Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Anne Milgram; Bully and Criminal

Attorney General Anne Milgram has illegally deprived innocent victims of violent crime of over SIX MILLION DOLLARS ($6,000,000). According to newly acquired information from the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety, for State Fiscal Year 2009 - i.e. from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009 - the New Jersey Victims of Crime Compensation Office has stolen over Six Million Dollars from innocent victims of violent crime.

Bully:

Below is a chart comparing the volume of work produced by that agency for two years while I was Director versus the year since Attorney General Anne Milgram fired me.

VCCO: SFY 07, SFY 08, SFY 09

The above figures illustrate what everyone who is familiar with the VCCO knows, Anne Milgram has dismantled an agency at the expense of innocent victims of violent crime. The people who work at the VCCO have been ordered to conjure any excuse to deny claims. They have gone so far as to review files of claims that were being paid and have informed victims they would cease coverage. This has been especially cruel to victims of sexual assault. In some cases victims have undergone therapy only to open up wounds and then have been told they waited too long to report the rape.

One reason the Attorney General can do this without fear of retribution is she controls all of the grant money that is the lifeblood of many nonprofit organizations that serve crime victims. She is also the chief law enforcement officer in the state, which means she has power over every victim/witness advocate in every prosecutor’s office. Simply put, virtually everyone who works in this field in New Jersey has to be on the good side of the Attorney General or she can fire you or deprive you of needed grant money. Earlier this year she announced all of the nonprofit service providers who would receive victim assistance grants. She disseminated $2,100,000 to a variety of service providers, mostly so they can provide services to victims of domestic violence and rape. She failed to announce at that time that she was also in the process of cutting over $7,000,000 of funds to victims that are supposed to be disseminated by the VCCO. All over the state service providers and victim advocates have gotten used to the idea that the VCCO has been shut down. They know from painful experience that deserving victims have been cruelly denied the funds they need to try to put their lives back together. They did not have any idea of the scope of this deprivation until this writing, but they still will not have any ability to do anything about it because they cannot afford to offend the Attorney General.
To illustrate further, below is a chart showing how some victims that have been revictimized by the Attorney General:

Claims 02

No matter how you look at the numbers, there is only one conclusion: The Attorney General has dismantled the only agency that was serving victims. For the past year the VCCO has been an abject failure. The people who work at the VCCO have been instructed to use any excuse they can conjure to deny claims. That means rape victims are not receiving counseling. Victims of domestic violence are denied the opportunity to leave their surroundings. Parents of murdered children do not have enough money to pay for funerals. Victims of drunk drivers have been denied medical treatment. The final, most outlandish cruelty, the VCCO has deliberately denied the claims of guardians of innocent children that have been sexually molested. In the mind of the Attorney General, the best people to cheat are the ones least able to fight back, in this instance, innocent children who need medical attention after being sexually assaulted. It is almost too mean to imagine, but the VCCO has decided to save money by reducing the payments for victims of child molesters by 76%!

If this was only a matter of the Attorney General deciding to reallocate resources to other, politically powerful entities, it would still be an outrage. Politically speaking, it is easy to pick on crime victims because most of them are poor. Even if they have some resources, they are too devastated from being raped, shot, mugged or overcoming the loss of a child to take on a political fight against the Attorney General.

Criminal:

The VCCO operates almost independently of state tax dollars. In most years, the State of New Jersey taxpayers support the VCCO with less than $1,000,000. It costs approximately $2,500,000 per year to administer the office, so in the end, the taxpayers are not even paying the salaries of the people who work there.

The VCCO receives funds from two types of sources; (1) those within the State of New Jersey and (2) a Federal Government grant. In both cases, the law is absolutely clear. The money must only be used to pay claims of victims. It may not be diverted to other purposes.

(1) New Jersey sources. The two main sources of funds from within New Jersey are (a) assessments paid by defendants in the various courts throughout the state and (b) surcharges paid by inmates in the prisons and jails for purchases at their commissaries. For the State Fiscal Year ending June 30, 2009, the VCCO received over $500,000 per month from the assessments paid by defendants in court. Parenthetically, I am still waiting for a complete Open Public Record Act ("OPRA") production of penalty revenue reports from the Department of Law and Public Safety, but even the incomplete response I have received confirms the agency received approximately $5,954,241. In addition, the agency received a record amount from the commissary surcharge. Again, based on an incomplete OPRA production the final figures are still out, but based on the Department of Law and Public Safety’s production, the prison commissary surcharge yielded approximately $2,698,936. In addition, the agency received restitution from criminals in the amount of $509,290 (source : Victims of Crime Compensation Office Restitution/Subrogation Report) . That is a total in New Jersey State revenue of $9,162,467.

That figure does not include any state taxpayer money! Under statute NJSA 2C:43-3.1 (6)(a) “The Victims of Crime Compensation [Office] Account shall be a separate, nonlapsing, revolving account that shall be administered by the Victims of Crime Compensation [Office]. All moneys deposited in that Account shall be used in satisfying claims pursuant to the provisions of the ‘Criminal Injuries Compensation Act of 1971’”. The statute that directs the collection of funds for the VCCO is clear – the money collected for the VCCO must be spent only on claims from victims to that agency and its related administrative costs. It is illegal to divert those collected funds to any other entity.

(2) Federal Government source. Under the Federal Government’s Office of Victims of Crime, VOCA grant program, each state in the union is provided with a yearly grant. As with the New Jersey funds, the Federal Government VOCA grant does not come from taxpayers, it is derived from a fund collected from defendants in the Federal Justice system. For fiscal year 2009, New Jersey was awarded $5,404,000. That figure is based on a simple formula that applies to every state. Each state’s crime victim compensation agency is awarded a federal grant in the amount of 60% of the total state dollars spent. In fiscal year 2007 the New Jersey VCCO spent $9,005,932.71 dollars from New Jersey sources (source United States Office of Victims of Crime http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/fund/cvfa2009.html ). Consequently, the federal grant for fiscal year 2009 is $5,404,000.

Parenthetically, by reducing the amount New Jersey spent on victims this year, the next federal grant will be considerably lower than it has been. To illustrate, if when the figures are calculated for the current fiscal year the New Jersey VCCO spends only $4,000,000 in state source funds, its consequent federal grant will be only $2,400,000. So by failing to pay victims’ claims as they are supposed to, it not only deprives victims today, it will eliminate the recurring revenue stream from the federal grant, necessitating further deprivation to victims.

Just like the state funds, the VOCA grant must be used for payments to victims through the crime victim compensation agency. As plainly stated on the VOCA website, “Every state administers a crime victim compensation program that provides financial assistance to victims of both federal and state crimes. VOCA allows states to use up to 5 percent of crime victim compensation grant funds for administering the crime victim compensation grant program. Any portion of the allowable 5 percent that is not used for administrative purposes must be used for awards of compensation to victims.”source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/factshts/vococvf/fs_000310.html).

Criminal Law

“NJSA 2C:30-2. Official Misconduct. A public servant is guilty of official misconduct when, with purpose to obtain a benefit for himself or another or injure to or deprive another of a benefit:(b) He knowingly refrains from performing a duty which is imposed upon him by law or is clearly inherent in the nature in the nature of his office. Official misconduct is a crime of the second degree. If the benefit…deprived or sought to be deprived, is of a value of $200.00 or less, the offense of official misconduct is a crime of the third degree.”

In the case at hand, the Attorney General has deliberately deprived crime victims throughout the state of benefits to which they are entitled in millions of dollars, far exceeding the $200 threshold to establish a crime of the second degree. In New Jersey, there is a presumption of incarceration for crimes of the first and second degree. So, if all works out well, Attorney General Anne Milgram can be found guilty, account for the funds stolen from the victims’ fund, and contribute her own assets in the form a victim’s assessment and her purchases in the prison commissary. All will be right with the world!

One may ask, how could the Attorney General do such a thing when she clearly has no authority to divert these funds and the needs of the innocent victims are so compelling. The answer is twofold. First, the attorney general lacks the life experience to be able to empathize with victims. She has never been interested in victims or the work done at that agency. Crime victims do not have hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance lobbyists in the halls of power, so they are invisible to the corrupt hacks who run this government and Anne Milgram is not about to take the initiative to fight for them.

The second reason is she has to defend herself against my whistleblower lawsuit. She fired me in the press, claiming she had no choice because of the way money was spent under my leadership. It was always a false allegation, but now she needs to try to make it true to defend the lawsuit. That is why the VCCO now denies claims for specious reasons. That is why they call rape victims and tell them they are going to stop paying for therapy while they are in treatment. That is why victims of domestic violence are stuck in their surroundings with no means of escape. That is why cruelties are unnecessarily heaped upon people who have already been through hell. And that is why Anne Milgram must be forced to return the funds to the VCCO and that is why she must have no part of running that agency.

It is sad to acknowledge how corrupt and incompetent New Jersey government is. The people of this state are much better than their government. We have gotten used to public officials getting caught accepting bribes. What makes this case so hideous is that I was honest and was doing what the public wanted: I was ridding waste, fraud, and corruption out of the agency and making sure victims got the help they were supposed to get. Many people have been asking aloud, “why are not more public officials honest?” This case shows why. The New Jersey State Government is so rotten to the core that even the Attorney General is a criminal. The people in positions of power, even those in law enforcement, do not take their obligations as public servants seriously because they believe there is no reward for honest work. Maybe when law enforcement starts obeying the law, some of the other public officials might follow suit.
Edward G. Werner Copyright 2009, all rights reserved

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