Nine summer interns have been selected to work at the Plainfield Municipal Utilities Authority after a joint selection process by authority personnel and a commissioners' committee.
The program was supposed to start July 8, but was delayed after a special meeting on July 1 at which two commissioners sought to disband it for 2013. Commissioner Harold Mitchell said the authority should not expend $28,000 on interns in light of layoffs and furloughs for regular employees. Mitchell and Commissioner Alex Toliver voted "yes" to drop the program for 2013, but Commissioners Carol Brokaw, Malcolm Dunn and Chairman Cecil Sanders voted "no."
Brokaw had called for the selection process to be advertised and for it to be a joint effort by PMUA personnel staff and a commissioners' committee. On Tuesday, she asked for the names to be given to the commissioners and also to be made public. The names were not revealed at the meeting.
It came to light in the July 1 discussion that past interns had been solely relatives of staff or commissioners. Dunn decried the practice, saying nepotism "blemished" the program. Sanders said it would be stopped.
(See Plaintalker's coverage of the July 1 meeting here.) Sanders said the $28,000 had already been budgeted, so dropping the program would have no effect on the layoffs or furloughs.
PMUA Chief Financial Officer Duane Young, sitting in Tuesday for Executive Director Dan Williamson, said the interns were college students or college-bound and Plainfield residents were chosen first.
Interns had previously received $2,000 to $3,000 for the summer jobs, in effect a perk for PMUA families if, as indicated on July 1, all were relatives of staff or commissioners and used the funds to defray college costs.
--Bernice
as with the past interns, I'm hoping these interns "looked like them" so as not to sully the program
ReplyDeletePMUA's muckety-mucks take us for fools to think that the nepotism they've admitted existed in the summer intern program hasn't existed system-wide all along. Such practices fueled the massive overstaffing that has now come home to roost in layoffs of about 20% of the employees over the last several years, as well as across the board furloughs.
ReplyDeleteBetween the sewage that flows from the City Council onto the Board of Commissioners, and from the Board onto the Council, there is no oversight and no checks and balances to rein in even its most egregious practices. Among these remain the theft by a variety of commissioners of over $600,000 in illegal compensation, and contract fraud dating as far back as 1998 which resulted in a reversal of cash flows and the unauthorized payout of $100,000 in cash each and every month by the City to the Authority. For this we had the pleasure of seating freebooters on the Board to engineer the $1,000,000 settlement with two top executives who quit after holding up their end of ongoing fraud and mismanagement.
Undergirding all this is a legal counsel whose firm has pocketed millions in fees since the beginning, and whose advisory opinions are filled with so many holes you would think a first-grader was dreaming them up. And of course the auditors too, who have looked the other way while financial statements were slowly massaged with misleading and materially false statements. Both have contributed generously to various campaigns from Council on up to State Assembly to buy the policial impotency required to keep the game going.
Interns, enjoy your summer, or what's left of it.
Sounds like same-o same-o. Wonder whose kids from PMUA got the money.
ReplyDeleteTwo Points -
ReplyDelete1. PMUA managers used to give themselves large bonuses each year! Do they still?
2. When I worked for the City I tried to get my daughter a 4 week internship but was told no due to nepotism. I have seen many examples approved since. PS - I don't look like them.
Thank Goodness we have a solid Democratic Council & Mayor over looking all of this. Christie would do something mean like cut the rates the homeowners pay to support all this valuable service previously so cheap by private contractors and the little pumping station section of the yard.
ReplyDeleteDon't understand how the names of these interns can be kept secret. This is our tax money.
ReplyDeleteSign me,
Naive
Well one of the interns (whose mother works for the PMUA) isn't even a student at any school. How does that work for the residents of Plainfield who do not work at the authority, who have children that are home for the summer, and cannot find sumer employment? That's why none of the names were released. Shady boots:-):-):-)
ReplyDelete