Two New Brunswick employees facing ethics complaints

NEW BRUNSWICK - Two city employees will have hearings on Monday for pending ethics complaint brought against them by a resident.

Andrea Eato-White and Leonard Bier, who work for the New Brunswick Parking Authority, are facing ethics complaint brought against them by New Brunswick Today Editor Charlie Kratovil for failing to properly disclose their finances.

"Financial disclosure statements are an important resource for reporters and other citizens to be able to discern if their public officials are susceptible to conflicts of interest," Kratovil said in a news release. "Failing to file these forms, or omitting items from these forms, can make it much harder to hold officials accountable."

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He urged people to attend the Monday ethics hearing, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the community room of the New Brunswick Free Library at 60 Livingston Ave.

Bier, according to his LinkedIn website, currently holds several jobs related to parking.

He is the director and general counsel of the Rahway Parking Authority, the legal counsel to the New Brunswick Parking Authority, the executive director and general counsel for the New Jersey Parking Institute, and he is a development and parking consultant for the parking authority in Miami, Florida. Additionally, Bier serves as the director of the Urban Redevelopment Agency in Rahway.

According to Kratovil's complaint, Bier repeatedly failed to disclose a $106,000 public pension.

Bier wrote to the New Brunswick Ethics Board to inform them he had omitted his pension income from the disclosure forms, according to the release.

Jennifer Bradshaw, the public information officer for New Brunswick, declined to comment for this story.

When called for a comment, Bier declined, stating that it would be "inappropriate" to discuss the matter before Monday's hearing. He did, however, say that he would be attending the hearing.

Eato-White, who also is also a property manager at the New Brunswick Housing Authority, "repeatedly omitted" financial disclosures on a 2016 ethics form, according to the release.

In Late June, Bier hired legal counsel and responded to the ethics complaint. According to the response, the allegations in which Bier failed to disclose finances, which Kratovil had written about, are "correct".

"He retired from government service in 2008 and receives a pension," the response, written by attorney James Burns, said. "He did not think that pensions or retirement accounts were a reportable source of income required to be listed in the FDS (financial disclosure statement)."

The response said that Bier has since reached out to officials in Trenton and was informed that all pensions, both public and private, are required to be reported.

See the complaints filed by Kratovil and Bier's response below:

Staff Writer Nick Muscavage: 908-243-6615; ngmuscavage@gannettnj.com