A criminal scheme outlined in a 40-page indictment boiled down to this simple point: a powerful state senator and an ambitious college administrator worked behind the scenes to help each other profit illegally at the taxpayers’ expense, authorities said.
A federal indictment says state Sen. Wayne Bryant, D-Lawnside, worked in early 2002 to support Dr. R. Michael Gallagher’s appointment as dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey’s Stratford campus.
Gallagher later helped Bryant get a job at UMDNJ that authorities describe as a no-work position meant to pad the legislator’s pension. In turn, the indictment says, Bryant helped head off an unwanted merger for UMDNJ and steered extra aid to the Stratford school — money that Gallagher allegedly diverted for his own benefit.
Bryant arranged for lawmakers to meet Gallagher, who was vice dean at the time, and recruited four of them to sign a letter of support for his appointment and gave it to then-Gov. James E. McGreevey, the indictment says.
Bryant’s advocacy on behalf of Gallagher enabled the dean to garner an annual base salary of $339,466 in 2002, the indictment says.
Gallagher, in turn, “rigged” the process when Bryant, then a co-chairman of the Budget and Appropriations Committee of the state Senate, was hired in early 2003 as a “program support coordinator” at UMDNJ, at a salary of $38,000 per year, the indictment says.
The indictment says Gallagher concealed from his colleagues at UMDNJ the fact that Bryant was chosen for the job.
Attorney Jeremy Frey, who is representing Gallagher, declined to comment on the indictment.
A federal monitor’s report last September that looked into alleged corruption at the state medical school, which promotes itself as the nation’s largest health sciences university, found that Bryant’s hiring was prompted by the senator’s own request to work for UMDNJ. That request coincided with Gallagher’s agenda to increase state funding for the School of Osteopathic Medicine and the fears of UMDNJ’s then-president Stuart Cook that the institution would be merged with Rutgers University.
In late 2002 or early 2003, Cook said he attended an event at Cooper University Hospital in Camden to discuss the details of a proposed new UMDNJ building on the Cooper Campus.
Bryant approached Cook, “seemingly wearing his hat as advocate for the city of Camden,” and talked about possible tax payments to the city by UMDNJ, the federal monitor said.
“Cook, admittedly uncomfortable dealing with politicians, indicated that Bryant ended the conversation with a request that he (Bryant) be hired by UMDNJ. Now extremely uncomfortable, Cook stated that he ended the conversation abruptly before Bryant indicated what exactly he could do if employed by UMDNJ,” the federal monitor wrote.
A short time later, Cook heard from Gallagher that he wanted to hire Bryant. Gallagher said he instructed his staff to create a position for Bryant to take advantage of his political clout and that Bryant was involved in this plan, according to the federal monitor.
The timing of this news coincided with Cook’s concern over the so-called Vagelos report.
The Vagelos Commission appointed by McGreevey mulled plans to merge Rutgers and UMDNJ — a move that could have created powerhouse campuses in Newark and New Brunswick but left South Jersey without an equal academic center.
Although advocates for the higher-education shakeup said South Jersey had the potential to double its capacity to serve 12,000 graduate and undergraduate students, Bryant was adamantly opposed.
The federal indictment alleges that in October 2002, a commission researching a possible merger of state academic institutions “concluded that UMDNJ failed to “achieve excellence.’ ”
The commission recommended that UMDNJ, Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology be merged into a single university system known as the University of New Jersey.
“The recommendations of the Vagelos Commission, if adopted by the Governor and approved by the Legislature, directly threatened the independence (and) future funding for (the Stratford school).”
During a tense December 2002 Senate Education Committee hearing, Bryant denounced the merger proposal, saying it would create a “separate but unequal” education system at South Jersey’s expense.
Two months later, the indictment says, Gallagher created a position for Bryant on the UMDNJ payroll to serve as “program support coordinator,” responsible for “planning, improving university communications, image, receptivity and relationships with local governments, community and civic organizations.”
From 2003 until 2006, the indictment says, Bryant ensured state budgets benefited the Stratford school to the tune of $4.7 million, inserting language crafted by Gallagher into the 2004 spending plan that brought $800,000 to the college’s Center for Children’s Support.
The pair met with a string of state Cabinet officials, the indictment says, pressuring then-Commissioner of Health and Senior Services Dr. Clifton R. Lacy in 2003 to provide the Cancer Institute of South Jersey with an additional $5 million.
In 2004, Bryant and Gallagher persuaded then-Commissioner of Human Services James Davy to provide $1.5 million to the school’s Center for Children.
The next year, the indictment says, Bryant and Gallagher met with then-state Treasurer John McCormac in Bryant’s Camden office to seek tax relief payments to Stratford, to compensate for land the college hoped to acquire. The indictment did not say whether the payments were made.
Also in 2005, Bryant secured a $200,000 grant from the state Treasury Department to support the Stratford school’s Institute for Successful Aging.
Reach Sarah Greenblatt at (856) 486-2457 or at sgreenb@courierpostonline.com
Source: www.courierpostonline.com
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