COUNCILMEMBER JAMES SOLOMON ANNOUNCES AUDIT OF FIVE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BODIES TO REDUCE WASTEFUL SPENDING BY FINDING ILLEGAL PAYOUTS

JERSEY CITY, NJ – As part of his recently-announced agenda to strengthen city budget oversight and crack down on wasteful spending, Councilman James Solomon announced that his office plans to audit local governments’ rules around “boat payments:” payouts that public officials receive upon retirement for their accumulated unused sick days and vacation days. The Councilman’s office will be submitting OPRA requests for information from five government entities: Jersey City, the Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority, Hudson County, the Hudson County Schools of Technology, and the Jersey City Board of Education.

“Governments throughout the state and here in Hudson County are giving away tens and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars illegally. I do not know the scope of the problem for Jersey City taxpayers —but the fact that no one knows the scope is unacceptable. We need a simple review of the contracts across five governments that tax Jersey City homeowners to find out, and that’s what we intend to do.”

For decades, longtime public officials have cashed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess unused leave upon exiting office. While the NJ state legislature passed two laws reforming these practices in 2007 and 2010, compliance with the laws is poor. The State Comptroller’s office conducted a 2022 audit of 60 local bodies to see if they were complying with the new rules and found that 57 of 60 were violating them – potentially at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to taxpayers

Neither Jersey City nor Hudson County were audited by the Comptroller, but three municipalities in Hudson County were found to be in violation of the rules to varying degrees.

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James Solomon represents downtown Jersey City as the Ward E Councilperson. He’s focused on building a just city with affordable housing and improved mass transit, bicycling, and pedestrian infrastructure. He is also an adjunct professor of political science at Saint Peter’s University, New Jersey City University, and Hudson County Community College.