12th District legislators Senator Jennifer Beck, Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon and Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande today urged the legislature to pass A-1444 and S-686, which would change current law by forcing any public official convicted of corruption to forfeit all their public pensions and applying to all public officials, regardless of when their crimes took place.
“Last year during our campaign”, said Casagrande, “Jennifer, Declan and I talked constantly about the fact that the Legislature passed a law that allows double or triple dipping public officials who were convicted of corruption to keep part of their pensions, and which exempts those officials who committed their crimes before the passage of the bill. Wayne Bryant is the poster child for the giant loopholes in that law which need to be closed. No public official convicted of corruption should receive one nickel of public money to fund their retirement. Yet this man could possibly keep all or part of his pension. That’s insane.”
Casagrande was referring to S-14, a bill sponsored by Senators John Adler and Ellen Karcher, which passed in March of 2007. The bill required public officials convicted of corruption to forfeit only the pension connected to the job under which the corruption was committed, leaving those with two or three pensions, like Bryant, able to collect those additional pensions. It also exempted any officials who committed corrupt acts before the bill’s passage, a move that was seen at the time as an attempt to shield Bryant and Newark Mayor Sharpe James from the penalties in the bill.
Beck, who has been a vocal critic of Bryant since his indictment, said the legislators would ask their respective committee chairs to post the bills for a vote.
“We need our committee chairs to post these bills for a vote before the year –end, so that the Legislature can correct these giant loopholes. To have someone who is convicted on 12 counts of corruption, still potentially eligible to collect an $80,000 pension is an insult to every honest, hardworking taxpayer in this state.”
O’Scanlon closed by saying “It is up to the judge to decide what the punishment will be for Wayne Bryant’s crimes as far as jail time. But the Legislature can send a strong message of its own to those who betray the public trust: do the crime and you will lose your right to a publicly funded retirement. We need to bring these bills up for a vote as soon as possible and I urge the Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committee chairs to do that.”
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January 23, 2008
