On June 21, 2009 I sent a correspondence to the New Jersey State Ethics Commission. (Please see my earlier blog entry). Attached is a copy of their response.
wiechnik_letter_8_24_09.pdf
In New Jersey, we expect state government bureaucrats to cover their asses at the expense of the public, but the State Ethics Commission should have some shame.
The New Jersey State Ethics Commission is the most vivid example of hypocrisy yet. Even the name is misleading. The attached letter purports to be on behalf of the Ethics Commission, but that is not so. The Ethics Commission is nine individuals who only hear news from one source; Kathleen C. Wiechnik, Esq. Ms. Weichnik is the Executive Director of the agency. She does not actually serve on the Commission. She is in charge of the office and she prepares the agenda for the Ethics Commission’s bimonthly meetings. In short, Ms. Wiechnik decides what information is presented to the Ethics Commission.
In my June 21, 2009 letter, I described what by any reasonable standard is an abuse of office by Mr. Jeffrey Stooleman. Mr. Stooleman – you can’t make this up – is in charge of Compliance at the Ethics Commission. His abuses are explained in the June 21, 2009 blog entry, but to summarize, he had an agenda to concoct an excuse to fire me. The Ethics Commission forced my predecessor, Richard Pompelio, out of his job, and they were now trying to do the same thing to me. Stooleman tried as hard as he could to come up with some violation, no matter how trivial, and over and over again he found I was honest and ethical.
But he had to keep trying. Mr. Stooleman is the longtime friend of Mr. Jacob Toporek, who is very well connected politically. Mr. Toporek filed many complaints against me and not one led to any finding of unethical conduct. In Mr. Stooleman, Toporek had the perfect foil. There is no tactic too cheap for Mr. Stooleman. He stooped to using a forged letter to try to soolicit a complaint against me. He received regular reports from a henchman within the agency. He questioned over thirty people for over three years. He even subpoenaed my computer hard drive. What did he find? He found I ran the agency effectively with no ethical lapses. This represents an abuse of authority not just because Mr. Stooleman used his office for political assassination, but because resources that could have been used to investigate true ethics violations were wasted. New Jersey is the laughing stock of the nation because of our corrupt government, and the Ethics Commission Compliance Director wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, to investigate me for three years. According to Ms. Wiechnik, this is “established practice and sound investigative procedure”.
The State Ethics Commission is charged with “enforcing the New Jersey Conflicts of Interest Law”. www.state.nj.us/ethics/ That makes it the perfect tool for political assassination. A political hack, like Mr. Stoolemen, investigates someone until he finds some technicality to use against him. Stooleman is free to harass anyone he wants because his boss will not permit allegations of his wrongdoing to be presented to the Ethics Commission.
Ironically, Ms. Wiechnik does not seem to notice the obvious conflict of interest she had. She decided whether to present this issue to the Ethics Commission. Clearly she has an interest in her own decision because she would risk an unfavorable reflection on herself if Mr. Stooleman’s abuses were investigated by a legitimate authority. If Ms. Wiechnik wanted to legitimately withhold this issue from the Ethics Commission, the ethical thing to do would have been to refer that decision to an independent entity such as an administrative law judge. Of course, the right thing to do would have been to disclose Mr. Stooleman’s conduct to the Ethics Commission and let them investigate it.
Ms. Wiechnik ridiculed my request for an accounting. She writes, “You have indicated the Commission owes you an accounting of the resources utilized in connection with its investigation. I am unaware of any statutory or regulatory authority for your request.” Ms. Wiechnik needed to look no further than the State Ethics Commission’s website. Had she checked she would would have found under the “Procedures” section it states: “The Commission has the power to undertake investigations and hold hearings regarding alleged violations of the Conflicts Law. The Commission also issues advisory opinions concerning whether a given set of facts and circumstances would in the Commission's opinion constitute possible violations of the Conflicts Law or any code, rules or regulations promulgated pursuant thereto.”
If we were to take Ms. Wiechnik’s letter seriously, we would wonder how she could possibly be unaware her agency has the authority to determine if Mr. Stooleman wasted three years’ time and untold amounts of money to conduct a sham investigation and whether the facts of this case represent a conflict of interest. Of course, Ms. Wiechnik is not to be taken seriously. She is content to take paychecks in return for covering up corruption.
In the end, this is just one more sad example of how far corruption has gone in this state government, and one more sad example of why it will continue for a long time to come.
Copyright 2009, Edward G. Werner, all rights reserved
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims
September 25, 2009 is National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims.
This year, please take a few minutes to consider the cost each of us pays every day for our society's collective failure to address violence and what we can do to stop it.
Forty-one years ago, Senator Robert F. Kennedy addressed the nation on the Mindless Menace of Violence.
Robert F. Kennedy speech ~ Mindless Menace of V...
These words, especially prescient immediately following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are as true and important today as they were on April 5, 1968. That is both a testament to the intelligence, compassion, and eloquence of Senator Kennedy, and a sad commentary on our society. Let this year's Day of Remembrance be both a solemn time for reflection and an inspiring time for action.
Please take the time on September 25th for a moment of silence to remember those who have fallen and then consider doing something affirmative to stop the violence. No means is too small to contribute to this great end. It may be something as simple e-mailing your representatives asking what they are doing to stop the violence; calling someone you know who has lost a loved one, just to let them know the one they lost is not forgotten; or contacting groups that are combating violence in society and volunteering to help in the effort.
When we make time to remember our loved ones and take the initiative to make lasting changes in their memories, they will know it. Each of them will look down upon us with joy, and their presence here on earth will never perish.
Edward G. Werner
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved
This year, please take a few minutes to consider the cost each of us pays every day for our society's collective failure to address violence and what we can do to stop it.
Forty-one years ago, Senator Robert F. Kennedy addressed the nation on the Mindless Menace of Violence.
Robert F. Kennedy speech ~ Mindless Menace of V...
These words, especially prescient immediately following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are as true and important today as they were on April 5, 1968. That is both a testament to the intelligence, compassion, and eloquence of Senator Kennedy, and a sad commentary on our society. Let this year's Day of Remembrance be both a solemn time for reflection and an inspiring time for action.
Please take the time on September 25th for a moment of silence to remember those who have fallen and then consider doing something affirmative to stop the violence. No means is too small to contribute to this great end. It may be something as simple e-mailing your representatives asking what they are doing to stop the violence; calling someone you know who has lost a loved one, just to let them know the one they lost is not forgotten; or contacting groups that are combating violence in society and volunteering to help in the effort.
When we make time to remember our loved ones and take the initiative to make lasting changes in their memories, they will know it. Each of them will look down upon us with joy, and their presence here on earth will never perish.
Edward G. Werner
Copyright 2009, all rights reserved
Friday, September 4, 2009
The Privilege is All Theirs
In the sixties they had a saying, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” When it comes to fighting corruption in the Garden State, the New Jersey Inspector General is boldly part of the problem. The Inspector General collaborated with the Attorney General to contrive an alibi to fire me. The real reason they had to fire me is because I am honest. In our corrupt state, that would be just one more ugly example of why the public is disgusted with the government. What makes this so hideous is the price for this hypocrisy has been foisted upon the most vulnerable citizens: innocent victims of violent crime.
As written in the previous blog entry, the Attorney General has illegally deprived thousands of innocent victims of over seven million dollars ($7,000,000) of services. While the Inspector General enjoys her big salary and benefits, rape victims go without counseling, shooting victims with no insurance are bankrupted by medical bills, parents of murdered children are dunned by funeral directors for burial costs they cannot pay, and victims of domestic violence are unnecessarily trapped in dangerous surroundings.
To digress, the VCCA processes thousands of claims each year. With a full-time staff of only 38 people, for the first eleven months of State fiscal year 2008, the VCCA received 3824 new claims. During that same time period, 2160 claims were deemed eligible for compensation and paid, 224 were deemed eligible with no compensable losses, 434 were deemed ineligible, 785 closed for administrative reasons. The people who work at the VCCA are diligent and professional in every way. Most of them have worked there for ten years or longer. They have both a tremendous amount of knowledge and a sincere desire to serve the people who come there for help. Most people in New Jersey have never heard of the VCCA because it is not an agency that advertises. It is well known to law enforcement agencies, medical professionals, and funeral directors – they are the people who most often refer people to the VCCA. I have found that once people understand what the VCCA does, they universally like it.
The VCCA costs taxpayers virtually nothing. During the years I headed the agency, we paid approximately $13,000,000 in benefits to victims per year, with administrative costs of approximately $2,500,000. Our revenue comes almost exclusively from criminal defendants. Each year we received approximately $7,000,000 from fees charged to guilty defendants in the various courts throughout the state, approximately $2,500,000 from fees charged to inmates at the commissaries in the prisons and jails, approximately $5,000,000 from a federal grant - money is derived from criminals in the federal system – and approximately $500,000 from restitution paid to the agency by criminals. Tax revenue does not even cover the cost of administering the office, and in return, every year thousands of citizens injured by violent crime get the help they need as a consequence of that crime.
In January 2008, I was informed by my supervisor in the Department of Treasury, David Ridolfino, the Inspector General was going to be investigating us. I looked upon this as an opportunity to display the good work we were doing and to seek constructive criticism. After an initial meeting with their investigators, I invited them to our weekly Supervisor meetings. The claims were processed by a team of investigators who report to a Supervisor. Each Supervisor had at least ten years of experience, so they were each well versed in the issues that arose and how we responded to them. As they were reviewing the claims, they set aside any one for which they were uncertain as to whether the victim’s claim should be paid. Each Tuesday, we met in the agency’s conference room where we went over the claims and the issues. A debate ensued at which everyone was free to voice their opinions about whether the claim should be paid. Sometimes the debates got spirited, and often there was a compromise reached before the decision was final. In every case there was serious consideration of the needs of the victim and our ability to meet those in keeping with the spirit and letter of the law. The Inspector General’s investigators and her lawyers sat in on these meetings for approximately six months. At no time did any of them approach me with any negative comments as to what we were doing.
It was clear to me in speaking to them that they had absolutely no background in this area and were ignorant of the agency and its governing statute and administrative code. If they had checked, they would have discovered the governing statute and administrative code are filled with qualifying language, giving the agency leniency to meet its goal – i.e. to assist innocent victims of violent crime who cooperate with law enforcement and have no money to pay for necessary services. This is the clear sentiment of the statute and administrative code and they have been so interpreted by the State Supreme Court.
In spite of the fact that the Inspector General had not completed her investigation, she responded to a request from the Attorney General for a letter that made it sound like she had found some reason for the Attorney General to fire me. She not only wrote the letter to the Attorney General, she published it on her website, where it is still on display. The letter, to which I have never been given an opportunity to respond, is meritless for several reasons. I was in charge of that agency for two and one half years. The letter refers to findings from a five year period. It never mentions me by name and never identifies any finding to have taken place during the time I was in charge. I had the opportunity to meet with the Inspector General and her staff in August, 2008. At that meeting, recorded on CD, it is painfully obvious the Inspector General was clueless. All allegations of wrongdoing in her letter are either referring to the time when the agency was under the supervision of my predecessor, or are the product of her ignorance as to the New Jersey State Constitution, statute, administrative code, and controlling legal precedents. Had the Attorney General been acting in good faith, she would have tried to determine if there was any validity to the allegations. Instead, she got the letter and made it her excuse to fire me in the press the following day.
Werner Attachment 9
It is helpful to digress and consider just what the Inspector General is supposed to be doing. The Office of the New Jersey Inspector General was created by Acting Governor Codey via Executive Order #7 on November 29, 2004. Its mission- as if written by George Orwell- is to “guard against extravagance, waste or fiscal mismanagement in the administration of any state appropriations”. Paragraph 10 of Acting Governor Codey’s Order compels the Inspector General to provide periodic reports to the Governor and issue a public annual report to the Governor and the Legislature.
Several weeks ago I made an Open Public Records Act request for any reports issued by the Inspector General regarding the investigation of the Victims of Crime Compensation Agency and the annual reports for state fiscal years 2008 and 2009. I received a response, attached below:
I G No Reports Letter
This response, or lack thereof, raises several questions. First, how can an agency that is supposed to be investigating mismanagement be so mismanaged that it fails to issue an annual report for fiscal years 2008 and 2009? The state fiscal year ends June 30th every year, that means the Inspector General has failed to report her activities to the public since June 30, 2007 – more than two years ago! Second, with all of the corruption in the New Jersey state government, how can the Inspector General justify spending so much of her resources investigating one agency like the VCCO? The Inspector General has had a team of lawyers and investigators culling though every file and interrogating every person who works at that agency for almost two years! Resources that could have been used to root out corruption were dedicated to conjuring an excuse to fire me, and she still cannot come up with one! Third, if the Inspector General’s investigation was so preliminary that she still had over one year to go, then why did the Attorney General use that letter to fire me without so much as getting my side of the story? And finally, if the Inspector General is aserting her privilege to deny a open public records act request for the results of a pending investigation, then why does she continue to publish the preliminary findings - many of which she now knows to be wrong - on her website?
The truth of the matter is this: The Inspector General has not produced an annual report in two years and has not produced any report about the investigation of the Crime Victims Compensation Agency because she cannot admit she has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do nothing more than drum up some phony excuse to fire me. The Inspector General has abused her authority to the extent that she cannot even produce an annual report. Apparently her agency has been so obsessed with the VCCA that she has done nothing in the interim to find any waste any place else in the government.
The Inspector General has done one thing for corruption: She has sacrificed her responsibility at the altar of public corruption. By collaborating with the Attorney General in this endeavor she has contributed to the pain and suffering of crime victims throughout New Jersey. A majority of these victims are women; victims of rape who cannot get therapy and victims of domestic violence who cannot escape their surroundings. They are women who do not have nice salaries and nice offices like the Attorney General and the Inspector General. She has also made it easy for the corrupt people within government to continue their crimes unabated by the agency that is supposed stop it. Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper is supposed to part of the solution to waste and fraud, but instead, she is a big part of the problem.
Edward Werner
Copyright (c) 2009, all rights reserved
As written in the previous blog entry, the Attorney General has illegally deprived thousands of innocent victims of over seven million dollars ($7,000,000) of services. While the Inspector General enjoys her big salary and benefits, rape victims go without counseling, shooting victims with no insurance are bankrupted by medical bills, parents of murdered children are dunned by funeral directors for burial costs they cannot pay, and victims of domestic violence are unnecessarily trapped in dangerous surroundings.
To digress, the VCCA processes thousands of claims each year. With a full-time staff of only 38 people, for the first eleven months of State fiscal year 2008, the VCCA received 3824 new claims. During that same time period, 2160 claims were deemed eligible for compensation and paid, 224 were deemed eligible with no compensable losses, 434 were deemed ineligible, 785 closed for administrative reasons. The people who work at the VCCA are diligent and professional in every way. Most of them have worked there for ten years or longer. They have both a tremendous amount of knowledge and a sincere desire to serve the people who come there for help. Most people in New Jersey have never heard of the VCCA because it is not an agency that advertises. It is well known to law enforcement agencies, medical professionals, and funeral directors – they are the people who most often refer people to the VCCA. I have found that once people understand what the VCCA does, they universally like it.
The VCCA costs taxpayers virtually nothing. During the years I headed the agency, we paid approximately $13,000,000 in benefits to victims per year, with administrative costs of approximately $2,500,000. Our revenue comes almost exclusively from criminal defendants. Each year we received approximately $7,000,000 from fees charged to guilty defendants in the various courts throughout the state, approximately $2,500,000 from fees charged to inmates at the commissaries in the prisons and jails, approximately $5,000,000 from a federal grant - money is derived from criminals in the federal system – and approximately $500,000 from restitution paid to the agency by criminals. Tax revenue does not even cover the cost of administering the office, and in return, every year thousands of citizens injured by violent crime get the help they need as a consequence of that crime.
In January 2008, I was informed by my supervisor in the Department of Treasury, David Ridolfino, the Inspector General was going to be investigating us. I looked upon this as an opportunity to display the good work we were doing and to seek constructive criticism. After an initial meeting with their investigators, I invited them to our weekly Supervisor meetings. The claims were processed by a team of investigators who report to a Supervisor. Each Supervisor had at least ten years of experience, so they were each well versed in the issues that arose and how we responded to them. As they were reviewing the claims, they set aside any one for which they were uncertain as to whether the victim’s claim should be paid. Each Tuesday, we met in the agency’s conference room where we went over the claims and the issues. A debate ensued at which everyone was free to voice their opinions about whether the claim should be paid. Sometimes the debates got spirited, and often there was a compromise reached before the decision was final. In every case there was serious consideration of the needs of the victim and our ability to meet those in keeping with the spirit and letter of the law. The Inspector General’s investigators and her lawyers sat in on these meetings for approximately six months. At no time did any of them approach me with any negative comments as to what we were doing.
It was clear to me in speaking to them that they had absolutely no background in this area and were ignorant of the agency and its governing statute and administrative code. If they had checked, they would have discovered the governing statute and administrative code are filled with qualifying language, giving the agency leniency to meet its goal – i.e. to assist innocent victims of violent crime who cooperate with law enforcement and have no money to pay for necessary services. This is the clear sentiment of the statute and administrative code and they have been so interpreted by the State Supreme Court.
In spite of the fact that the Inspector General had not completed her investigation, she responded to a request from the Attorney General for a letter that made it sound like she had found some reason for the Attorney General to fire me. She not only wrote the letter to the Attorney General, she published it on her website, where it is still on display. The letter, to which I have never been given an opportunity to respond, is meritless for several reasons. I was in charge of that agency for two and one half years. The letter refers to findings from a five year period. It never mentions me by name and never identifies any finding to have taken place during the time I was in charge. I had the opportunity to meet with the Inspector General and her staff in August, 2008. At that meeting, recorded on CD, it is painfully obvious the Inspector General was clueless. All allegations of wrongdoing in her letter are either referring to the time when the agency was under the supervision of my predecessor, or are the product of her ignorance as to the New Jersey State Constitution, statute, administrative code, and controlling legal precedents. Had the Attorney General been acting in good faith, she would have tried to determine if there was any validity to the allegations. Instead, she got the letter and made it her excuse to fire me in the press the following day.
Werner Attachment 9
It is helpful to digress and consider just what the Inspector General is supposed to be doing. The Office of the New Jersey Inspector General was created by Acting Governor Codey via Executive Order #7 on November 29, 2004. Its mission- as if written by George Orwell- is to “guard against extravagance, waste or fiscal mismanagement in the administration of any state appropriations”. Paragraph 10 of Acting Governor Codey’s Order compels the Inspector General to provide periodic reports to the Governor and issue a public annual report to the Governor and the Legislature.
Several weeks ago I made an Open Public Records Act request for any reports issued by the Inspector General regarding the investigation of the Victims of Crime Compensation Agency and the annual reports for state fiscal years 2008 and 2009. I received a response, attached below:
I G No Reports Letter
This response, or lack thereof, raises several questions. First, how can an agency that is supposed to be investigating mismanagement be so mismanaged that it fails to issue an annual report for fiscal years 2008 and 2009? The state fiscal year ends June 30th every year, that means the Inspector General has failed to report her activities to the public since June 30, 2007 – more than two years ago! Second, with all of the corruption in the New Jersey state government, how can the Inspector General justify spending so much of her resources investigating one agency like the VCCO? The Inspector General has had a team of lawyers and investigators culling though every file and interrogating every person who works at that agency for almost two years! Resources that could have been used to root out corruption were dedicated to conjuring an excuse to fire me, and she still cannot come up with one! Third, if the Inspector General’s investigation was so preliminary that she still had over one year to go, then why did the Attorney General use that letter to fire me without so much as getting my side of the story? And finally, if the Inspector General is aserting her privilege to deny a open public records act request for the results of a pending investigation, then why does she continue to publish the preliminary findings - many of which she now knows to be wrong - on her website?
The truth of the matter is this: The Inspector General has not produced an annual report in two years and has not produced any report about the investigation of the Crime Victims Compensation Agency because she cannot admit she has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do nothing more than drum up some phony excuse to fire me. The Inspector General has abused her authority to the extent that she cannot even produce an annual report. Apparently her agency has been so obsessed with the VCCA that she has done nothing in the interim to find any waste any place else in the government.
The Inspector General has done one thing for corruption: She has sacrificed her responsibility at the altar of public corruption. By collaborating with the Attorney General in this endeavor she has contributed to the pain and suffering of crime victims throughout New Jersey. A majority of these victims are women; victims of rape who cannot get therapy and victims of domestic violence who cannot escape their surroundings. They are women who do not have nice salaries and nice offices like the Attorney General and the Inspector General. She has also made it easy for the corrupt people within government to continue their crimes unabated by the agency that is supposed stop it. Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper is supposed to part of the solution to waste and fraud, but instead, she is a big part of the problem.
Edward Werner
Copyright (c) 2009, all rights reserved
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