Hiding something?
The underlying facts of the controversy seem to present no great investigative challenge requiring the sleuthing acumen of a Sherlock Holmes. Either Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno pulled a fast one with a public pension plan or she didn’t. If she didn’t, how is that conclusion reached? Seemingly a simple question, easily answered. Yet the Christie administration has tap-danced around with the question, raising suspicions rather than allaying them.
Did Guadagno game the state-administered Police and Firemen’s Retirement System (PFRS) in 2008 when she was Monmouth County Sheriff so that a top aide could dubiously collect both a salary and pension totalling $172,500 a year? The board of trustees of the PFRS seems to think it a distinct possibility. It asked the Criminal Justice Division under the state Attorney General to investigate. So has it?
If not, why not? If it has, what was the conclusion? If the conclusion was that there was no impropriety, how are the peculiar underlying facts of the controversy explained? And if an investigation’s pending, why’s it taking so long given that the basic facts have been established? The question rudely pushes its way to the forefront: Is there something to hide? How do you explain the following:
— Then-Sheriff Guadagno announced in a 2008 staff memo and on the sheriff’s website that she had hired a second-incommand with the title of “Chief of Law Enforcement.” Her organizational table also listed the new hire, Michael Donovan Jr. — a retired prosecutor’s investigator and Christie political supporter — as having that title.
— But a Guadagno news release described him as having been hired in a lower-ranking post in charge of serving warrants. Likewise, the written oath of office Donovan signed and county payroll records listed him in a warrants-officer capacity.
NJWatchdog.org raised the question whether these contradictory documents were part of a ruse enabling Donovan to draw both a salary and a pension check. As a Chief of Law Enforcement, NJWatchdog says, he was obligated to stop receiving pension checks from the PFRS, re-enroll in the system and resume paying contributions to the pension plan. The pension trustees agree.
If so, Donovan could owe $245,000 including $18,000 of evaded pension system contributions, NJWatchdog.org says. It adds this: It’s a misdemeanor to willfully falsify pension records with the intent of enabling someone to scam a public retirement plan. Guadagna is widely regarded as a capable backup to the governor. Her background includes stints as a federal and state prosecutor. Her impressive curriculum vitae, of course, doesn’t exempt her actions from scrutiny.
Were the contradictory Guadagno documents just a series of innocent clerical flubs? Are the misgivings of NJWatchdog.org and the PFSR board of trustees the result of overactive imaginations or misinterpretations of pension system rules? Why’s it taking years to evaluate established facts in light of regulations and law and make a call whether there was impropriety or not? Why all hush-hush legal and bureaucratic moves surrounding the case?