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Democrats want to keep governor's most embarrassing moment alive
BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
UPDATED
What if legislative Democrats held a hearing, in part, to keep political heat on the Republican Christie administration for blowing the opportunity to gain New Jersey $400 million in federal Race to the Top education funding and none of the invited aides to the governor showed up?
The answer is expected Tuesday when the Assembly Appropriations Committee conducts what Democrats are describing as the first formal inquiry into the critical application mistake that lost the funding and led to the firing of state education commissioner Bret Schundler.
Gov. Christie wants the whole embarrassing political nightmare to become history as quickly as possible and is expected to tell the Democrats his aides will not appear.
"The frustration we're experiencing with the administration is that we have not been able to confirm a number of these attendees or secure the documentation we've requested in a timely manner," Assemblywoman Nellie Pou (D-Passaic), the committee chairman, said late Friday afternoon.Among those "invited'' to appear are Schundler and Richard Bagger, Christie's chief of staff.
As of late Friday afternoon, Assembly aides said additional Christie aides have been invited to testify but they could not immediately say who, if any, had agreed to appear.
They are:
- All members of the administration's Race to the Top team who met with U.S. Department of Education officials about the application.
- Any administration staff involved in the preparation of the state's application.
- Christie's director of policy, Gregg Edwards.
- Christie's communications director, Maria Comella.
- Christie's press secretary, Michael Drewniak.
- State treasury officials with knowledge of the contract the $500,000 consultation awarded to Wireless Generation and representatives of company.
Friday night, the governor's office released a copy of a letter sent to Pou by Christie's deputy chief counsel Kevin M. O'Dowd.
O'Dowd wrote the Assemblywoman that state Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks; DOE official Jessani Gordon, who helped prepare the application, DOE official Andrew Smarick, and Dan Gohl, the assistant director for Innovation and Change for the Newark public schools, would appear to discuss the preparation of the funding bid.
O'Dowd also wrote that Christie's aides, Edwards, Drewniak and Comella would not appear because they played no role in the preparation of the application.
O'Dowd mentioned that he understands that Lucille Davy, education commissioner under Gov. Jon Corzine also will appear.
This firm was retained by NJ simply to serve as a consultant for the Race to the Top application. But contrary to both federal and state rules, Wireless Generation actually developed proposal text that specifically defines a scope of work that Wireless Generation itself expects to complete -- either by sole source or by a rigged bidding process whereby Wireless Generation has developed a scope of work that only it will be in a position to carry out. In fact, you'll see by doing a search of the application that the proposal itself actually talks about the New Jersey student data being sent to Wireless Generation's central servers.
This is a complete perversion of federal and state procurement rules
Merit pay tied to student performance
Revisiting tenure
the implentation of national standardized testing
Increase of charter schools to replace failing schools that don't improve as a result of the above measures.
You want that, teachers?
You are chasing rabbits, here. Losing RTTT was a bullet dodged by the NJEA.
I think christie & his closest picks should be brought before the hearings as christie was the one who changed what Schundler already had in place. They should ALL come before this hearing & be accountable for the changes that lost us that money & tell what they know. No more circling the wagons. Or worrying that they will be the next ones fired for not going along with his lies.
Give me a break! Give me a break!
It is sure going to make New Jersey a wonderful place to do business again instead of being dead last and a tax nightmare.