By Jarrett Renshaw and Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver and Newark Mayor Cory Booker told a group of North Jersey Democratic lawmakers today they have struck a deal to support the proposed higher education reorganization, removing one of the biggest obstacles to the controversial reshuffling of three of the state’s largest universities.
Oliver (D-Essex) and Booker held a closed-door meeting with lawmakers this morning in Trenton to detail the deal they negotiated, according to sources who attended but were not authorized to discuss the meeting.
The proposed restructuring, supported by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Gov. Chris Christie, would break up the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and divide the pieces between Rutgers University and Rowan University.
Under the deal, North Jersey legislators will drop their opposition to the plan if the state picks up the outstanding debt of University Hospital, UMDNJ;s teaching hospital in Newark, the sources said. The proposed legislation will also be rewritten to create four new seats on the Rutgers Board of Governors, including two for members from Essex County, to give the region more say in how the state university is run.
The deal also calls for the remnants of UMDNJ in Newark to be reformed into a new School of Health Sciences at Rutgers, which would be overseen by its own chancellor, the sources said.
There will also be amendments to current restructuring bill to increase union protections and change the proposed governance structure at Rowan-Rutgers and at Rutgers-Newark, the sources said. It’s unclear how the governance structure will change.
The changes to the legislation are designed to appease some of the concerns of North Jersey lawmakers, including those in Newark who said the higher education reorganization deal would help Camden at Newark’s expense.
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