Christie on Dems Rejection of Kwon to Supreme Court

Governor Chris Christie will be addressing the press corp regarding the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of his nomination of Phillip Kwon to the NJ Supreme Court momentarily.

Watch it here:

• Tweet

Senate Judiciary Committee Rejects Kwon’s Supreme Court Nomination

The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee rejected Phillip Kwon’s nomination to be an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court.

The committee voted 7-6 against Governor Christie’s nominee.  Democratic Senator Brian Stack of Hudson County joined five Republicans in voting for the nomination.

Michael Aron of NJTV said that this is the first time in history that the Judiciary Committee has not approved a governor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

At issue for the Democrats voting against the nomination was Kwon’s family finances, his political affiliation and his work in the Christie administration’s Attorney General’s office.

The nomination of Chatham Mayor Bruce Harris was not heard today.

Republican members of the committee, called the Democrats’ rejection of Kwon a politically motivated “indefensible character assassination.” In a joint statement Senators Gerald Cardinale, Kevin O’Toole, Joe Kyrillos, Christopher Bateman and Michael J. Doherty said,

Today, Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee rejected an exceptionally well-qualified Supreme Court nominee for no good reason whatsoever.  From the moment Mr. Kwon was nominated, the Majority engaged in a campaign of intensely personal character assassination centering around issues that were completely immaterial to his fitness to serve on the court.

The Majority’s entire line of questioning and basis for rejecting his nomination centered on events that had absolutely nothing to do with Phil Kwon.

In short, Phil Kwon was railroaded out of sheer partisan animosity toward the governor.  Theirs was a rejection seeking a reason.  Faced with a nominee whom there was no rational basis to reject, the Majority decided to create one based on the actions of others for which he bears no legal, ethical, or personal responsibility.

If the Majority thinks that its own political ends are what matters in this process, they are mistaken.  The only thing that matters is the public’s right to Supreme Court justices that are well qualified, fair, and nominated by a Governor to whom the voters gave this awesome responsibility.

Their petty actions today are a disgrace to the legislature and the people we serve.

• Tweet

“Scary” Governor and Teacher at Kearny Town Hall

• Tweet

Navy Seal Veteran Gets A Haircut, Apologizes To Christie

William Brown, the Rutgers-Camden law student who got into it with Governor Christie at a town hall meeting last week and was called an idiot by the Guv, has cleaned himself up and apologized.

Law student talks about being called ‘idiot’ by governor: MyFoxNY.com

The Phillie FoxNews affiliate got Brown’s apology on Tuesday.  Bob Ingle, Save Jersey, The State Column, Politico and now MMM have covered the apology.  The rest of the media outlets which made Christie’s “idiot” remark national news are mum.

• Tweet

Christie’s Interaction With William Brown

Full exchange audio, courtesy of Save Jersey:

• Tweet

The video we’ve been anticipating…

Not released by the Governor’s office

• Tweet

Christie in Ocean Township

“We’ve already won the fight”

There’s a lot of familiar faces in the background. Who’s missing?

• Tweet

Governor Christie Takes Action to Root Out Waste and Abuse to Make Every Education Dollar Count

Trenton, NJ – Today, Governor Chris Christie took another important step to move forward with common sense reforms of the state’s system of education funding by convening a task force of experts to root out and eliminate well-documented instances of abuse and manipulation of the school funding formula due to fraud in the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program. The Education Funding Task Force, created by Executive Order, will act on the Governor’s commitment to make every education dollar count and ensure funding is not being misdirected, but actually getting to those economically disadvantaged children who need it most.

“Providing a great education that prepares every single child in our state for college or a career has been a top priority of my Administration. For this reason, I’ve proposed a budget that increases state support for education to its highest level ever and an agenda of bold reforms to turn around failing schools,” said Governor Christie. “But how we spend education dollars in our schools is just as important as how we provide them. Funding must follow the child more closely and get to the students who need it most. This Task Force will help to root out and eliminate well-documented fraud and abuse in the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program, which has led to the possible misdirection of tens of millions of dollars of education funding.”

The School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) is designed to distribute greater amounts of school aid to districts serving greater numbers of students who are economically at-risk and districts with less property wealth. Currently, participation in the federal Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program serves as the proxy for classifying and counting economically at-risk students. Recent studies and news reports clearly identify high levels of fraudulent enrollment in the program – undercutting the state’s ability to fairly and appropriately determine aid levels for schools. A 2011 report by the State Auditor found that as many as 37 percent of the students in the program are enrolled fraudulently.

Recognizing the importance of maintaining integrity and reliability in this program is crucial to ensuring a fair, accurate and equitable distribution of funding to schools. The Education Funding Task Force is charged with examining the state’s school funding formula and developing recommendations concerning those areas of the formula that may be susceptible to fraud or subject to outside manipulation. This includes participation in the Federal Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program as a proxy for at-risk status and the municipal tax abatement program. 

The Task Force will specifically consider the following issues: 

·         Economically effective measures of student poverty;

·         Educationally sound measures of defining at-risk students;

·         Appropriate adjustments to SFRA to account for municipal property ratable bases that may be artificially deflated as a result of municipal property tax abatements;

·         Identifying all aspects of the SFRA that may be susceptible to fraud, or subject to undue outside manipulation and recommendations to address these abuses; and

·         All other such other matters as may be referred to the Task Force by the Governor.

The Education Funding Task Force will be composed of 7 members from inside and outside of government, each with expertise in education funding, policy, administration, governance and fiscal management. All members of the Task Force will serve without compensation.

The Task Force was first called for in the Department of Education’s Education Funding Report released last month, in a recommendation aimed at exploring the use of a new measure for at-risk students in place of participation in the Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program. The funding report outlined a series of common sense measures to improve the school funding formula and to help close the state’s persistent achievement gap by making education funding more closely follow the child.

A copy of Executive Order 89 can be found as an attachment to this release.

• Tweet

Governor Christie Press Conference

Governor Chris Christie has a press conference scheduled for 11:30 this morning.

Watch it live here:

• Tweet

Americans for Prospertity Opposes Christie’s Supreme Court Picks

Steve Lonegan, Executive Director of the New Jersey Chapter of Americans for Prosperity and Governor Chris Christie’s opponent in the 2009 GOP gubernatorial primary, has come out in opposition to Christie’s nominees for the State Supreme Court.

Chatham Mayor Bruce Harris and First Assistant Attorney General Phillip Kwon were nominated by Christie in January.  The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings on their nominations on March 22.

In a press release issue last night, Americans for Prosperity said that they expected to testify against the nominations and that it ” will be mobilizing its army of more than 60,000 citizen activists as part of its efforts to have impartial, originalist justices confirmed to the state’s highest court.”

“After careful review and consideration of these nominees, Americans for Prosperity cannot endorse their confirmation to the state’s highest court and will work to see that they are not confirmed by the state Senate,” Lonegan said.

 “The governor was elected on the promise to change the makeup of the court by replacing activist justices with originalists who will interpret the law, not make law from the bench,” continued Lonegan, “and Americans for Prosperity was fully prepared to support him in achieving this goal.

“However, there is nothing in the backgrounds of either of these nominees to assure us that Mayor Harris or Mr. Kwon will practice judicial restraint and put a stop to this court’s endless usurpations of the powers of the other branches of government if seated on the Supreme Court.”

• Tweet