Our dishonorable Essex County Executive Joe Divincenzo has done it again.
This hack politician is apparently receiving a pension and also a salary. And appears not to care about it.
Star-Ledger reports he is one among many:
DiVincenzo earns an annual salary $153,207, but also has been collecting an annual pension of $68,856 since 2010 under a controversial state law that allows elected officials to "retire" while still in office. The 59-year-old politician took advantage of the loophole even as he worked behind the scenes with the governor to successfully roll back the health and pension benefits of public employees across the state.
DiVincenzo, a Democrat, defended the move in a Star-Ledgerarticle in the fall, arguing that he was playing by the rules and merely cashing in on his nearly three decades as an employee in the county.
The county executive has also come under fire recently for using his campaign account to pay for lavish meals, rounds of golf and annual trips to Puerto Rico. He says the spending was for legitimate political purposes.
And despite a county policy enacted in 1997 that prohibits him and other administrative employees from amassing any more than 40 vacation days at one time, DiVincenzo is sitting on a stockpile of 101.5 vacation days, according to county personnel records. At his current salary, he could trade in those unused vacation days for a $59,691 payout, records show.
The county’s policy states that nonunion employees may carry over more than one year’s worth of vacation days, but they must take the unused days in the next year or lose them. DiVincenzo gets 20 vacation days a year, which means he can only carry a maximum of 40 vacation days at one time.
