Suspended WF School Business Admin. Pleads Guilty

Suspended Westfield School District business administrator Robert A. Berman pleaded guilty in Union County Court on Monday to accepting roughly $13,000 in windows and doors from a contractor that he recommended be hired by the school district, according to a press release distributed by the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. 

Berman, 55, admitted to conspiracy to make false representations for a government contract, a third-degree offense. After being charged in March, he was suspended from his positions as the Westfield School District's business administrator and board secretary.

Under the terms of the plea deal announced Monday, prosecutors will recommend that Berman be sentenced to a term of probation and be assessed a $13,000 penalty that he must pay into the state's Antitrust Revolving Fund for antitrust enforcement efforts. He must also forfeit his positions with the Westfield School District, and he will be permanently barred from public employment in New Jersey. 

In return, prosecutors agreed to drop the second-degree bribery charge they filed against Berman on March 9, to which he on March 14. He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 27, 2012. 

Berman told investigators that between 2004 and 2008, Metropolitan Metal Window Company installed about $13,000-worth of window glass and doors for free at his home in South Plainfield, in exchange for recommending that the Westfield Board of Education appoint Metropolitan as the district's "contractor of record," according to the attorney general's press release.

In a statement issued by the school district's community coordinator, Lorre Korecky, Superintendent Margaret Dolan said, "We will continue our focus of providing education to 6,300 students with the support of 800 staff members in the Westfield Public Schools. We have cooperated fully with the State Attorney General’s Office, which has had complete access to the financial records of the district and has conducted a full review. We carefully scrutinize all financial matters and continue to cooperate with all audits. Our relationship with the accused vendors and employee was severed upon the announcements of the accusations in March 2011. We are resolute in our responsibility to our students and our community."

Vincent Yaniro has been serving as the district's interim business administrator since March, a position he can hold in an interim capacity for up to two years. In a follow-up telephone interview, Korecky stated that she "did not have an answer" regarding whether the Board of Education planned to make Yaniro the permanent business administrator.

Nevertheless, if Yaniro or another person is hired for the position, it will mark the district's third top-level hire this year, effectively reshaping Dolan's executive team. On July 7, the Board of Education approved Michael Weissman to succeed Theodore Kozlik, who was retiring, as Assistant Superintendent for Pupil Services. Last Tuesday, the board tapped Paul Pineiro to replace retiring Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Anita O'Neal.

In addition to Berman, investigators in the Division of Criminal Justice's Corruption Bureau also filed charges in March against a school district administrator and three contractors for related fraud and kickback schemes involving Westfield and two other school districts.  

The engineer, Kenneth Disko, 48, of Mountainside, to taking thousands of dollars in kickbacks from 2001 to 2010 on contracts he recommended that involved rigged bids and fraudulently inflated costs. The state will recommend that Disko, who served as the contracted engineer or engineer/architect on record for the Westfield, Tinton Falls and Scotch Plains-Fanwood school districts, be sentenced to three to five years in prison, pay a penalty of at least $50,000, and be barred from entering into public contracts in New Jersey for 10 years.

The three contractors were charged by complaint on March 9 with making false-payment claims, a second-degree offense. The contractors are:

• John Sangiuliano, 57, of Scotch Plains, and the co-owner of Metropolitan Metal Window Company
• Martin W. Starr, 45, of Cliffwood Beach, and the owner of Starr Contracting
• Stephen M. Gallagher, 50, also of Cliffwood Beach, and the owner of East Commercial Construction and Tara Construction.

The charges against the three contractors are pending. They each face up to 10 years in state prison and a maximum criminal fine of $150,000.