Former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, who in 2018 took a state pension-boosting job as head of an obscure university governing body, has quietly left that post to head up a Camden development nonprofit.
Redd spent enough time as CEO of the Rowan University/Rutgers-Camden Board of Governors to lock in her future pension based on that job’s $275,000 salary, drastically boosting her retirement allowance over what she would have received had she not worked there.
Redd has taken over as CEO of Camden Community Partnership, formerly known as Cooper's Ferry Partnership — a nonprofit engaged in redevelopment and community programs in Camden, according to a Facebook post from the group, which has not otherwise announced Redd's new role and does not list her as CEO on its website.
Redd had previously chaired the nonprofit's board of directors.
Kris Kolluri, the nonprofit's former CEO, left over the summer to head up the Gateway Development Commission to build a new rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan. Redd is following in Kolluri’s footsteps: He was also CEO of the Rowan University/Rutgers-Camden Board Governors before leaving to run Camden Community Partnership.
A request for comment from Camden Community Partnership was not returned on Tuesday.
While it’s not clear what Redd’s salary is with the nonprofit, it will likely be a bump from her university job. As of 2020 — the latest year for which Internal Revenue Service nonprofit returns are available — Kolluri earned a base salary of $319,168 with Camden Community Partnership, $76,632 in bonuses and incentives as well as $25,650 in retirement and other deferred compensation.
Redd, a Camden native who was mayor from 2010 to 2018, now lives in Sicklerville, according to the address listed on her political donations in campaign finance records.
Redd’s departure from the Rowan University/Rutgers-Camden Board of Governors was not publicly announced. An administrative assistant at the board told POLITICO that Redd left on Sept. 23 and that the group’s chief operative officer, Dean D’Astuto, is serving as interim CEO.
Camden Community Partnership also did not formally announce that Redd has taken over as CEO, except for a brief mention in a Sunday Facebook post that lists her as CEO. The post was about a $950,000 donation a housing nonprofit received from New Jersey American Water.
Redd’s pension
While it is common for elected officials in New Jersey to take short-term jobs to boost their state pensions, Redd’s case was unique because former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican — in one of his last acts in office in 2018 — signed a bill that had been rushed through the lame duck legislative session that was designed specifically to let Redd, a Democrat, back into the pension system.
When Redd resigned as a state senator to become mayor of Camden in 2010, the public pension she had been accumulating since 1990 was frozen. That was because a 2007 law barred newly-elected public officials from joining the pension system, shifting them into 401(k)-style accounts instead.
The law Christie signed in 2018, days after Redd took the job at Rowan-Rutgers, allowed Redd and several other politicians in similar situations to buy back the time during which they were out of the pension system and remain in their original tier. In Redd’s case, that’s the first and most generous tier. And by staying at the Rowan-Rutgers job for more than three years, she locked in that salary as the basis for her future pension.
Had Christie not signed the law, Redd at retirement would have earned a pension based on 20 years of service and a salary of $92,000. Now she can retire with a pension based on 32 years of service and a salary of $275,000.
Redd, 54, is eligible to collect her pension without a penalty for early retirement when she turns 55, according to a state pension guide. It will be about $160,000 a year, based on the guide's calculations. Had she not been allowed to return to the pension system, her pension upon retirement would have been about $37,000.
Camden Community Partnership
Camden Community Partnership was founded as Cooper's Ferry in 1984 and often works hand-in-hand with the city government on programs aimed at rebuilding and revitalizing Camden, which is New Jersey’s poorest city.
The organization got some critical press in 2019, when ProPublica reported that South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross and his brother, Phil, muscled the nonprofit out of its exclusive rights to buy a Camden business complex in favor of a private developer over the resistance of the nonprofit’s then-chair, the late John Sheridan.
