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).
[…] in places like New Jersey where politicians and government employee unions have strong alliances against […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] other words, interest groups (especially overpaid bureaucrats) control the political process and they are pressuring politicians to divert even more money from […]
[…] already written about state bureaucrats being grossly overpaid (see here and here for some jaw-dropping […]
[…] I hope bureaucrats in New Jersey, California, and Illinois don’t read this article. They might get some additional ideas of […]
[…] ripoff that will get your blood boiling. Depending on your perspective, this may be worse that the toll collector on the New Jersey Turnpike who pocketed more than $300,000 in a single […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
[…] But not New Jersey, the state where you shouldn’t die. That’s the state that many people have been fleeing because they don’t like paying confiscatory taxes to finance bureaucrats who make as much as $320,000 per year. […]
Things like this happens when states are run by liberals.
[…] An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000. […]
I always thought overtime was abused by most government employees.
I agree about the tolls. In this day and age I can’t understand why we still have human toll-takers–and not just for taking money, sometimes they still have them handing out the tickets! It makes no sense, other than as some sort of workfare program. Fortunately they’re starting to be replaced by EasyPass devices, but when you’ve got automated checkout at the supermarket, automated parking garages, etc., there’s no reason to pay a human being to stand in a little box for 8 hours passing out tickets to drivers.
This is RDICULOUS. I agree that transportation bureaucracies are consistently the most corrupt, and has anyone ever realized that states with tolls always seem to have the worst problems? They are a recipe for disaster and we should completely renovate the whole system.
I’m not sure exactly why, but transportation bureaucracies are the WORST in terms of corruption and lack of accountability. Coming from Massachusetts, home of the “Big Dig,” I know that first hand.
Considering that the country is going to need massive upgrades in infrastructure in coming years, what can we do to prevent this behavior from getting worse?