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BY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Bitter and hurt about his ouster by Gov. Chris Christie as state education commissioner and worried about his family's financial situation, Bret Schundler Wednesday blamed the governor and his chief of staff Richard Bagger for the missteps that led to his firing last week.
As Christie and his aides hoped more pressing events like the approach of Hurricane Earl would put the Race to the Top debacle behind them, Schundler, from his home in Jersey City, emailed reporters a long explanation of his version of how the events leading up to his ouster occurred, including letters and emails.
At one point, Schundler declared that he feared Christie and Bagger were setting him up to take the fall for the embarrassment.
"I've held up distributing this chronology of events because I haven't wanted the education agenda I support to be harmed by Governor Christie,'' Schundler said. "But the governor saying yesterday that I lied to him forces me to defend myself.''Christie fired Schundler, a key member of his cabinet on Friday, charging he had lied to him about his role in a mistake that cost the administration a chance at $400 million in federal Race to the Top education aid. On Tuesday, Christie told reporters that should a cabinet member or aide lie to him, like Schundler, they would be fired.
Schundler said Christie and Bagger were told twice not to state to reporters that he had made the application correction verbally to U.S. Department of Education officials at a videotaped meeting in Washington.
"I will not accept being defamed by the governor for something he knows I did not do,'' Schundler said.
Christie's office is sticking with the governor's position that Schundler lied.
"Once again, Mr. Schundler acknowledges that he told both the governor and the U.S Secretary of Education that he verbally confirmed for Race to The Top judges that New Jersey satisfied spending criteria on education for the period 2008-2009,'' Michael Drewniak, the governor‘s press secretary, said. "However, video of the presentation revealed that this was not the case. This indisputable fact was the basis for Mr. Schundler's dismissal, no matter how much he attempts to cloud the issue or redirect responsibility for his own conduct."
New Jersey finished 11th in the Race to the Top competition, only a few points behind finishing in the money. Nine states and the District of Columbia collected from $750 million to $75 each.
Schundler conceded after the firing that he made an editing mistake on the application that cost the administration the aid. But earlier last week, Christie told reporters that Schundler had told him he corrected the mistake in person during a review of the application with officials in Washington. When a tape of the meeting showed Schundler did not make the correction, the governor fired him. Earlier this week, Schundler said he never told Christie he corrected the mistake and on Wednesday he provided details of events leading up to his firing.
Schundler said that on Aug. 24, he received a call from Bagger and Maria Comella, a Christie spokeswoman. Bagger asked whether Schundler had tried to submit the missing information to the U.S. Department of Education after the taped interview.
"No, I responded; the competition rules did not permit the provision of new information,'' Schundler said. "The rules of the grant competition were inflexible. Information provided after the application's due-date -- whether leading up to, during, or after our interview with grant reviewers -- would not have been accepted.
"I told Rich that no one on our team could provide the missing numbers from memory, and made clear that we couldn't produce the information from any other papers we had with us. Even if we could, I reinforced, we would not have gotten points. We had only one way to redeem the five points at stake: find the missing information somewhere in the application papers we had submitted. But we could not find the missing information in the application. It was not there. Rich then asked me if we had said anything about the missing information. I said I thought at some point a reviewer asked me whether they had given us a fair opportunity to find the missing information, and I said yes, and added, as an aside, that we did meet the grant's education spending criterion.''
Schundler said Comella ended the call with the words, "Well, it was a mistake, then."
"With those words she was essentially communicating, as I had in my emails to her, that the only way to accurately sum up for the press what had happened was to admit my team made an error on the application and leave it at that,'' Schundler said. "But that idea, that you simply admit making a mistake, obviously didn't sit well with the governor because the next morning (Aug. 25), while I was at my office, I received a phone call from him.''
Schundler said Bagger was also on the phone.
"The governor said he was angry about the missing information in our grant application, but that no one was going to lose their job over it,'' Schundler said. "He said he was about to do a press conference about the matter, and that he believed it is always better to be on offense than defense, so he would accept responsibility for the error, and then go on offense against the Obama administration. He was going to try to make the story about their picayune rules.
"He (Christie) was going to say that I gave the reviewers the missing information, but the Obama administration refused to give us the points we deserved, and that this showed they put bureaucratic rules above meaningful education reform.''
Schundler said he interrupted Christie and told him not to state Schundler had provided the missing application figures to U.S. DOE officials.
"Asked, by Rich (Bagger) I think, about commenting that we met the criterion, I confirmed it,'' Schundler said. "I also said the United States Department of Education might still have $100 million dollars left over in its Race to The Top account, and that we should ask Secretary of Education Duncan to give it to New Jersey as the first-runner-up state: the state next in line for funding.
Schundler said Christie liked the idea and directed him to write the letter.
"I was not able to watch the governor's press conference because I had a meeting with Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee,'' Schundler said. "But later that afternoon, while I was working on the letter to Secretary Duncan requested by the governor, I saw a transcript of the press conference on (NewJerseyNewsroom.com). Here is some of what governor Christie said:
"...when we went in for the personal interview, two weeks before the decision was made, they raised the issue with us. Commissioner Schundler gave them the ‘08 & ‘09 numbers..."
And "During that interview this issue was raised and Commissioner Schundler gave them, in the interview, the numbers for '08 - '09 because the mistake was raised."
"I don't know if it was intentional, but in these two instances, the governor said precisely what I told him not to say,'' Schundler said. "I also knew it was going to create a problem - if for no other reason than because the grant interview was videotaped. When the videotape came out, the news story would no longer be about Obama's picayune rules; it would be about the governor's misstatements.''
Schundler said he emailed Bagger and asked if he wanted any changes.
"My letter had a sentence that read as follows: 'Our application did not include one sentence in Section (F)(1)(i) which had appeared in previous drafts: a sentence establishing that New Jersey increased its spending on education as a percentage of total state revenues from 36.9% in 2008 to 39.6% in 2009 (a fact that we had noted in New Jersey's Round 1 application).
"Rich emailed me back his edited version of the letter. He made a change to this sentence. It now read this way: ‘Our application did not include documentation in Section (F)(1)(i) establishing that New Jersey increased its spending on education as a percentage of total state revenues from 36.9% in 2008 to 39.6% in 2009 (a fact that demonstrated in New Jersey's Round 1 application and confirmed verbally during our August 11th presentation).'''
Schundler said Bagger's revised letter had him stating that he gave federal reviewers the correct numbers missing from the application.
"That raised red flags with me,'' Schundler said. "Rich knew I had not given numbers to the reviewers. He had learned about it from the email I sent to Maria Comella early Tuesday (Aug. 24) afternoon. He knew about it from the conversation I had with him and Maria later that afternoon. And he knew about it from my Wednesday (Aug. 25) morning conversation with the governor, during which Rich was on the speakerphone too. My point had been clear: I did not give any numbers to the reviewers. And yet Rich wanted me to say that I had - and in a letter to the United States Secretary of Education, no less.
Schundler said he then feared he was being set up to take the fall for what had become the first major political embarrassment for Christie.
"Rich was with the governor when he gave his press conference,'' Schundler said. "He probably cringed when the governor misspoke, just as I did when I read the transcript. The governor's misstatement could easily become an embarrassment. I feared they were setting me up as a scapegoat.
"I spoke with Rich on the phone and told him I would not accept his edits,‘' Schundler said. "I had not given the missing numbers to the reviewers and I would not say that I had. Rich said he would rework the sentence and later emailed me an edited letter that I found acceptable.
"The key sentences read: 'Our application did not include documentation in Section (F)(1)(i) establishing that New Jersey increased its spending on education as a percentage of total state revenues from 36.9% in 2008 to 39.6% in 2009 (a fact that was demonstrated in New Jersey's Round 1 application). In addition, it was confirmed verbally during our August 11 presentation that New Jersey satisfied this criteria.'
On Thursday (Aug. 26) afternoon, the U.S. DOE released the videotape of Schundler and his aides meeting with officials in Washington.
"It didn't surprise me,'' Schundler said. "The governor, in the midst of his attack on the Obama administration, said things that were false and now the Obama administration was acting to embarrass the governor about it. I came out from an early evening meeting and saw I had an email from Rich Bagger requesting that I call him immediately. I called and he said the governor was demanding my immediate resignation for having "misled" him about the grant interview.
"I responded to Rich that both he and the governor knew that was not true,'' Schundler said. "Rich didn't respond to that point -- which of course he wouldn't. Rich then told me the governor had left for a radio call-in program and was not available to discuss it, but that it seemed his mind was made up. He said he would call me later that evening, after the radio program was over, to talk more -- which he did not. Finally, he said that in the morning I should report to the governor's office to discuss "transition issues."
Schundler said that from his home that evening, he forwarded Christie a string of emails detailing how his aides and consultants searched for the application mistake.
"... Now I was being fired, and I figured part of the reason had to be the governor's belief DOE made the error, and I was responsible as commissioner,'' Schundler said. "I decided to let the governor know that the error may well have occurred during a fact-checking process that involved two departments - not just the (state) DOE - and sent him the email string we had discovered.
"I learned yesterday (Tuesday) that one of our consultants finally found in her boxes of papers what we'd been looking for: the answer to the question of how the missing information got dropped from the application,'' Schundler said. "It turns out that I had crossed out the key words while hand-editing text. I haven't seen the page with my hand edits, and I don't know why my error wasn't caught, but I now feel worse about things than ever. My stupid error contributed to New Jersey not winning $400 million in federal grant funds. If the governor had given us time to discover this, and then fired me for the error, I would still feel devastated, but I would not feel defamed.''
Schundler said he told Christie and Bagger "... the truth: I did not give the missing budget numbers to the U.S. Department of Education grant reviewers. I spelled this out in my Tuesday (Aug. 24) emails to Maria Comella. I said it repeatedly during my Tuesday (Aug. 24) phone conversation with Maria and Rich Bagger.
I stressed it during my Wednesday (Aug. 25) morning phone conversation with the governor -- with Rich Bagger on the speakerphone -- who already knew I had not given any numbers to the grant reviewers. And I refused to sign a letter to Secretary Duncan that misrepresented the fact. We're not talking about a situation where there might be a misunderstanding by the governor and his team. We're talking about a point I made again and again, just last week.
Schundler declared that telling the truth is important to him.
"And the accusation that I misled the governor to hide a poor interview performance is utter nonsense,'' Schundler said. "I handled the reviewer's question appropriately and my team and I earned New Jersey a larger point gain from our interview performance than any other state achieved in either of the two rounds of this competition. Finally, I knew that the interview was being videotaped. If you don't know whether you should believe in my honesty or our effective presentation performance, at least trust in my common sense: There is no way I would lie to the governor about having provided the ‘08 budget numbers, knowing that such a lie would be brought to light.
"I have thought about the possibility that beyond my being a scapegoat for his misstatement, the governor might be angry at me for not telling him the interview was videotaped,'' Schundler said. "In my defense, I never believed I needed to say, ‘Governor, stick to the truth, there's a videotape.' Perhaps I should have.
"After all, I may have misremembered by a few minutes precisely when, a few weeks earlier, I had made a comment about New Jersey meeting the grant's spending criteria,'' Schundler said. "But it's hard to imagine how, within a matter of minutes, the governor could forget a point I made to him emphatically.
"Perhaps he just accidentally misspoke when he said I provided the missing numbers. You know ... gotten on a roll and said the wrong thing,'' Schundler said. "But then he would have had to accidentally misspeak again, just a few minutes later, when he repeated the same falsehood. The accident thesis seems unlikely ... but you draw your own conclusions. The only thing I'm sure of is that the governor knew I didn't provide numbers at the grant interview.
"I told Governor Christie and his staff that I did not provide the numbers,'' Schundler said. "The documentary evidence backs me up. Reporters should ask the governor a direct question: ‘Is it true Bret Schundler told you that he did not provide the numbers?' If he says, ‘No,' ask him for his evidence. If he says, ‘Yes,' ask him why he made the claim that I provided numbers -- remember, twice -- during his press conference.
"I mentioned that the governor told me he likes being on offense, not defense,'' Schundler said. "As a former prosecutor, that it is not surprising to me. Prosecutors construct their argument and press it. In this instance, the argument the governor wanted to make at his press conference was that New Jersey lost out on $400 million because the Obama administration has stupid grant competition rules. It would have supported the governor's argument if I had, in truth, given the reviewers the missing information, and they just refused to give us points. But that is not what happened. And the governor already knew that Wednesday (Aug. 26) morning.
"The governor ignored my correction of his mental script,'' Schundler said. "Whether accidentally or on purpose, he went ahead and said what he had wanted to say from the beginning. He shouldn't have. Good prosecutors don't support their argument with claims they know are false. And they don't charge people that they know are innocent.''
