May 11, 2005
Head of New Jersey's School Construction Agency Resigns
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, NY TIMES

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TRENTON, May 10 -- The head of New Jersey's School Construction Corporation resigned on Tuesday after the agency, responding to an audit that found the $8.6 billion program poorly managed and beset by cost overruns, adopted a series of reforms.

Jack Kocsis Jr. had served as chairman of the agency, the most expensive public works program in New Jersey history, since it was created in 2000, in response to a 1998 court order to replace schools in low-income districts.

In his resignation letter, Mr. Kocsis said he was proud that the agency had helped build more than 80 new schools without the delays that have bogged down many construction projects.

But reports published by The Star-Ledger of Newark early this year found that schools built by the agency cost an average of 45 percent more than similar schools built by local districts. Mr. Kocsis was also accused of conflicts of interest because he was employed as an executive director and lobbyist for the Building Contractors Association of New Jersey, an industry group whose members received $1 billion in agency contracts.

In March, Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey suspended the agency from spending money and ordered the inspector general to investigate its finances. After a scathing audit, which found that lax fiscal oversight made the agency "vulnerable to mismanagement, fiscal malfeasance, conflicts of interest and waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers dollars," the board on Tuesday adopted a series of reforms and Mr. Kocsis announced his resignation.

"With the reforms adopted today, the primary leadership needs of the S.C.C. board now shifts from construction oversight to financial and corporate management," Mr. Kocsis wrote in his resignation letter. Mr. Codey announced that Mr. Kocsis, whose resignation was effective immediately, would remain a board member and be succeeded as chairman by Alfred C. Koppe, a former top executive at both Public Service Electric and Gas and Bell Atlantic. Mr. Koppe has also served on a wide range of government advisory boards from the Newark Alliance and New Jersey Economic Development Authority to the state's Higher Education Commission and the Wilentz Commission to overhaul New Jersey's courts.

"He will bring new accountability and new oversight to the S.C.C.," Mr. Codey said.

Mr. Koppe said he was confident that his business experience would help establish a new sense of fiscal discipline at the agency.

"If there is one skill-set I have learned as a corporate executive and as a lawyer, it is how to make sure that large organizations run at the highest level of efficiency and equity," Mr. Koppe wrote in a letter accepting the nomination. "That seems to be the task at hand here."