Agency chief puts burden on districts waiting for schools

BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL STAR-LEDGER STAFFNewark and other communities scheduled to get hundreds of new schools under a 1998 state Supreme Court order will have to take up the responsibility -- and possibly some of the costs -- of finding sites and designs for the new buildings, the new head of the state agency in charge of the school building program said yesterday.

"Local school districts and municipalities cannot be mere takers of these facilities," said Barry Zubrow, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was appointed chairman of the state Schools Construction Corp. last month. "Design, construction and siting need to be placed in the very hands of the people who are using the schools."

Zubrow's comments, in a speech to the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association in Trenton, were the first indication of what recommendations he might include in a report on the school program he is scheduled to deliver to Gov. Jon Corzine on March 15.

Zubrow is the latest state official dispatched to repair the widespread mismanagement that has plagued the construction corporation since it was established three years ago.

The overhauls began a year ago, after a Star-Ledger analysis found the first six schools built by the state agency cost, on average, 45 percent more than 19 schools built by local school districts at the same time.

The state Inspector General later reported that mismanagement and gaps in oversight left the agency vulnerable to "waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars."

Last July, after realizing the $6 billion lawmakers had allotted to the program was about to run out, the corporation selected 59 projects for a funded "capital program," and shelved hundreds of others in various stages of development.

"We are midstream in a $6 billion construction program that has gone off track," Zubrow said. "We need to fix it and make sure the schools that are within the capital program get built in a timely and efficient manner."

Last month, state officials estimated it would cost more than $12 billion to complete the suspended projects.

Zubrow said he does not expect to seek additional funds for the school building program until he has completed the ongoing overhaul of the agency's management and operations.

A centerpiece of that reform, he said, will be a return of many responsibilities to the municipal governments and school districts in which the new schools are being erected.

Specifically, Zubrow said he plans to raise the $500,000 cap on jobs that can currently be delegated to local officials.

He also plans to give local officials greater responsibility for identifying affordable and appropriate sites for the schools the state is going to build for them. And future decisions on which schools might be built first could rest partly on whether a community has cooperated in making appropriate and clean sites available or is relying on the state to prepare all the land.

"I think part of the discussion is going to come from a question of who would pay for the land and who would have the responsibility for some of the ancillary costs," he said.

The SCC has spent $387 million acquiring land for school projects. But millions of that money was spent on sites for schools that are no longer slated to be built, and many sites supplied to the state have been contaminated with toxins that required millions more dollars in cleanup costs.

David Sciarra, the attorney who has pressed the Abbott case on behalf of students in the needy communities, embraced Zubrow's strategy for shifting responsibilities back to local officials.

"I'm strongly in favor of the state setting up a framework in which the local school district and the municipalities are required to come up with clean sites in good locations at a reasonable cost as a requirement of local land use planning," he said. "The state should be able to say 'If we're going to pay for this school and build these schools, you've got the responsibility to make sure you deliver sites that are appropriate.'"

Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He may be reached at dmcnichol@starledger.com or (609) 989-0341.