The Joy of Whistleblowing

CEPA became New Jersey law in 1986.  I remember reading the new law at work. It was summarized on an 18-inch by 2-ft long poster on the bulletin board in our lunch room. When I read it, especially part two, I knew I wouldn't use it unless I was very, very careful. In all honesty, our division was honest; all employees I knew anyway (about 100), so I wasn't too concerned. But being in purchasing and contracting like I was, managing a unit, and dealing with dozens of state agencies who sometimes bent the rules, I read the poster again. 

"1. New Jersey law prohibits an employer from taking any retaliatory action against an employee because the employee does any of the following:

a. Discloses, or threatens to disclose, to a supervisor or to a public body an activity, policy or practice of the employer or another employer, with whom there is a business relationship, that the employee believes is in violation of a law, or a rule or regulation issued under the law (and so on)." 

2. The protection against retaliation, when a disclosure is made to a public body, does not apply unless the employee has brought the activity, policy or practice to the attention of a supervisor of the employee by written notice and given the employer a reasonable opportunity to correct the activity, policy or practice. However, disclosure is not required where the employee reasonably believes that the activity, policy or practice is known to one or more supervisors of the employer or where the employee fears physical harm as a result of the disclosure, provided that the situation is emergency in nature.

So, if I see something not kosher, I'm to tell my boss, and let them and management correct the "supposed" problem. My experience with my outside agency cohorts who found themselves in that situation meant: they'd never hear of it again, or if they did, they were in trouble because they had no "hard" evidence, and the situation, usually wasting state money, continued.

Sometimes there was nothing to be done anyway. Deputy directors, directors and higher had made a decision, and by gum, my friends were to carry it out, no matter how shady. 

The moral of the story: If you don't have hard evidence, keep your mouth shut, or it could be you that's sent off to a corner with no work, and there were already some of them, for one reason or another. 

No, this law and laws like it are all wrong. That's why I liked the State Ethics Commission. We all had copies of their rules and examples, and they were independent of the bigwigs. I knew if I ever came across something sinister, I'd go to them before going to my boss, even tho Chris, or later Dick or John fair-minded.

Why? Because in-house things got taken care of in-house and never, never made it out unless it was someone caught in the act of out and out fraud and not just stupidity and wastefulness. In my experience real fraud was rare, but usually the higher you got the stupidity got worse (not all mind you). And it wasn't always the managers and directors who were at fault, but all the big shots in the State House or commissioner's offices making humongous deals with vendors on questionable, or specious projects, spending millions of dollars.

The problem? No real, effective oversight, especially when the big wigs said "do it." If the Governor's Office said "Do this." we jumped. If a Commissioner said the same, it got done. Especially when the gatekeepers were told to push it thru also. Everyone from us, to the funding guys, to the Information Technology folks, or whoever else had to be involved, greased the skids. The twists and turns of words and phrases would be made to fit the regs. I'd seen million plus dollar schemes (Waivers of Advertising), get walked thru and approved in a day (with all the documentation), especially as the years rolled on. 

I knew. I wrote that documentation.

So, this whining brings me back to effective oversight.

Agencies in NJ government are so siloed, they only worry about their own specific little piece and not the whole picture. The reviewers are all in charge of a piece of the pie, the procurement request itself, whether for the department, IT, funding, rules and regs or whatever. 

That's why I loved my job as manager of the Statewide Contract Consolidation Unit, now practically abolished (2013). Agencies provided all their procurement documentation to us, and we matched it against rules and regs -- and common sense. So we accepted or rejected their requests in whole or in part, usually asking for, and getting, revisions to be made, sometimes telling them what to say. Of course we also handled our OWN contracts worth millions, but in all fairness, we applied the same rules to them.

Once I held up the purchase of a $4 million mainframe computer system for a two weeks, meeting with the State's sole Contracting Officer and the vendor (by phone), until all questions were answered satisfactorily. And that was a fast track project from the highest departmental levels.

The point? We were independent of the requester, we had our Director's backing, we thought we were doing the right thing, and so that procurement got held up.

Whistleblower supervisors are not independent; management audits (of which they're are many in state government), are not all adhered to or practices changed as they should be.

So the wasteful cycle continues. 

Let's change to independent commissions and let the whistleblowers speak up.

By Rodney Richards, NJ