Is Gov. Chris Christie a bad boss? An analysis By Mark J. Magyar Four weeks before Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey and turned him into a media superstar, Gov. Chris Christie delivered a sarcastic but little-noticed evaluation of his own administration: “Sometimes, I know it’s going to be shocking for everyone to hear, government doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to.” Christie’s comment was meant to be a flip throwaway line excusing the inexplicable 18-month failure of his Department of Community Affairs to get $300 million in federal foreclosure aid into the hands of tens of thousands of New Jerseyans. It wouldn’t happen again, Christie vowed. Nevertheless, the same agency last month was the subject of a Senate Legislative Oversight Committee hearing into its failure to get $600 million in federal aid into the hands of homeowners who lost their homes to Sandy. The agency has yet to fully explain its secret firings of two private contractors hired to administer Sandy relief programs. NJSPOTLIGHT_logo_final.jpg Earlier this month, an NJ Spotlight/WNYC investigation revealed that the administration’s system for awarding $25 million in Sandy grants was so riddled with errors that it awarded large amounts to towns unscathed by the storm, gave no money to flooded municipalities such as Belmar and Atlantic City, and shorted Hoboken by $700,000. Meanwhile, the Assembly Transportation Committee held a hearing into why NJ Transit failed to provide enough trains and buses to take home tens of thousands of frigid Super Bowl fans, who ended their visit chanting, “New Jersey sucks!” That fiasco came 15 months after NJ Transit lost $120 million worth of locomotives and rail cars to Hurricane Sandy. “This is Management 101,” said Sen. Robert Gordon (D-Bergen), the oversight committee chairman. “We need to understand what the overall problem is with this administration. “Does this administration put political credentials ahead of policy expertise? In an administration that rewards loyalty and punishes every sign of disloyalty, does anyone dare to give the governor bad news?” he asked. “And if the governor is really making every decision right down to who gets hired in individual departments in ‘red light, green light’ meetings, that’s just bad management.” The failure of Community Affairs to get needed aid to homeowners and of NJ Transit to protect its trains and get Super Bowl fans home quickly are part of an unprecedented series of high-profile governmental foul-ups in Christie’s four-plus years in office. That’s the verdict from interviews with more than 20 academics, lawmakers and Statehouse insiders from both parties. It’s not a new issue, they note, citing the 2010 loss of a $400 million Race to the Top grant due to a clerical error and Christie’s last-minute decision to undo Education Commissioner Bret Schundler’s groundbreaking agreement with the teachers union on tenure and merit pay that would have assured the federal money. While the media focus is on the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, government experts say Christie’s record raises fundamental questions about his management of state government overall, which they say are a direct result of a series of related factors that are a reflection of Christie’s personal management style and the way he set up his government. The most critical, they say, are Christie’s insistence that every decision go through his governor’s office, his reliance on former prosecutors with minimal policy experience or Statehouse ties to handle key positions, his administration’s lack of transparency, his failure to listen to anyone outside his inner circle, and his tendency toward stalling and personal criticism that stifles needed policy debate. Christie’s communications department did not respond to emailed questions on these issues, Christie’s Sandy czar and NJ Transit officials have refused to appear at legislative hearings, and Christie went more than 11 weeks without a news conference until Friday, a day after he was cleared of involvement or prior knowledge of Bridgegate by a law firm that his office hired to do an internal investigation. Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney and legislative committees investigating potential criminality, official misconduct and ethics abuses have flooded the governor’s office with subpoenas, and five top Christie appointees have been fired or resigned. “It’s just unprecedented,” said Carl Golden, former communications director for Republican Govs. Tom Kean and Christie Whitman. “I’ve never seen a governor in this position.” TOP-DOWN ORGANIZATION Government experts agree that the Christie administration’s policy failures — such as Bridgegate and other scandals — flow directly from the decisions Christie made on how to set up and run his governor’s office and the $50 billion, 70,000-employee state government. “We went from an administration where the guy at the top couldn’t make a decision to a guy who can make a decision but wants no input,” said Monmouth University political scientist Patrick Murray, comparing Christie with Democrat Jon Corzine. “The problem is that when you pretty much shut out all outside voices in the decision-making process, you’re more likely to make a mistake.” Experts said the Christie administration is more centralized and has less hands-on policy and political experience than any governor in at least a half-century. “You can’t run a business you don’t understand,” said Raphael Caprio, director of Rutgers University’s Local Government Research Center. “I’m not sure the senior administration officials understand the aims, the mission and the needs of the constituencies of the agencies they have been asked to run. Their inherent background is prosecutorial.” Experts says Christies administration is more centralized and has less hands-on policy and political experience than any governor in a half-century. Christie put 14 former staffers from his U.S. Attorney’s Office into top governor’s office or cabinet-level positions, tapped former prosecutor Kim Guadagno as lieutenant governor and put other ex-prosecutors atop key agencies. His political team came to him after working for Rudy Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney with a similar management style. “Every administration has a management tone set by the governor and it starts with the organization of the front office — who gets access to the governor, how small is the inner circle and how much of a gatekeeper it is,” said Rider University political scientist Ben Dworkin. “Sometimes it’s a team of rivals, sometimes it’s filled with true believers.” LACKING STATEHOUSE EXPERIENCE Christie’s decision to rely on his U.S. attorney’s staff and political operatives is rooted in his insistence upon absolute loyalty, and the fact that Christie was never really part of New Jersey’s Republican establishment. Christie formed alliances with Democratic powerbrokers George Norcross and Joseph DiVincenzo to further his own national and state ambitions. He did nothing, however, to showcase future Republican leaders, strengthen the state’s Republican Party or give the GOP a chance to recapture the Legislature. That’s because Christie was — and remains — an outsider. A brash one-term county freeholder ousted by his own party, Christie teamed with his brother Todd to raise millions for 2000 presidential candidate George W. Bush, who resurrected Christie’s career by naming him U.S. attorney. Other than Richard Bagger, Christie’s first chief of staff, the core leadership team Christie chose lacked the Statehouse relationships, in-depth understanding of policy issues and years of experience responding to constituent complaints that make an administration successful, government experts agreed. Christie appointed the first Community Affairs commissioners without extensive state or local government experience, and both Lori Grifa and Richard Constable have come under fire for failing to get needed aid to homeowners. “Community Affairs is supposed to function like a giant funnel,” Golden said. “State and federal aid pours in one end and goes out the other to help local governments and citizens.” But Grifa choked off the funnel. She was so focused on preventing fraud that she set up a system in which only eight homeowners a month qualified for federal grants to avert eviction while $300 million sat unused. Under Constable, Sandy victims complained that 15 months after the devastating storm only $25 million had been awarded and $112 million obligated out of a $600 million fund for Sandy rebuilding. CHAIN OF COMMAND Unlike Christie, governors such as Kean, Whitman and Brendan Byrne vested considerable autonomy in their cabinet, but the firing of Schundler after the Race to the Top fiasco sent a clear message: Don’t do anything without checking — then double-checking — with the governor’s office. That increasingly became the administration’s modus operandi as Christie considered running for president in 2011, was vetted for vice president and keynoted the Republican National Convention in 2012, then aimed for a re-election landslide last year to set up a 2016 presidential run. “In the U.S. Attorney’s Office, everything that is going on has to go up the chain of command, and that’s what Gov. Christie and so many of his appointees are used to,” Golden said. “But in government, there’s a risk if you try to concentrate too much power and authority in one person or office. There’s a balance between the need to let the governor’s office knows what’s going on versus the need to get every decision approved by the governor’s office. That leads to delays in decision-making.” Mark J. Magyar, who served as deputy policy chief under Gov. Christie Whitman, is an editor-at-large for NJ Spotlight. Chris Christies big issues 1.Christie’s insistence that every decision go through his governor’s office, his failure to listen to anyone outside a inner circle, and what analysts say is his increasing tendency to put politics ahead of policy, and national politics ahead of state politics. 2.Christie’s reliance on former prosecutors with little administrative or policy experience to run the governor’s office and key state agencies. 3.The exodus from the state government of scores of knowledgeable senior officials. 4. A lack of transparency, a tendency toward secretiveness and a failure to seek real public input. 5.Christie’s frequent refusal to allow cabinet officers and other key officials to testify at legislative hearings.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 17:41:51 +0000