By Patricia Alex, Staff Writer, The Record.
Kean University flouted state law and its own policies in spending $250,000 for the purchase of a Chinese-made conference table, according to a state report issued Wednesday.
The purchase, first reported in The Record, was made without needed board approval or competitive bidding, according to an investigation by the Office of the State Comptroller.
The table purchase, in 2014, raised questions about spending at Kean where President Dawood Farahi has come under fire for promoting “vanity projects.”
Related: Kean University’s $219,000 table the center of attention
The comptroller’s report – more than a year in the making – duplicated much of what had been reported by The Record and also found that school officials had paid an architect $30,000 for a full-scale plywood mockup of the table, which is 22-feet in diameter.
That additional cost brought the total to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, according to the report, which also found the school’s rationale in circumventing public bidding to be lacking.
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