NJ State Comptroller found Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, attended no Newark Watershed board meetings as its ex officio chair during the period investigated and designated no replacement after May 2010, 2014; a federal bankruptcy court dismissed him from a related civil suit on immunity grounds, 2016

An Office of the State Comptroller investigative report released Feb. 19, 2014 found that the Newark Watershed Conservation and Development Corporation, a city-created nonprofit that managed Newark's watershed under city contracts, operated without meaningful oversight, and that its executive director, Linda Watkins-Brashear, wrote unauthorized checks to herself, awarded no-bid contracts to associates and authorized risky trades that lost more than $500,000 in public funds.