Including health benefits, pensions and some other perks, Rutgers University paid out a combined total of almost $2.1 million to athletic director Tim Pernetti, lawyer John B. Wolf (resigned) and basketball coach Mike Rice (fired).

Rutgers Head Coach Mike Rice
Former Rutgers Head Coach Mike Rice (Chris Trotman, Getty Images)
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The trio was involved in a huge scandal after a video was released showing Rice physically abusing players and using gay slurs.

New Legislation would limit compensation to terminated public employees and those who resign to their base salary for one year only even if they have a multi-year contract.

"Taxpayers should not have to pay problematic public employees to go away," says Assembly Ron Dancer, the bill's sponsor. "It's too easy for public officials to throw piles of cash and other goodies at their problems. The only thing that does is create higher costs for taxpayers, ratepayers and tuition payers."

Saving Taxpayers from Exorbitant Severance Payouts

If the legislation were in place before the recent Rutgers scandal, Dancer says it would have saved taxpayers more than $1 million from the severance packages given to Pernetti, Rice and Wolf.

The base salary for Pernetti was $453,000. His severance package totals $1.2 million. Rice's base salary was $300,000 and his buyout totaled $475,000. The total payout to Wolf was $421,162. His base salary was $280,775. Dancer says limiting the severance packages to their base salaries would have saved a grand total of $1,062,387.

"There are more than one million better ways to use public dollars than on severance packages for public employees with questionable conduct on the job," says Dancer. "The public deserves better use of its resources than these outrageous payment packages."

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