New Jersey’s commercial solid waste industry remains open to abuse and manipulation by criminal elements that circumvent the State’s regulatory and oversight system, the State Commission of Investigation concludes in a report issued today.

“Individuals banned from the industry here years ago because of ties to organized crime and other criminal activities have nonetheless found ways to conduct a lucrative commerce in waste-hauling and recycling,” the SCI report states. “New Jersey has also become a haven for criminally-tainted entrepreneurs who were kicked out of the business as a result of heightened vigilance and stronger rules elsewhere, most notably in neighboring New York.”

The report focuses heavily on longstanding statutory, administrative and funding weaknesses in New Jersey’s A-901 program, established more than two decades ago in an effort to keep the industry clean. The SCI has reported on regulatory shortcomings in this realm on several prior occasions.

“That the Commission today must repeat some of the same general findings and recommendations is a testament to the price of warnings ignored, opportunities lost, and legislative intent undermined,” the report states. “It is also a testament to the guile and persistence of unqualified individuals who remain willing and able to subvert the system.”

Four Hudson County municipalities - Harrison, Hoboken, Union City and West New York - got smacked in the State Commission of Investigation report on fiscal waste in municipal government that was released Tuesday.

Harrison took the biggest hit, with more than a half-dozen examples of spending and employee perks the report considers excessive - including the $241,851 paid to former Administrative Clerk/Deputy Municipal Clerk Marion Borek when she retired after 61 years with the town, the bulk of it for 881 days of accumulated unused sick leave.

At a public hearing in February 1992, the Commission released information for the first time showing that elements of organized crime had gained control of numerous bars and restaurants in New Jersey. The Commission’s investigation found that state and local regulators were doing little to enforce fundamental policies established by the Legislature in 1937 and reaffirmed in 1985. A preliminary report on investigations of liquor license applications was issued in March 1992 and a final report was issued in October 1992.

In a January 1991 public hearing and September 1991 report, the Commission assessed the complicated problem of video gambling, including the ramifications of organized crime involvement as well as weaknesses in the statutes that apply to gambling devices. 

A house is the most costly thing that most people will ever buy, so most of us tend to pay close attention to all transactions surrounding homeownership. In 1984, for example, I bought my first house, a bungalow in Toms River. I still recall the purchase price, the initial mortgage payment and the fee I paid my lawyer.

So I find myself wondering how an intelligent person could go through a real-estate transaction of any sort and have no memory of it. Yet that seems to be the case with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez. In a recent Star-Ledger article about that Union City rowhouse he once owned and that is now the subject of a federal investigation, a spokesman for the Menendez campaign claimed the senator has no recollection of whether he got a crucial variance in 1988 that would have permitted it to be rented out for commercial rather than residential use.

TAXPAYERS
BEWARE
What You Don’t Know
Can Cost You
«»
An Inquiry Into
Questionable and Hidden Compensation
for Public School Administrators

TRENTON – The State Commission of Investigation (SCI) today issued the final report of a systemic investigation into questionable and hidden compensation for public school administrators and called for sweeping reforms to ensure full public disclosure, control and oversight of pay and benefit practices that cost New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars every year.