Nice Work If You Can Get It...

Prior to his ouster from National Review, John Derbyshire made light of the desirability of getting a government job on The Corner, and then used the latest story of a governmental employee being paid entirely too much for the work done or services rendered as the punchline. Coincidentally -- or maybe not so -- most of these stories tended to originate from the suburbs ringing New York City in the Tri-State Area.

Well, that still seems to be the case, as the Star-Ledger reports that an unnamed attorney was being paid $18,800 per year -- plus health-insurance! -- by the Township of North Bergen, N.J. to do...absolutely nothing at all.

Now that's my kind of work! Also: Oh dear.

Maybe that's a sensationalist take on the unnamed attorney's story, aimed at driving up page-views. Let's see what the Township's version of events is: 

According to the report [of the Office of the Comptroller], North Bergen officials said they were unsure whether the attorney was assigned to the township’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board or served as the tenant advocate, and later said they did not know what work he had performed.

After the attorney resigned, the report said, North Bergen officials told the comptroller he had received a salary for "unknown job duties without the consent of township officials" and that they had referred the matter to the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office for review.

...then again, maybe it is that bad. Either the Township was paying the unnamed attorney to do nothing at all, which would be a sign of their corruption, or they were being fleeced by a con artist who was so bad at setting up the swindle that the Township wasn't even aware of precisely what they were paying for. (Or maybe the con artist was that good. Either way, it is a sign of the Township's incompetence.)

Probably would've been smarter to just to fess up to paying the unnamed attorney to do nothing, even if that wasn't the case. This is New Jersey, after all: The handing out of sinecures -- and corruption in general -- are to be expected from the local politicos. Incidentally, the entire report by the Star-Ledger is worth the read, as it highlights just how immensely dysfunctional New Jersey's local politics are.