NEW YORK, NY May 20, 2008 —A manager with the City Department of Education has agreed to pay a $1,000 penalty for attempting to run his part time job as Mayor of a Bergen County town while on Dept. of Education time. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

The City's Conflict of Interest Board says Joseph Blundo, who's in charge of the Department of Education's employee help line, made 76 long distance phone calls from that office doing work as mayor of River Vale, New Jersey while he was on the clock for the DOE.

Blundo is paid just $4000 a year as mayor of the Bergen County town and gets $145,000 a year for his day job. The calls were made over a 3 month period.

The Conflict of Interest Board was created in 1989 and has since investigated almost 3000 complaints of potential violations of the strict code that covers the city's 300,000 municipal workers.

For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.