Transparency in Government Act

June 3, 2009

Contact: Senate Republican Office / 609-292-5199
Transparency in Government

In our continuing effort to demonstrate the need for the Transparency in Government Act, which would require all New Jersey government spending to be made available and searchable on an easy to use public website, here is Part 3 of our series, Your Tax $$$ at Work?  In this series, we present examples of how government bureaucracy hides the wasteful spending of taxpayer funds.

Your Tax $$$ at Work? Part 3 – Paying State Employees Tuition Reimbursement for Classes that Have Nothing to Do with Their Jobs.

Attached are actual payment vouchers that were paid by the State of New Jersey to reimburse government employees for enrolling in college classes like Introduction to Music, Theater Appreciation and Chorus I.

In some instances, the state employees that are being paid with New Jersey taxpayer funds to attend these classes are not even New Jersey residents.

Click here to view the receipts and supporting documentation.

These documents reveal a number of state employees who appear to be aspiring artists, based on the following classes that they are taking at taxpayer expense:

• $1017.15 was paid to reimburse an employee for serveral classes, including Workshop in Art: Ceramics;
• $1287 was paid to another worker for three classes, including Theater Appreciation;
• $109.50 for attending Introduction to Music was paid to one employee;
• $146 was remibursed to another employee for a pair of classes, including Chorus I;
• $306.25 paid for another worker to attend a pair of classes, including Art Appreciation; and
• $219 was paid to yet another state employee for taking Introduction to Theater.

Among the numerous other examples of classes that taxpayers paid for state employees to attend include: The World Ocean, Arab Israeli Conflict, Christian Social Conscience and Introduction to Gender Studies.

With multi-billion dollar deficits year after year, skyrocketing taxes and shrinking property tax relief, why are taxpayers paying for state employees to take classes on Theater Appreciation and the like?

These documents were obtained only after numerous formal OPRA requests and demonstrate wasteful government spending that the public would likely never see.

These receipts further demonstrate the need for the Transparency in Government Act which would require all government spending to be made easily searchable on a public website.

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