A low level clerk gets booted for double payment to Cami Anderson’s friend
Cami Anderson, the hermit superintendent of the Newark schools, exonerated herself of any wrongdoing in the illegal giveaway of thousands of dollars to an old friend and former assistant who managed to draw checks from school districts in two different states. Anderson, Gov. Chris Christie’s agent in the district, did it apparently by blaming the scam on some low-level payroll bureaucrat who is no longer employed by the district.
“So he took the hit for everything?” asked Phil Sellinger, a member of the Newark school board whose members tried unsuccessfully Tuesday night to find out exactly how Anderson arranged to have Tiffany Hardrick, a $175,000-a-year assistant superintendent, obtain more than $12,000 in compensation from Newark while she was working as schools superintendent in Forrest City, Arkansas, after she quit.
The “he” to which Sellinger referred was the director of payroll who left Newark after the double payment to Hardrick was revealed in an audit conducted by the state Department of Education.
Anderson has not appeared at a school board meeting since January of 2014, blaming that year’s mayoralty campaign–now more than a year old–for not wanting to come to board meetings because they had become too political. Instead, she had another $175,000-a-year assistant, Vanessa Rodriguez, explain–sort of–how A low level clerk gets booted for double payment to Cami Anderson’s friend | Bob Braun's Ledger: