people who are involved.
Please ask the Governor if he will enforce the ethics rules for everyone. Also ask if he can set up a " hotline" to report ethics violations without fear of retribution.
Please ask the Governor if he is going to investigate this scam!
This IS a scam, WAS a scam, and REMAINS a scam! Everyone in Corrections knows about it ,including George Hayman, and they just keep signing off on it.
This is JUST ANOTHER in a series of unethical, corrupt, and questionable actions taken by this current DOC Administration that has been intact since 2001.
Ask " Mr. Ethics" when enough is enough. Corzine decided to keep this DOC Administration intact even though he had other options.
Please , Please, ask him if this is the type of Administration he wants running his $1.3 billion dollar business.
Audit finds fault with N.J. inmates' life-skills classes
They cost state $1.5M a year, but are they held?
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/2/06
BY TOM BALDWIN
GANNETT STATE BUREAU
TRENTON — The new state budget preserves a $1.5 million-a-year deal whereby taxpayers pay a private company to teach prison inmates coping skills, though state auditors found no one at the Department of Corrections has checked whether the classes were held.
"Corrections never asked for anything and still processed the bill," Ron Thompson, manager of the audit by State Auditor Richard Fair, said Tuesday of the 6-year-old deal.
In fact, the Department of Corrections pays staff employees to offer inmates precisely what the outside contractor says he provides.
The department suggested the contract be dropped at the startof the budget process last winter, said spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkeneheuer. "We suggested that that could be eliminated, but it got put back in the process by the governor or the Legislature," she said.
Anthony Coley, spokesman for Gov. Corzine, said "the Legislature put it into the budget" that went into effect July 1.
The contractor is called the Life Skills Academy. It is run by Emmanuel ben Avraham, an anti-drug-use community activist who said he grew up sleeping in cars and cardboard boxes on the streets of Newark.
The audit of DOC's arrangement with ben Avraham's Life Skills Academy said:
"DOC did not properly administer the contract, and records were insufficient to independently verify whether the company complied with the terms and conditions of the contract."
The annual $1.5-million no-bid contract says Life Skills was to send educators to the prisons to teach soon-to-be-released inmates for two hours a day, five days a week for eight weeks, processing 1,250 inmates a year.
Ben Avraham said his company did the work.
"Various prisons never forwarded anything to the deparment to substantiate a payment," Thompson said. "When we went to the actual prisons, we found out that Life Skills Academy was actually keeping the records, and that is a fallacy. It's like I am keeping the record so I can get paid."
"DOC has not effectively monitored this contract," said the audit, never even taking attendance and never asking who may have passed the course or why someone did not.
And entirely out of the character of state spending, the $1.5 million each year goes straight from state coffers to Life Skills, instead of through the Corrections Department.
Life Skills appears to be the only outside vendor whose payment is required in the state budget. "The appropriations act appropriates the money to the company. That's the rules, and that is rare," said audit manager Thompson.
"We have been trying to have this thing taken out of the budget for years," Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, R-Bergen, said about efforts by him and Republican colleagues. "It has not happened."
DOC Commissioner George Hayman wrote on June 12 to Fair, the state auditor, saying his department will start taking attendance and assaying the worth of the program, though Hayman said it will be tough to gauge things like an inmate's self-esteem.
Hayman said DOC would have trouble grading Life Skills against "all the other competing programs provided at our correctional facilities."
That statement underscored the fact DOC has an Office of Transitional Services, headed by a $93,675-a-year director, whose mandate, it says, is to teach inmates how to "practice responsible, crime-free behavior."
Why then, asked O'Toole, is an outside contractor getting $1.5 million to duplicate DOC work?
Life Skills evolved from an earlier national program that former Assembly Speaker Garabed Haytaian, R-Warren, took a liking to.
In 1994, the program landed in the state budget in that year's down-to-the-wire budget debate.
It could not be determined Tuesday why the program was added and has endured when the DOC has its own employees helping inmates transition to life outside prison.
Ben Avraham, then going by the name of Shahid Watson, a Trenton street activist, ran the New Jersey end of the national program, which morphed into Life Skills when ben Avraham broke with the national system.
Tom Baldwin:
There has been much talk in the news lately about internet Network Neutrality. From Jon Stweart lampooning Alaska Senator Stevens to papers issued by founders of the internet like Vince Cerf to Princeton’s Professor Ed Felton.
Most of the discussion revolves around Verizon and ill conceived, ham fisted, federal legislation to regulate Net Neutrality at the federal level. I’ve asked Gov. Corzine to take a proactive stance on Net Neutrality and not wait for the federal government to tell us what is best for New Jersey.
Net Neutrality is good for competition, innovation and the future of the internet. It keeps the internet a level playing field allowing small internet startups, which we have plenty of in New Jersey, to compete with the big guys. Mr. Corzine has an opportunity to stand up for Net Neutrality by raising the issue at the state level.
I would like to ask Mr. Corzine why he feels it is best to let Washington shape the future of the internet for New Jersey consumers.
Tom L
Red Bank
RedBankTV.org
What specific plan does Governor Corzine have to solve the $18 billion outstanding liability in the State's pension benefits program and the $20 billion liability in the State's health benefits program for retirees?
The pension actuaries are assuming a 8.5 percent annual return from investment. Does Governor Corzine believe that number is set unrealistically high?
If the State earns significantly less than the 8.5% over the next 5 years, then the outstanding pension and health benefit liabilities for retirees will grow by billions. The current projection is for pension and health costs to rise from approximately $2 billion in 2006 to at least $6.5 billion by 2009. How does the governor intend to fund this deficit?
Isn't the only way to fix the problem without raising taxes is to cut benefits and raise the retirement age from 55 to 60?
Anthony DeGenaro
Manasquan, NJ
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM MR. BALDWINS ARTICLE TODAY.
PLEASE ASK THE GOVERNOR WHY HE HAD HIS SPOKESPERSON LIE AND STATE THAT THE PROGRAM WAS PUT INTO THE BUDGET BY THE LEGISLATURE.
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE SINCE IT WAS PART OF THE DOC BUDGET THAT WAS PRESENTED TO THE LEGISLATURE!
WHY IS CORZINE PROTECTING HAYMAN WHEN HE KNOWS THAT HAYMAN HAD TO APPROVE THIS ENTRY INTO THE DOC BUDGET BEFORE IT GOT TO THE LEGISLATURE.
WHAT LEGISLATOR IS PULLING ALL OF THESE STRINGS?
IF HAYMAN WANTED IT OUT HE COULD HAVE TESTIFIED AT THE BUDGET HEARING, BUT HE NEVER SAID ANYTHING.
COLEY IS COVERING UP FOR HAYMAN.
----------------------------------
"The department suggested the contract be dropped at the startof the budget process last winter, said spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkeneheuer. "We suggested that that could be eliminated, but it got put back in the process by the governor or the Legislature," she said.
Anthony Coley, spokesman for Gov. Corzine, said "the Legislature put it into the budget" that went into effect July 1."
Governor Corzine and the state of New Jersey need to promptly address the extreme security vulnerability poised by the continued operation of the Oyster Creek nuclear power station where hundreds of tons of high-level radioactive waste is hoisted to a storage pond literally on the roof top of the reactor building.
The National Academy of Sciences in an April 2005 publicly redacted report to Congress identifies the design (General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor) has perhaps the most vulnerable nuclear reactor to a potential terrorist attack seeking to inflict catastrophic ecomonic damage, radiation sickness and a massive population dislocation.
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