NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ—It’s been a rough year for William Tambussi, the South Jersey political machine attorney accused of a slew of criminal acts in a stunning indictment against him and five others for running a corrupt political and redevelopment racket.
It marks the latest shake-up in New Jersey politics and government, and comes after years of organized pushback against the more than $1 billion in state tax credits that went to support Camden construction projects associated with the alleged criminal enterprise.
Until today, Tambussi held multiple positions at Rutgers, including one of fifteen seats on the powerful Board of Governors—which calls most of the shots at the state university.
But now Tambussi, and another member of the powerful Rutgers board, were ousted from their positions due to noncompliance with residency requirements.
Superior Court Judge Benjamin Bucca, who worked as a tennis coach at Rutgers for over a decade, ruled that the law requires at least one member of the Board of Governors (BOG) to reside in Camden County, a requirement that Tambussi no longer met since he moved to Brigantine two years ago.
The BOG and Governor Phil Murphy—who jointly had the power to remove Tambussi but opted not to—have stayed silent about the matter, failing to respond to repeated inquiries from New Brunswick Today.
Michael Carucci of Sills, Cummis, & Gross attempted to argue on behalf of the ousted Rutgers board members that they are not considered state government officeholders, and that the university itself is not a public entity, but rather a “public-private” institution.
Carucci and his colleague, former NJ Attorney General Peter Verniero, also tried to argue that the residency requirement only applied at the time of appointment, and that once he was seated on the board, Tambussi was free to move outside of Camden County.
But after hearing arguments from both sides, Bucca ruled that Tambussi and his BOG colleague Heather Taylor, who was supposed to reside in Middlesex County but relocated to Monmouth County in 2020, were both disqualified from the board effective immediately.
Outside attorneys representing the university unsuccessfully asked for a stay of Bucca’s decision pending an appeal, suggesting Rutgers might spend additional taxpayer and tuition-payer resources on challenging the ruling.
ANOTHER NJ “POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE”
The removal order comes less than two weeks after Tambussi was indicted in the corruption case, alongside former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, who left City Hall in 2018 and almost immediately filled a Rutgers post widely seen as a pension-padding patronage job.
Tambussi, a partner in the law firm Brown & Connery, has for decades represented one of his other co-defendants, South Jersey’s Democratic Party political boss: George Norcross.
WNYC’s Managing Editor Nancy Solomon said it was surprising that the corruption case was brought pursuant to New Jersey’s version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a federal law intended to help law enforcement “take down the mob.”
“By using RICO and defining this as a criminal enterprise, the Attorney General is basically saying that Tambussi can’t hide behind attorney-client privilege,” said Solomon.
According to the Office of Attorney General Matthew Platkin, Norcross is “the registered agent for the groups that own buildings in Camden that are the subject of the criminal allegations.”
Norcross is also “executive chairman” of the insurance firm Conner, Strong & Buckelew—a company that counts the Middlesex County government among its clients—and chairman of the board of trustees for Cooper Health, a large Camden-based hospital that serves as the crown jewel of Norcross’ corporate empire.
Norcross’ father of the same name served on the hospital’s board before him, and the younger George Norcross has called the health system “probably the biggest engagement of our family’s interests.”
Norcross is also the brother of Congressman Donald Norcross, and a member of Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach social club that doubles as the residence of former US President Donald Trump, who is also a former Tambussi client.
Tambussi also represented the Camden County Democratic Committee in their recent failed bid to uphold the state’s longstanding system of “bracketing” in party primary elections. Sometimes referred to as “the county line” or “the party line,” the system has been proven to give a sizable advantage to candidates supported by political machines like this one.
A federal judge’s decision to declare the system unconstitutional was upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in April, in an epic win for activists and a big loss for political bosses. Platkin, the same Attorney General now prosecuting the Norcross machine, also distinguished himself by refusing to defend the bracketing statute.
Although the racketeering conspiracy alleged in the explosive indictment centers around redevelopment in Camden, none of the six defendants actually live in the struggling city these days. Redd has since moved to Sicklerville, George Norcross is now a Florida resident, and the other three charged are Pennsylvanians.
Tambussi’s residency was at issue in the civil lawsuit against him because he left Haddon Heights for Brigantine in 2022, running afoul of a requirement that Camden County have a representative on the Board of Governors (BOG).
George Norcross violated the Democratic Party’s bylaws by moving to Florida and registering to vote there in 2020, while keeping his role on the party’s National Committee, according to the New Jersey Globe.
A third Norcross brother who runs the law firm Parker McKay, Phil Norcross, was also indicted in the expansive case.
The other defendants are a pair of corporate executives who teamed up with Norcross’ insurance company on the development deal to build the 15-story “Triad1828 Centre” tower: Sidney Brown of NFI International and John O’Donnell of the Michaels Organization.
The Attorney General’s Office said the enterprise’s conspiracy spanned twelve years, and resulted in its acquisition of Camden waterfront property and property rights for itself and others through unlawful means.
“On full display in this indictment is how a group of unelected, private businessmen used their power and influence to get government to aid their criminal enterprise and further its interests,” said Platkin. “The alleged conduct of the Norcross Enterprise has caused great harm to individuals, businesses, non-profits, the people of the State of New Jersey, and especially the City of Camden and its residents. That stops today.”
The charges against Tambussi in the bombshell indictment unsealed on June 17 include not only “Racketeering Conspiracy,” but also eight counts of Financial Facilitation of Criminal Activity, four counts each of Misconduct by Corporate Official, and three counts each of Conspiracy to Commit Theft by Extortion, Criminal Coercion, and Official Misconduct.
All of the offenses in the 111-page indictment are first and second degree charges, which means some defendants could be looking at decades-long prison sentences if convicted, as well as hefty fines and “forfeiture of ill-gotten proceeds from their criminal activity.”
The alleged scheme was complicated, but amounted to using Camden’s government, including the redevelopment agency represented by Tambussi’s firm, to shift the balance of power towards the Norcross machine when it came to waterfront development.
“There was a backroom deal,” as WNYC’s Solomon put it, in published reporting years before the indictment. “In 2013, Christie worked with the three Norcross brothers… to create a massive tax break program for Camden,” causing land values to rise.
Then, the criminal enterprise allegedly used a law that the Norcrosses helped write in order to get the state government’s Economic Development Authority to pay for their developments through lucrative tax credits that could be sold for cash.
The indictment also draws some of the same conclusions.
“From approximately 2012 to 2013, members and associates of the Norcross Enterprise, including GEORGE E. NORCROSS, III, used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences,” reads the indictment, referring to the Economic Opportunity Act of 2013, a bill sponsored by then-Senator Donald Norcross.
Tambussi joined George Norcross and their attorneys in Trenton, where Attorney General Platkin laid out the case against the “Norcross Enterprise.” By all accounts, it was unprecedented for a defendant to show up for the announcement of their own indictment.
Platkin claimed the alleged criminal enterprise “conspired to, and did, extort and coerce others to obtain… properties and property rights on the Camden, New Jersey waterfront and associated tax incentive credits,” making way for developments that the Norcross machine wanted to build or acquire and boxing out other potential developers.
RU BOARD IGNORED CALLS FOR REMOVAL
Given his appearance at Platkin’s announcement, it was little surprise when Tambussi showed up for the June 20 meeting of the BOG at Winants Hall in New Brunswick, where he received a warm welcome from his colleagues, but the opposite from the audience.
BOG Chairman William Best, who is leaving office at the end of the month after awarding himself an honorary degree, praised Tambussi at one point, prompting one member of the audience to shout out.
“He’s a mobster!” shouted Sherry Wolf, an organizer with the Rutgers faculty union. “Listen to what you’re saying. You sound ridiculous!”
The board’s members did not substantively address the outburst, nor did they respond to any of the three public commenters, including this reporter. All three speakers mentioned Tambussi’s indictment, but no response came from any Rutgers official.
“I have no comments at all,” Best told New Brunswick Today when asked about the indictment on his way out of the meeting room.
According to state law, the BOG has the power to remove members, after holding a hearing, and if the appointing authority—in this case, the state’s Governor—confirms their decision.
But that seemed unlikely given how chummy the rest of the BOG members were with their indicted colleague. While saying his goodbyes after the meeting, Tambussi also physically embraced the BOG’s lawyer, John Jay Hoffman, a former State Attorney General who was recently nominated for a seat on the NJ Supreme Court by Governor Phil Murphy.
In the leadup to the meeting, New Brunswick Today had repeatedly asked the staff at Rutgers Media Relations for a comment on the criminal case against Tambussi on behalf of the university’s administration.
Rutgers officials, including Vice President Kim Manning, did not respond to phone and email messages inquiring about the status of Tambussi’s position and whether or not the administration of Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway has to say anything about it.
Even after the June 20 meeting concluded, university spokesperson Dory Devlin declined to respond to questions: “I’ve got nothing to say.”
The Rutgers American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) had called for Tambussi to resign from his roles at Rutgers, and backed the case for his removal.
“While he has been appointed to represent Camden on this board, he has not been a resident of our campus’ county since June 2022, and is thus ineligible for the seat based on the conditions of his appointment,” said Kelly Dittmar, a Rutgers political science professor who spoke on behalf of the AAUP-AFT.
“To make matters worse, Mr. Tambussi has now been indicted for criminally preying on Camden’s residents, the very community that he is supposed to represent on this board.”
Antoinette Miles, Interim State Director of the NJ Working Families Party, also spoke out and called for Tambussi’s removal.
“New Jersey deserves to have better representation on the Board of Governors,” said Miles. “Our state’s premiere public research university should not be sullied any further due to its connection with Bill Tambussi and the corrupt machine he represents.”
MERGER PLAN CHANGED RUTGERS FOREVER
The tax credit legislation of 2013 was far from the first time Norcross and his allies had written and pushed a high-impact law through the State Legislature.
The same crew was also responsible for some of the biggest changes in New Jersey’s higher education landscape, including the the 2012 law that restructured Rutgers University’s governance, expanding the BOG and adding special seats that were supposed to guarantee representation to the three main areas that Rutgers calls home.
Then-Gov. Christie, a Republican, had his sights set on merging the notoriously corrupt University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) with Rutgers, bringing a medical school back to the state university for the first time in a half-century.
Meanwhile, George Norcross—a fierce Christie ally despite being in opposite political parties—also saw the potential for synergy between heathcare and academia.
Norcross wanted Rutgers’ South Jersey campus in Camden to become part of Rowan University, an institution that had recently partnered with Cooper Hospital.
Merger legislation was drafted that would accomplish both moves in one fell swoop. It was pushed by Norcross allies, and after much discussion and many changes, adopted into law. It was the product of a compromise, and lots of politics.
While Norcross didn’t get the full Rutgers-Rowan takeover, the “Restructuring Act” forever changed the institutions, and paved the way for Tambussi to get into higher education.
In the end, the BOG was expanded from 11 to 15 seats, but the balance of political appointments remained the same, with the Governor appointing a slight majority of the board. Most of UMDNJ was merged into Rutgers, with a small piece broken off for Rowan, which was elevated to a “research” university in the process.
Since July 1, 2013, when the law took effect with the blessing of the university, the BOG was supposed to have at least one representative each from Essex, Middlesex, and Camden Counties, home to each of Rutgers’ three main campuses.
Under the 2012 legislation, two new boards were also created specific to the Camden campus, and though it didn’t happen right away, Tambussi eventually claimed the BOG seat reserved for a Camden County resident.
As we reported, Norcross ally Steve Sweeney, who was New Jersey’s Senate President throughout the Christie administration, continued to push bills that had the potential to further politicize Rutgers, and retaliate against the university’s Board of Trustees, the group that was largely responsible for killing the Rutgers-Camden takeover pushed by Norcross.
NEW BOARDS ENABLED MORE CORRUPTION
After the merger was complete, the Norcross machine’s influence grew and, thanks to Tambussi and his special seat on the BOG, reached deep inside Rutgers University.
Tambussi was first approved to join the BOG in 2014, after Christie nominated him, and despite friction between Norcross and Murphy, Tambussi was re-nominated to the seat by by Murphy in 2020.
By the end of his time on the BOG, Tambussi had also accumulated positions on both of the new Camden boards, after being installed under shady circumstances to at least one of them: The Rutgers-Camden Board of Directors.
Meanwhile, Dana Redd had already been installed into a lucrative role after she left city government, working for the other new board as CEO of the Rowan University-Rutgers Camden Board of Governors.
According to the indictment, the cooperation of then-Mayor Dana Redd and other officials like Tambussi were critical to enabling the group’s schemes.
Redd was handsomely rewarded for her cooperation, with changes in law passed and signed in the final days of the Christie administration that allowed her to collect a much bigger pension than she otherwise could, combined with the new high-paying job working for one of the two new Camden-related boards created in the 2012 higher education merger law.
Redd, the city’s Mayor from 2010 to 2018, “is alleged to have abused that position to benefit herself and the Norcross Enterprise,” using parts of the city’s government “to aid the enterprise in acquiring property and property rights for itself and others through coercion, extortion, and other criminal acts,” according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The indictment states that, around the time Redd was leaving city office, George Norcross “wanted to move people around” and Redd “needed a place to go as her term as mayor was ending.”
After she decided not to run for a third term as Mayor, the Legislature fast-tracked an oddly-specific bill nicknamed the “Get Dana Redd a Better Pension Act” by the South Jersey Times Editorial Board.
While none of that is mentioned in the explosive indictment, the next piece of the corruption puzzle required the machine to create an opening for Redd to land at Rutgers.
As POLITICO’s Matt Friedman reported in the “NJ Playbook” newsletter, “You can’t have a political machine without soldiers. And of course, those soldiers usually need to be paid.”
Friedman had aggressively covered the controversial pension-boosting legislation at the time, and again in 2022, after Redd quietly left the Rutgers job.
“Years ago, I wrote a lot about the law Chris Christie signed to let former Camden Mayor Dana Redd — an alleged Norcross co-conspirator — back into the top tier of the pension system… just as she was hired for a $275,000 pensionable public job at the Rutgers-Rowan Board of Governors,” wrote Friedman. “But I didn’t have subpoena power to unearth the inner workings behind the move.”
According to Friedman, the combination of the change in law and the almost five years spent in the position nearly tripled Redd’s potential monthly pension when she cashes in.
But, it wouldn’t have been possible unless that job opened up at just the right time.
Apparently, the criminal enterprise is also accused of using its power to persuade a non-profit organization to force out its own leader, and hire Redd’s predecessor in the Rowan-Rutgers job, all in order to create the opening for Redd to take the plum position.
“Before Redd could be hired in the new job, its then-occupant Kris Kolluri needed a landing place. That turned out to be the CEO post at the non-profit that was then called Cooper’s Ferry Partnership,” wrote Friedman.
The organization was re-named the Camden Community Partnership in 2021.
In December 2017, the non-profit’s co-chair Susan Bass Levin, a former Cherry Hill Mayor and cabinet member for three gubernatorial administrations, threatened then-CEO Anthony Perno “with harm to his reputation and termination for cause if he did not resign,” according to the indictment.
That indictment references a recorded conversation where Bass Levin warned Perno of Norcross’ influence: “Believe me when I tell you. If you don’t think that [George Norcross] can’t get to anybody he wants to, you’re kidding yourself.”
Bass Levin also name-dropped Tambussi, saying that the Norcross attorney had reviewed Perno’s contract and felt that his bosses could “drive a truck through it.” She also said that, if Perno did not resign, “‘they’ would just make something up about him, which would lead to him being terminated for cause.”
Kolluri was later hired to lead the Gateway Development Commission, which oversees construction of new railroad tunnels between New York and New Jersey, and that’s when Redd again followed his career path, leaving the Rowan-Rutgers position to take the top job at the Camden Community Partnership, where she is still listed as President and CEO.
The other new board created by the 2012 legislation, called the Rutgers-Camden Board of Directors, doesn’t have any employees, but it does have certain oversight powers over the Camden campus.
The BOG was secretive about which one of their own board members they were installing on the Rutgers-Camden Board on April 14, 2021, perhaps to keep the public from criticizing the potential for conflicts of interests stemming from Tambussi’s longstanding representation of George Norcross and his businesses.
The move cemented and deepened the connective tissue between Rutgers University, Governor Phil Murphy, and the Camden-based political machine of George Norcross.
“Conflicts of Interest thrive in the dark. A case in point arose… when the Board of Governors of a major public university voted to install a member to a local campus Board of Directors,” reads the Corporatization of Higher Education newsletter article titled “Big Universities, Big Conflicts.”
“This vote took place in public as required by law, however the BoG refused during their public meeting to NAME the candidate whom they were electing.”
Even though it was suspected Tambussi was the recipient of the appointment, the BOG and its then-Chairman Mark Angelson—an ally and appointee of US President Joe Biden currently awaiting Senate confirmation to become Ambassador to Norway—refused to say who was being appointed, even when asked during the meeting where the vote was held.
“I would add that it is one of the great privileges of my life to serve on this board with Bill Tambussi,” was all that Angelson had to say.
RUPD INTERFERES WITH OUR REPORTING
During our reporting on this story, two Rutgers University Police Department (RUPD) detectives escalated an interaction with this reporter, attempting at one point to block our camera’s view after the June 20 BOG meeting concluded.
While this reporter wasn’t treated as poorly as Sue Altman was when New Brunswick’s Senator Bob Smith ordered police to remove her from a high-profile hearing on the Norcross tax credit controversy in 2019, RUPD’s Internal Affairs division is nevertheless investigating the incident after we complained to Chief Kenneth Cop.
New Brunswick Today was still able to get close enough to the indicted board member to ask him a couple of questions.
Tambussi told New Brunswick Today his term was set to expire at the end of June, and he was unsure if he would continue on the board.
“We’ll see,” said Tambussi, who appeared in good spirits as he made the rounds on his way out of the building.
However, no replacement for Tambussi has been named by Governor Murphy. A nominee would require approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full State Senate.
But if Rutgers had been allowed to follow its past practices, Tambussi could have stayed on the board for months or years to come as a “holdover” appointment.
An attorney representing the plaintiffs in the residency case, captioned Kelly v. Tambussi, said that Rutgers was not following the law when it allowed other board members to stay on while waiting for re-appointment.
“Rutgers seems to think a member holding over after a BOG term expires is legal. Rutgers is wrong,” said Flavio Komuves, the Weissman & Mintz attorney who presented the case for the removal of Tambussi and Taylor.
Komuves was also one of three attorneys that pressed the case against the “county line” earlier this year, defeating Tambussi and over a dozen other attorneys fighting for the status quo.
Though Rutgers officials still have not responded to New Brunswick Today’s inquiries, a university spokesperson told NJ.com that the university is mulling a potential appeal, but for now Tambussi has been removed from both the BOG and the Rowan-Rutgers Board.
Over the past week, four different spokespersons for Governor Murphy failed to respond to inquiries about the matter, leaving questions about the Governor’s intentions unanswered.
Editor’s Note: Flavio Komuves represented this reporter in an unsuccessful 2018 case seeking to have several members of the Rutgers BOG removed for residing out of state, including Mark Angelson. Michael Carucci and Peter Verniero represented the defendants in that case.
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Charlie is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, and the winner of the Awbrey Award for Community-Oriented Local Journalism. He is a proud Rutgers University journalism graduate, a community organizer, and a former independent candidate for mayor of New Brunswick.
