Two Board of Governors members removed following court ruling on residency requirements
Two members of the Rutgers Board of Governors were immediately removed from their positions on Thursday following a court ruling determining they failed to meet the residency requirements of their roles on Thursday.
The appointments of 15 Board of Governors members with voting power are shared by the governor of New Jersey and the Rutgers Board of Trustees. As of 2012, one of the eight gubernatorial appointees must live in Camden, while another must live in Essex County. Of the seven Trustees appointments, one must live in Essex County and the other in Middlesex County.
Concerns around whether Heather Taylor, managing director of Eisner Advisory Group who was appointed to represent Middlesex County by the Board of Trustees in 2019, and William Tambussi, partner at Brown and Connery who was first appointed to represent the city of Camden by former Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) in 2014, actually reside in their respective jurisdictions were first litigated by the University’s faculty unions in January.
The Rutgers chapter of the American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) alleged that Taylor purchased residential property in Monmouth County in 2019, sold her home in Middlesex County in 2020 and re-registered her address on her voter documents to reflect the change in 2022.
Her term would have otherwise expired in June 2025.
The union also alleged that Tambussi, who was reappointed to his seat in June 2020, purchased residential property in Atlantic County four months later. He sold his Camden County property in 2022 and re-registered his voting address to reflect the change in residential address in the same month, only to announce his actual residential address in Philadelphia.
His Board appointment would have otherwise concluded on June 30 of this year.
In a statement to the press on Thursday, the University said that it has not seen the ruling and that an appeal remains plausible. For now, the University has removed the two members from the Board and its website to abide by the court’s decision. Both Taylor and Tambussi’s workplace websites continued to list the affiliation as of that day.
While an article from Inside Higher Ed indicates his removal was based on his noncompliance with the Camden residency requirement, it also comes just 10 days after he was indicted as a co-conspirator on 13 counts related to racketeering, conspiracy to commit theft through means such as extortion and other criminal activities, misconduct and financially supporting criminal conduct.
The impact of his criminal activity in Camden was highlighted in a statement on his removal from Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, in which the union highlighted the importance of the decision to the wellbeing of communities within the Middlesex and Camden counties, as well as at Rutgers.
"This is particularly true for Camden County, where Bill Tambussi is charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment of weaponizing Camden’s government to benefit his client, George Norcorss," the union’s statement read. "Rutgers, as the state’s premier public research university, should not be stained by the association with a corrupt political organization."
