Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats: The $320K-per-Year New Jersey Turnpike Employee

This definitely belongs in the OMG category. Bureaucrats at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority are ripping off taxpayer is a spectacular fashion. Here are some stunning details.

Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses.  In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included. The audit says that toll dollars From the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway were spent on items ranging from an employee bowling league to employee bonuses for working on birthdays and holidays. It took place as tolls were being increased. The biggest expense uncovered in the audit was $30 million in unjustified bonuses to employees and management in 2008 and 2009 without consideration of performance. One example was paying employees overtime for removing snow and working holidays and then giving additional “snow removal bonuses” and “holiday bonuses.” …Among the questionable legal expenses was a billing for $111,840 for a law firm’s weekly internal status meetings that were generally attended by 10 to 15 of the firm’s attorneys and two to three of its paralegals.

P.S. I’m getting rid of the “Part XLIII” part of the “Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats” series. In the beginning, I figured it was a good way of emphasizing the scope of the problem, but now it’s become a bit of a pain (especially since I started having to go online to figure out how to translate numbers into roman numerals).