Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti — a former state transportation commissioner and chief of staff to Gov. Phil Murphy — recently took a job as a senior vice president at the engineering firm WSP while maintaining a part-time role as an adviser to Murphy.
Gutierrez-Scaccetti began working at WSP — which describes itself as “one of the world’s leading professional services firms” — earlier this year as a senior vice president and local business lead, and is involved in projects outside of New Jersey, the governor’s office said.
WSP has landed large contracts in New Jersey in recent years, including construction management for NJ Transit of the $74.5 million Elizabeth Station renovation and providing environmental review, preliminary engineering and master planning for the Port Authority Bus Terminal project, valued at more than $10 billion.
Before assuming the job with WSP, Gutierrez-Scaccetti consulted with New Jersey’s ethics officer and completed disclosure paperwork, the governor’s office said.
“Diane is a valued part-time member of our team and has cleared her working arrangement with our ethics officer,” said Natalie Hamilton, a spokeswoman for the governor…
Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow at Rutgers University’s Center for Urban Policy Research, said balancing dual roles in the private and public sectors “can be problematic, and the officials involved have to make good choices” by following the law and ethics policies.
“Clearly the governor decided, you know, she’s got all this institutional knowledge, she knows stuff, she understands the politics very well apparently, she understands the operations and the activities well, and as long as she is recused, recuses herself from anything that’s on the competition side or any information she has, as long as she does that … she’s OK,” Pfeiffer said.
Gutierrez-Scaccetti, who has owned a home in Tennessee since 2022, recused herself from involvement in recent controversial procurements to provide E-ZPass services for the Turnpike Authority. Her daughter worked at Tennessee-based TransCore until 2023.
New Jersey Herald, April 17, 2025