New NJEA-Backed Super PAC Will Be Run by Millionaire NJEA Execs. How Much More Teachers’ Dues Will Go into Their Bank Accounts?

We decided to take a deeper dive into new NJEA-backed Super PAC, Working New Jersey   As the name implies, and as Working NJ’s ELEC filing states, its purpose is to back a candidate (widely assumed to be NJEA President and NJEA-endorsed Sean Spiller) who supports “working New Jersey families and who understands the struggles and needs of everyday people.” Thus it’s highly ironic that two of the officers running Working NJ became millionaires as top execs at the NJEA’s headquarters in Trenton, where they were paid by New Jersey teachers’ highest-in-the-nation dues.  Indeed, one of them, Ed Richardson, is a multimillionaire.

Here are the numbers:

Working NJ chairman Ed Richardson was a top NJEA exec from 2008-2018 (11 years) and was paid a total of $9.3 million, or an average of $846,688 a year.  That’s clearly in the “multimillionaire” range or “Wall Street money” as the Star-Ledger‘s Tom Moran said.  The “hard-working” teachers whose dues funded this outrageous compensation made less than 1/10th of Richardson’s pay.  

Working NJ officer Steve Wollmer was NJEA Director of Communications from 2007-2015 (9 years) and an assistant director from 2000-2007 (8 years), according to LinkedIn.  Prior to 2011, the NJEA’s tax returns did not provide Wollmer’s pay, but from 2011-2015, he was paid a total of $1.98 million, or $395,339 a year.  Taking $395,339 as his average pay over his 9 years as director would come to a total of $3.6 million.  It’s highly likely that Wollmer’s total pay for his 8 years as an assistant director exceeded $400,000, which suggests that Wollmer’s total compensation for his years as a top NJEA exec exceeded $4 million.  That’s a lot of money and would appear to classify Wollmer as a “millionaire” (perhaps Spiller could confirm this). Again, this was funded by the dues of “working” teachers who made a small fraction of that.

Rather than taking care of “working families,” Working NJ looks more like it’s taking care of the millionaires. We know from Working NJ’s ELEC filing that it plans to spend $35 million supporting Spiller.  That’s on top of the $8 million that NJEA leadership (including President Spiller) already gave to Spiller’s personal Super PAC, Protecting Our Democracy, which adds up to $43 million.  NJEA leadership used the NJEA’s own Super PAC, Garden State Forward for the $8 million, and it seems likely that Garden State Forward will be the funding vehicle for Working NJ.  Garden State Forward’s funded by teachers’ regular dues, so that could be up to $43 million of teachers’ dues used to fund Spiller’s personal political ambitions.

And pay the officers who will run Working NJ, including Richardson and Wollmer.  So, how much more will they be paid from teachers’ dues?  Several hundred thousand? A million?  Someone should ask them.  The teachers who are paying for all this deserve the truth.