McGreevey, After Criticism, Quits as Lawyer for Meadowlands Mall
The New York Times
April 28, 2005
Jeffrey Gettlemen
Former Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey announced yesterday
that he would no longer work for the developers of the $1.4
billion Xanadu retail and entertainment mall after environmentalists
and other critics said it was a conflict of interest for him
to be paid by a project he was so closely tied to while in
office.
Mr. McGreevey, who resigned as governor last fall after he
revealed he was gay and having an extramarital affair, spearheaded
the lucrative deal for Xanadu's developers to bring stores,
an indoor ski slope and what the state estimated was 40,000
jobs to the Meadowlands in East Rutherford. A few weeks ago
he began working for the same developers as a lawyer and was
put in charge of overseeing a job-training program for Xanadu's
future work force.
Though other state officials who had worked on the project
would have been prohibited from doing the same thing, state
ethics rules are not as clear on what governors can do once
they leave office. Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey is now saying
he will change this.
"The governor wants to close that loophole," said
Kelley Heck, a spokeswoman. "There's a lot of ethics
guidelines for when the governor is in office. But the rules
are a little more vague when it comes to what the governor
can or cannot do after office."
Because of this controversy, which was first reported in several
New Jersey newspapers, Governor Codey is pushing his legal
staff to come up with tougher rules regulating governors after
they leave government, Ms. Heck said.
Mr. McGreevey, who has maintained a low public profile since
stepping down in November, did not return phone calls for
comment. Instead, he released a one-sentence statement yesterday
saying, "I am removing myself from the Xanadu project
to ensure compliance with both the letter and spirit of Acting
Governor Codey's pending action."
Mr. McGreevey has been working as a lawyer for the law firm
of Weiner Lesniak, run by State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak,
a powerful Democrat from Union County. The well-connected
firm, based in Parsippany, has been representing Xanadu's
developers since they won a bidding war in 2003 to bring the
project to the Meadowlands.
Part of the development agreement calls for a job training
program, and it was a coincidence that Mr. McGreevey was the
one assigned to oversee this, said Michael Turner, a spokesman
for the Mills Corporation, one of the two real estate companies
financing Xanadu. (The other is Mack-Cali.)
"It is ridiculous to think of this as payback,"
Mr. Turner said. "I mean, it's lot for him to go through
just for this."
Though Mr. McGreevey's reincarnation as a lawyer for the Xanadu
project provoked criticism, it appears not to have broken
any laws, several ethics experts said yesterday.
State ethics rules specifically prohibit state lawmakers and
high-ranking state officials from working on any deal that
they had been "substantially and directly" involved
in as a "state officer." But that law does not apply
to the governor because the governor is not defined as a state
officer, said Al Porroni, legal counsel to the State Legislature.
And while the governor's own code of ethics, adopted by Mr.
McGreevey in 2003, "prohibits conflicts that are substantial
and material or that may bring the governor into disrepute,"
the code does not say anything about work after leaving office.
Alan Rosenthal, professor of public policy at Rutgers University,
said Mr. McGreevey's position would be a lot more questionable
if Mr. McGreevey had not resigned so suddenly.
"If he knew he was going to leave office on a certain
date and then entered into a deal with a company that he was
going to work for as soon as he left office, well, then, there
would be a lot of raised eyebrows," Dr. Rosenthal said.
"But that doesn't apply to this case. McGreevey didn't
think he would be leaving office so soon."
Still, Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club,
which opposes the Xanadu project because the group contends
it eats into sensitive wetland areas, said the arrangement
was shameful.
"The fact that he's backing down now is good," Mr.
Tittel said. "But the question is, what happened six
months ago? Did McGreevey have something to gain when Xanadu's
lease was signed? I still think there should be an investigation."
