Anonymous ID: f2fbb3 April 24, 2019, 5:19 a.m. No.6295311   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>5315 >>5320 >>5404 >>5429 >>5490 >>5642

CEO of NJ Schools Development Authority Resigns Amidst Scandals

 

Lizette Delgado-Polanco, the embattled chief executive of the Schools Development Authority, has submitted her resignation after weeks of controversy surrounding her leadership of an agency at a crossroads.

 

Her resignation comes a week before she was scheduled to testify to the Senate Budget Committee, where she was likely to face much tougher questioning than she did from lawmakers in the Assembly committee earlier this month. In that appearance, Delgado-Polanco remained defiant and insisted, as she had for weeks, that she had simply done what other CEOs do when they take charge.

 

Few people agreed with that. The new employees she hired included a cousin who had been accused of sexual harassment — and resigned — the mother of her grandchild, a friend of her daughter's and multiple people with whom she worked at unions. At least 10 of her hires did not have college degrees or qualifications listed in job descriptions, the Network found.

 

Her management of the authority prompted multiple investigations, led to calls for the authority to be abolished and drew demands from former employees for her to resign. Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, was one of many who expressed surprise last week that she had held on to her position for so long.

 

But as the vice chairwoman of the Democratic State Committee and a former union leader, Delgado-Polanco had ties to Gov. Phil Murphy's core constituencies.

 

Murphy's office did not immediately comment on her resignation.

 

Her resignation comes a week before she was scheduled to testify to the Senate Budget Committee, where she was likely to face much tougher questioning than she did from lawmakers in the Assembly committee earlier this month. In that appearance, Delgado-Polanco remained defiant and insisted, as she had for weeks, that she had simply done what other CEOs do when they take charge.

 

Few people agreed with that. The new employees she hired included a cousin who had been accused of sexual harassment — and resigned — the mother of her grandchild, a friend of her daughter's and multiple people with whom she worked at unions. At least 10 of her hires did not have college degrees or qualifications listed in job descriptions, the Network found.

 

Delgado-Polanco came to the authority in August with the charge of leading it to secure billions of dollars in new bonding power to continue its mission. The authority, which was created in the wake of a previous scandal, has run out of money for new projects but needs much more to build schools in the 31 so-called SDA districts around the state.

 

The authority's existing debt already costs taxpayers $1 billion a year.

 

The authority became the focus of negative attention shortly after Delgado-Polanco took command when her chief of staff, Al Alvarez, abruptly resigned over a sexual assault allegation from the Murphy campaign. Delgado-Polanco said she was not aware of the allegation when she was hired.

 

But the authority's fate was thrown into doubt once details of the restructuring she led became public. Sweeney renewed his call for the authority to be abolished and has proposed folding it into the Economic Development Authority. But that agency is also at the center of controversy over tax breaks, and board members have resisted Murphy's call for them to resign.

 

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/watchdog/2019/04/23/lizette-delgado-polanco-resigns-nj-schools-development-authority/3552712002/

Anonymous ID: f2fbb3 April 24, 2019, 5:42 a.m. No.6295429   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>6295311

 

Lizette Delgado–Polanco was born in the Bronx, New York to Dominican parents. Her mother had been forced to leave the Dominican Republic in the 1960s because of her family’s participation in the resistance party, El Partido Revolucionario Dominicano. Ms. Delgado–Polanco moved to Hammonton, New Jersey as a young child and resided there with her aunt. When she was 13 her family was able to return to the Dominican Republic in 1980, where her grandfather was named the head of the Department of Agriculture. After graduating from high school in the Dominican Republic, Ms. Delgado–Polanco returned to the United States and settled in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After a wrongful termination, Ms. Delgado–Polanco became deeply involved with local unions, resulting in her working as a bilingual representative for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees [HERE], Local 54. Because of her work with unions, and their Hispanic members, Ms. Delgado–Polanco became involved with local and state wide politics, culminating in being named as Assistant Secretary of State in 2002. She was the first Latino to be named to this position. Ms. Delgado–Polanco served as the executive director of the Service Employees International Union New Jersey State Council, which serves over 40,000 members in New Jersey. Ms Delgado–Polanco has also attended three Democratic National Conventions (2000, 2004, and 2012) as a delegate for the State of New Jersey.

 

https://www.npl.org/Pages/Collections/njhric/Polanco.html

 

Questions are being asked about the people Gov. Phil Murphy has running operations and overseeing $11 billion in construction projects.

 

The Schools Development Authority is at the center of a personnel scandal that threatens its future and also poses a political liability for Gov. Phil Murphy, whose hiring practices have already become the subject of a special legislative committee.

 

NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey has been investigating the personnel decisions under Murphy's handpicked chief executive, Lizette Delgado-Polanco. Those findings and others have put intense focus on the authority at a critical time in its existence.

 

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/watchdog/2019/04/03/nj-schools-development-authority-personnel-scandal-explained-lizette-delgado-polanco/3333400002/

 

At a salary of $225,000, Delgado-Polanco is paid $50,000 more than Murphy and is one of the highest-paid public workers in New Jersey. She lives in Ewing with her husband, Enohel Polanco-Gonzalez, who was hired at a salary of $95,000 in December at the Department of Education. And her daughter, Brianna Earle, has worked in Murphy's office since he became governor, earning $110,000 a year.

 

Her union work began in 1996 when she was a business agent for UNITE HERE, which represented workers in the food service, hotel and gaming industries, according to her résumé. She left that union in 2001 to become director of special projects for then-U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine for about six months before joining the gubernatorial campaign of Jim McGreevey as the Latino base voter program director, her résumé says.

 

After McGreevey won, Delgado-Polanco became the first Hispanic assistant secretary of state, a position in which she managed a $41 million budget and directed day-to-day operations of 11 divisions, according to her résumé.

 

She left the McGreevey administration in 2004 and started a public affairs firm, D-Solutions. In 2008, she became executive director of the New Jersey Service Employees International Union, where she coordinated the legislative and political agenda for more than 40,000 workers.

 

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2019/03/21/how-nj-schools-development-authority-ceo-lizette-delgado-polanco-rose-power/3173460002/