Reconfirmation Hearings Would Focus on General (Mis-)Management and Whistleblower Trial
Senator Jennifer Beck (R-12), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman John Adler (D-6) to commence the long-delayed reconfirmation hearing of New Jersey Board of Public Utilities President Jeanne Fox.
Despite having been nominated by Governor Corzine to continue serving as the head of the BPU in February, the reconfirmation of Fox by the Senate Judiciary Committee has been delayed by Chairman Adler pending the outcome of a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a BPU employee claiming he was punished for detailing an unlawful $80 million account created by Fox for unknown purposes using fees paid by ratepayers through their utility bills.
“Regardless of any new information that may become public during the whistleblower trial, there are numerous other issues related to the poor performance of Jeanne Fox as head of the BPU that the Judiciary Committee can begin to tackle now,” said Beck. “Past audits have proven that Fox is a poor manager, and skyrocketing utility bills show that she has done little to protect ratepayers.”
An audit performed by the Department of the Treasury first exposed how Fox funneled more than $80 million in funding through an unlawfully established bank account that was outside of the State accounting system and in violation of established regulations. The account was accessible only by Jeanne Fox and several other staff members at the BPU.
The Treasury audit further exposed: how established procedures were circumvented to determine grant awards; how files and procurement records were shredded, destroyed and lost; rampant cronyism with grant awards; that reporting and oversight were irregular and inadequate; and that potential conflicts of interest were widespread.
An additional investigation by the State Auditor found that financial transactions of the BPU’s Office of Clean Energy (OCE) were performed by a third-party, outside the state’s accounting system. The State Auditor also found that records critical to the evaluation of proposals relating to more that $2.7 million in Clean Energy Program funding “were no longer available,” and that as a result, the Auditor was unable to “verify that decisions were made in evaluation process that were fair, unbiased, and were merited based upon scoring procedures established by the OCE.” The State Auditor found that the BPU, under Fox, had violated a number or established regulations and had disbursed grant funds to a number of recipients that were as much as 50% in excess of their stipulated grant agreements.
Beck added that claims detailed by the whistleblower alleging wrongdoing by Fox, which will be addressed in the upcoming trial, are serious enough to warrant a dedicated hearing for their consideration during the reconfirmation hearings.
“If the claims detailed by the whistleblower are true, that he was punished for exposing wrongdoing at the BPU, including the establishment of an unlawful $80 million bank account, the Judiciary Committee should dedicate a hearing to those issues as related to the reconfirmation of Jeanne Fox upon the conclusion of the lawsuit,” added Beck. “The numerous failures of Jeanne Fox will clearly take substantial time for the committee to fully investigate. I hope that Chairman Adler will agree that we must start now.”
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March 10, 2008
