Why Is Tom Moran Flacking For the Sweeney-Norcross Machine (and another question)

The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) wants to know and I have a guess.

Tom Moran works for the largest recipient of legal-ad money in the state and State Senate president Stephen Sweeney is in a position to fend off any attempt to rein in this subsidy for newspapers who play the game. The NJEA is looking to punish Sweeney for not doing enough for their bribe money and Moran is defending Sweeney by attacking this ‘lying union’ and the $1.2 million in compensation their head gets.

But there is another question here.

Moran gets his information from the NJEA form 990 for the year ended August 31, 2016 which shows these compensation amounts for NJEA officers:

But the form also reports a substantial net liability of over $82 million:

The largest liabilities relate to Accrued Post Retirement Benefits and Accrued Pension Cost:

Which is a substantial increase from the amounts reported on the prior year form 990:

With the increase ($63 million) being entirely due to those benefit costs. Yet the NJEA Defined Benefit Plan, according to their latest 5500 filing, is 135% funded:

With total compensation for the prior year reported as:

On the NJEA website Ed Richardson responded to criticism of his compensation package:

Drawing on public records detailing the compensation of union officials, [Moran] used a mind-bogglingly dishonest calculation to claim that my compensation is nearly 4 times what it really is. He cannot claim ignorance. He knows that the figures he reported were misleading, but his decades-long crusade to discredit NJEA will not be stopped by anything as inconvenient as facts. That’s par for the course with Tom when he’s in one of his NJEA-induced rages.

…….

That allegiance probably explains how Tom can write a column ostensibly about union officials’ compensation without mentioning the fact that Sweeney’s union compensation, according to the most recent filings by his union, is over $235,000 for what is, presumably a part-time job. Approximately one-third of his work in that job, according to the same filing, is lobbying and political work.

I say that job is presumably part-time, because Sweeney also gets a taxpayer-funded salary of over $65,000 as Senate President, a position widely acknowledged as the second most powerful elected office in New Jersey, with commensurate responsibilities. So the $235,000 he earns from his union for work done in his off hours is a pretty good salary indeed.

Whatever you think of Steve Sweeney earning over $300,000 per year, with the bulk of that coming from his work as a union official, it is revealing that Tom didn’t say a word about it, because he knew about it. Steve Sweeney and I are in the same tax bracket, but you’d never know that from reading Tom’s diatribes.

Likewise, Tom is remarkably silent about the wealth of Sweeney’s primary benefactor, South Jersey political boss George Norcross, who has built a political and business empire that’s made him a multi-millionaire many times over.

Tom’s double standard can only be explained by his single-minded obsession with NJEA. If it means an opportunity to take another public shot at NJEA, Tom will gladly do the bidding of a powerful political machine. Tom’s rants are slowly turning him into the newspaper version of Chris Christie: a one-trick pony whose attacks on NJEA ring more and more hollow every time he goes back to that well.

Moran responded today:

[Form 990] listed [Richardson’s compensation] as $1.2 million in salary and benefits. You can look it up on the union’s 990 tax form, which all non-profits must disclose. It’s on Page 2 of Schedule J, in black and white.

The same page shows that it’s basically a free-for-all at the union’s headquarters in Trenton — compensation for the top five NJEA officers averaged $764,000 in 2015.

Richardson is lying about all this, flat-out, despite the public record that puts any doubt to rest. In a union newsletter, he told his members that he earned about one-quarter the amount he listed on the IRS tax form.

I wanted to ask him about that, but he refused to talk. I tried to lure him out of hiding with an offer to discuss it by e-mail, and a promise to publish the exchange in full for all to see. He turned that down, too.

Even by Jersey standards, this guy has real chutzpah. I hate to admit it, but I almost admire him in a sporting kind of way.

Let’s look at the numbers for Richardson over those two years:

1. Base compensation from $328,701 to $339,771
2. Nontaxable benefits from $33,874 to $32,203
3. Retirement and deferred compensation from $225,450 to $840,651

Other NJEA officers also showed substantial increases in that third item.

Did the NJEA put in a top-hat plan? If so, did they tell anyone about it?