Honig’s Restitution Cut to $274,754

Former schools chief Bill Honig was ordered Monday to pay $274,754 in restitution in connection with his felony conflict-of-interest convictions in January.

The amount was about $60,000 less than he had been ordered to pay initially, but Honig continued to argue that he should not be required to pay any restitution in the case that involved his authorization of $337,509 in state contracts that benefited his wife’s nonprofit Quality Education Project.

“This is just another piece of evidence that this trial was a railroad job,” said Honig, whose attorneys are appealing the convictions and penalties.

Superior Court Judge James L. Long had tentatively ordered Honig to pay the full amount of the state contracts that called for hiring educators to set up parental involvement programs in conjunction with Nancy Honig’s business.

Long found in his latest order that there was convincing evidence presented in Honig’s jury trial that the state received some of the services it paid for.

Long found that under another contract, a former school principal was paid with state funds “to work as a prominent QEP executive.” Regarding the work of two other educators, Long wrote in his order, “the testimony . . . fails to establish that the state received the services for which it contracted.”