N.J. comptroller says Turnpike Authority is overpaying its employees, gave $30M in bonuses
Clik here to view.
N.J. State Comptroller Matthew Boxer in this June 2010 photo.Who knew that there is a business that gives bonuses for shoveling snow or working on your birthday, that throws a $10,000 event that nobody attends and pays for an employee bowling league?
Where is this workplace paradise?
That would be your own New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
"It’s amazing when you peel back the curtain — sometimes you see waste and corruption," Peter Kennedy of New York City said between Exits 12 and 11. "It’s upsetting when you see the perks."
"Sign me up," said traveler John Klosek of Sayreville, stopping at the Turnpike’s Thomas Edison service plaza in Woodbridge. "Since I haven’t had a pay raise in six years and I don’t get any of the stuff they’re getting, of course I’m not happy."
An audit by state Comptroller Matthew Boxer found $43 million in waste at the Turnpike Authority during the heart of the Great Recession in 2008-09.
Among the examples: Bonuses for shoveling snow or working on a birthday; public toll dollars used to pay for an employee bowling league; and free E-ZPass transponders for the commute to and from work.
Much of the waste followed toll hikes at the end of 2008, Boxer said.
"You almost get the sense that there is this attitude of, ‘Well, it’s not my money,’" Boxer said during an interview today.
Boxer said the audit found that the authority, which oversees the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway, gave about $30 million in bonuses to employees and management without consideration of performance.
Even after they were paid overtime for removing snow, individual employees were given an additional $1,000 to $1,700 "snow bonus," costing the authority $268,000 collectively in 2008-09.
Workers in one collective bargaining unit were given bonuses for working on their birthday, the audit found.
Among the other examples of waste cited by the audit:
• Free E-ZPass transponders for the commute to and from work, saving employees collectively an estimated $430,000 a year.• A total of $274,000 in "anniversary bonuses" for part-time toll collectors after four years of employment.
•â $89,000 for scholarships for children of authority employees
• $12,000 for an employee bowling league
• $10,000 to cover costs for a toll operators event — which none of the authority’s employees attended.
"The audit team was reporting back that there was above-normal employee compensation, and that compensation was structured in a way that really hindered the transparency of the payments," Boxer said.
Management, despite not being covered by the collective bargaining process, also benefited from the bonuses and payouts, the audit found.
All 10 of the employee agreements are set to expire next year, and Boxer recommended that the questionable bonuses be eliminated.
Responding to the audit, newly hired authority executive director Veronique Hakim noted that by the end of this year, the authority will stop giving E-ZPass transponders to employees for commuting.
"In addition, prior to the issuing of this report, the Authority had reviewed these types of ‘employee relations’ payments referenced in the report and had eliminated payments such as that to the bowling league," Hakim wrote.
Hakim and state transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson, who chairs the authority, today outlined a series of reform measures.
In addition to taking back the E-ZPass transponders, the authority will, among other steps, eliminate future annual payouts for vacation and sick leave and longevity for non-union workers — and plans to eliminate those extras in the new union contracts next year.
Also, the employee relations account, which was previously used to fund non-profit and charitable activities, will be eliminated, and authority employees will have to take a new ethics training program.
Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, said the governor is taking the same approach at the Turnpike Authority as he did at the Delaware River Port Authority, which has come under fire for its spending practices.
"It’s just stunning that some of these perks were actually built into labor contracts negotiated by the prior administration," Drewniak said. "Well, those contracts — all 10 of them — are up in 2011, and it’s safe to say that they will not include built-in abuses like these. I mean, who in the private work world gets anything like a bonus for working on their birthday?"
Franceline Ehret, a toll collector for 25 years and president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local No. 194, which represents Turnpike toll collectors, said some of the bonuses are not what they might seem.
Not all bonuses are given to every union, she said. And many of the bonuses were negotiated in response to givebacks the unions made in other areas.
Ehret said that in the case of the "separation bonus" — given to employees leaving the authority after 10 years of service — the unions negotiated it in response to the trend of older workers being encouraged to leave so they could be replaced by workers with less pay and benefits.
She also said employees were forced to get the E-ZPass transponders so they could more easily travel between interchanges for their work, but that many employees didn’t want them because they still blamed E-ZPass for putting collectors out of work.
"We always go to the table expecting to negotiate in good faith," Ehret said. "It’s open season on unions right now, I guess. We believe our workers are just as entitled to a middle class living as any others."
Harsh criticism of the Turnpike Authority is only the latest seething review of government spending since Comptroller Matthew Boxer took office in January 2008.
By Mike Frassinelli and Carmen Juri / The Star-Ledger