The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey created a “no-show job” for the powerful chairman of the State Senate’s Budget and Appropriations Committee that essentially allowed him to “lobby himself” for taxpayer funds, according to the latest report by a federal monitor appointed to oversee the finances of the embattled public health-sciences university.

The investigation by the monitor, Herbert J. Stern, a former federal judge, could find no evidence of work done by Sen. Wayne R. Bryant, a Democrat, for his $35,000-a-year salary. Employees of the university’s School for Osteopathic Medicine “consistently” told the monitor that the senator spent three hours a week on the campus, and “the only thing observed of Bryant by anyone was that he read the newspapers.”

However, the School of Osteopathic Medicine received $12.8-million over Senator Bryant’s three-year tenure—$5.8-million in the 2004 fiscal year and $3.5-million each in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. The school had received $2.86-million from the state in the 2001 and 2002 fiscal years and $2.7-million in 2003. Senator Bryant has not responded to a request by the monitor’s office for a meeting, the report notes.

In addition, Mr. Bryant’s hiring coincided with efforts by the governor at the time, James E. McGreevey, a Democrat, to merge the medical and dental university with Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The report suggests that Senator Bryant had been hired, in part, for his ability to block the merger through his legislative clout. Although Governor McGreevey’s plan failed, public officials—including the current governor, Jon S. Corzine, also a Democrat—are revisiting the idea.

The report is just the latest in a series of revelations of waste, fraud, and abuse at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, a catalog of corruption estimated in an earlier report to have totaled at least $243-million.