Monica Yant Kinney: Bryant's dream? Now it's a wake-up call for others

Former New Jersey Sen. Wayne Bryant never said much about the criticism that dogged his career, the charges that he accumulated pension-padding public jobs the way some people collect state spoons or snow globes.

But once, in an interview with a few Inquirer journalists in 2003, Bryant testily defended the foul-smelling behavior that later led to his spectacular fall from power.

Bryant doesn't see himself as a patronage pig. He and his family aren't sucking the system dry, I wrote.

They're just, he said, "living the American dream."

Some dream. After a five-hour sentencing hearing Friday, Bryant learned he'll be waking up for four years on a prison mattress.

If he's really lucky, he'll get the top bunk.

It wasn't the harshest punishment possible - federal prosecutors had sought eight to 10 years for the Camden County Democrat - but it wasn't as jaw-droppingly outrageous as the bear hug U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter gave disgraced former Pennsylvania State Sen. Vince Fumo.

That's because unlike Buckwalter, U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson believes sentences should act as a deterrent. Otherwise, what's the point?

Twice this month, I've endured criminal sentencings masked as This Is Your Life marathons.

Bryant, 61, used to be the godlike chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. He wrestled $175 million for Camden's recovery. His work on the NJ Stars program opened college doors to needy students across the state.

But hours of testimonials about a criminal defendant's decades of good deeds insult everyone in earshot. Bryant may well have been a sweet, selfless young man when he began his career. But what's relevant is that he became a political animal all about the Benjamins.

Bryant got caught trying to hike up his top-three earning years to bolster his state pension.

Raw greed alone is not a crime. Bryant's scam qualified as a toxic "quid-pro-quo bribery," Wolfson told the defendant, "when you ceded your impartiality" and "allowed the payers to place a thumb on the scale of your decision-making."

I've long mocked "no-show" jobs, but in its own way, the "low-show" gig is far more brazen.

For occasionally pretending to work at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, Bryant got a $35,000 salary and, more important, boosted his pension from $21,000 to $80,000.

In return, he happily steered $11 million in state funding to the school. A more thoughtfully corrupt thank-you gift I've rarely seen.

Only once during the sentencing did prosecutors mention last week's mega-bust of 44 political and religious figures in what could wind up as the biggest corruption scandal in Garden State history.

Bryant supporters grumbled, but clearly Wolfson had the disturbing big picture on her mind.

"We certainly don't own [corruption] in our state," she said, "but it is here."

Bryant isn't the first, last, or worst. Yes, he did much good. But that's what voters expect. We don't elect them to loot the place.

Amid the outcry over Fumo's spa trip of a sentence, I wondered for a moment if maybe the public, press, and prosecutors were too hungry for blood.

Bryant's swan song snapped me back into reality. The problem isn't us. It's the genetic makeup of our flawed leaders.

Wolfson noted that among the many letters she received in support of the defendant were several from in-the-know types still puzzling over how Bryant was guilty of any crime.

"I don't understand," they wrote. "He did what everybody else was doing."