| Schundler firing raises questions |  |  |  |
| Written by NORM COHEN |
| Tuesday, 31 August 2010 09:28 |
Last week Gov. Chris Christie fired state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler for misleading him when reporting how it was that New Jersey lost $400 million in "Race to the Top" federal education funding. Schundler continues to protest that he reported the facts accurately to the governor and did not mislead him. A number of interesting issues have come out of this clerical error that cost New Jersey $400 million. First, there is the mystery of the missing data, supposedly one or two pages out of a thousand. The data was in the report on May 26, according to Schundler, but then was lost, perhaps during the final fact-checking process, and the wrong data appears to have been substituted for the correct data. Didn't someone print out an extra copy before the application was given to the fact checkers? If this is the accurate timeline, then someone else needs to be fired besides Schundler, preferably the person or persons that substituted the incorrect data. I found it interesting that, according to news reports, Schundler asked to be fired rather than resign so that he could collect unemployment compensation. Schundler said he has a mortgage and a daughter entering college and needs the money until he can find a new job. There is nothing wrong with a person wanting unemployment compensation while they look for a new job. What is interesting is that this request came from a conservative Republican, and it is conservative Republicans that oppose unemployment compensation because it is an entitlement, and because it makes people lazy. Yet here is a conservative Republican being very open |
