In the final weeks before the Christie administration closed a facility in Woodbridge for people with disabilities, hundreds of state workers earned $2.7 million just for showing up.
TRENTON -- In the final weeks before the Christie administration closed a facility in Woodbridge for people with developmental disabilities, hundreds of state workers earned $2.7 million just for showing up -- including some seen playing cards and watching TV, according to a report by the Office of the State Auditor.
About 800 to 850 direct-care workers continued to report to the Woodbridge Developmental Center from October through December, even thout only 40 residents still remained there in October, 34 in November, and finally none as of Dec. 11, 2014.
"To accommodate these employees without duties, the Woodbridge Developmental Center converted a number of buildings into 'hubs' equipped with furniture and televisions," according to the audit. "In November 2014, we observed WDC employees in a hub sitting idle, watching television or playing card games."
Last residents at Woodbridge Developmental Center moved out
"According to WDC management, the employees generally assigned to hubs generally refused to volunteer for out-of-title work around the center," the audit said.
Most of these employees continued to show up at Woodbridge until Jan. 9, 2015, when the 50-year-old campus finally closed for good, the audit said.
Civil service rules protect state employees who are faced with layoffs by giving them time and latitude to decide whether there is another job for which they may be qualified, and when they must report to the next job.
But the Department of Human Services -- the state agency that operated Woodbridge as well as the five other remaining developmental centers -- made the decision to keep Woodbridge employees on the payroll an additional 27 days beyond a 120-day layoff notification requirement. Those nearly four weeks cost the $3.2 million in salaries, including $2.7 million paid to "idle" employees, the audit said.
State Auditor Stephen Eells from the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services said he "didn't see a lot of effort" by the department "to encourage individuals not to be sitting idle at a place where they weren't needed."
More direct-care workers were needed at New Lisbon Developmental Center, a facility in Woodland Township in rural Burlington County where former Woodbridge residents had landed. Yet of the 87 Woodbridge employees who were reassigned to New Lisbon, only two agreed to leave Woodbridge in December to assume their new jobs sooner, the audit said.
The Woodbridge facility is the second institution for disabled people the Christie's administration that closed in order to spend more on privately operated community housing and rely less on cost-heavy state institutions. The North Jersey Developmental Center in Totowa closed in July 2014.
The closing at North Jersey contributed to the number of "idle" workers at Woodbridge, the audit noted. Through seniority "bumping" rights, 82 direct care workers were sent to Woodbridge, which "had no need for these employees."
The audit also noted the state overpaid a total of $22,600 to 330 workers who received a night shift bump of 25 cents an hour despite not working any evening shifts. "This was just sloppiness in the record keeping," Eells said.
In a written reply to Eells' office, Acting Human Services Commissioner Elizabeth Connolly generally agreed with the audit's findings but defended the decision seeking more time to execute the layoffs.
Not only were the 1,280 full-time and part-time employees affected at Woodbridge, but so were "all of the department's approximate 14,000 employees included in the layoff process" under civil service rules, Connolly wrote.
"Although the auditors questioned $2.7 million in salary costs, typically half of the costs are reimbursed by the federal government," according to Connolly's response.
Connolly also stressed the $2.7 million in salaries questioned in the audit is dwarfed by the $116.9 million the state saved in closing Woodbridge and North Jersey developmental centers. The administration dedicated $100 million of that to community housing and daily programs.
Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
