The new dumping grounds for failed politicians

New Jersey has found a place for its burned out, used up politicians - the academe:

TRENTON — For New Jersey politicians, the podium of higher learning can serve as a refuge for higher earning.

At a time when taxpayer-funded higher education in the Garden State is enduring budget cuts and scandals, politicians and others from public life are staffing the state-run lecture halls, along a wide-ranging pay scale.

Some teach for free, sharing with students their decades of experience.

Trenton-based Superior Court Judge Jack Sabatino gets no compensation for teaching at Rutgers Law School in Camden, where he had been associate dean before donning the black robes.

Likewise, Superior Court Judge Michele Fox teaches for free at the same school, just as former Gov. Brendan Byrne's chief of staff, Harold Hodes, teaches gratis at The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers.

... Further up the scale, former Gov. James Florio, who left office in 1994, earns $96,632 a year for teaching one course at Rutgers one day a week.

Scott Weiner, who served as Florio's environmental commissioner, left that post to earn $147,000 as director of a Rutgers center on energy policies. Weiner now heads the state's Schools Construction Corp., where the U.S. Attorney is examining the books.

Onetime lawmaker and commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs Stephanie Bush-Baskette earns $142,975 a year as director of the Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers.

And former state Education Commissioner William Librera receives $163,200 a year in his latest career move to direct the Rutgers Institute to Improve Student Achievement.

Former Gov. James E. McGreevey is rebuilding his life, in part, by helping Kean University, the third largest school in the state system, open a college in Zhejiang, China.

I like the pay for the one course, one day a week stint. I might actually return to teachng for that position. Oh, sorry. I guess I don't qualify. I'm not a failed governor of the state.