Christie’s Contradiction

There seems to be a glaring incongruity in what has been Governor Chris Christie’s approach in dealing with two major issues that have recently come before the New Jersey Legislature and his office.  The disputes in question are unrelated to one another, except by the inexplicably dissimilar strategies with which Governor Christie has chosen to address them.
 


NJ Governor Chris Christie fields a question from
the audience at January's Town Hall Meeting in Bridgewater.

The first is the still-unresolved issue of gay marriage.  The second is the painful, but now-settled issue of school budgets.  The common thread that weaves these two disparate matters into a common pattern is the way that the governor has decided that they should be solved.
 
As to the controversy swirling around gay marriage, the Governor has decided that the final voice on the matter should be that of the New Jersey electorate via a state-wide referendum. 
 
Christie feels strongly about that, and has just vetoed a bill that would have placed the union of a gay couple on the same definitional level as that of a heterosexual couple.  The governor has consistently insisted on the notion that the public, not elected officials should make that choice.

 
On the other hand, the Governor has applied a completely opposite approach on another controversial issue of whether or not elected officials in municipalities and/or school districts should be permitted to unilaterally disenfranchise the voters in their communities.
 

Governor Christie momentarity reflects
upon a question before responding.

In a bill which he could have throttled by a veto or by the threat of veto, Mr. Christie went along with permitting locally elected officials to strip away the electorate’s right to vote on school budgets – one of the most rudimentary elements in New Jersey’s framework of participatory decision-making.
 
I was present at the Governor’s Town Hall Meeting at the Shimon and Sara Birnbaum Jewish Community Center in Bridgewater when he spoke there on January 24^th.  
 
Christie is not a man to wriggle around explanations for why it is that he does what he does.  He is consistently direct and clear.  That is why I like him and voted for him.
 
On that day, however, it struck me that his rationale for why he had just signed into law a bill allowing local officials to eliminate the school budget voting franchise was, at best, strongly weak; yet the Governor possesses anything but timid thinking. 
 
At Bridgewater’s Town Hall Meeting, he commented that people often don’t know the date in April that school elections take place; that the hours of voting vary; that not many people show up; and that the tax levy is capped at 2% (a number which this writer predicts will be ephemeral). 
 
In his brief comments about this topic, Christie’s determination and tone was not as filled with the passion that he normally brings to issues, and it seemed to me that it left his logic looking somewhat limp.
 
The essence of the matter is and always has been:  Who gets to make the final call on local school budgets? 
 

A glimpse of some of the dignitaries at the New Jersey
Gubernatorial Town Hall Meeting in Bridgewater:  At the
bottom row center sits Raritan Borough Mayor Jo-Ann Liptak,
while at her right is Hillsborough Township Mayor
Gloria McCauley.

The deficiencies in the April school election process which Governor Christie so accurately pointed out could easily have been fixed by merely moving both the school budget vote, as well as the election of school board candidates to November.
 
Back to the other side of the contradiction – gay marriage.
 
I won’t argue here for whether or not the governor is correct in his view that gay marriage should be decided through a plebiscite.  However, I will highlight the contradiction between his two decisions:
 
Because of his choice to support transferring to local politicians – not to the voters – the full responsibility for disenfranchising the electorate with regard to the school budget, I will defend my argument that this move was out-of-character for Mr. Christie.
 
This is especially the case when one compares it to the contrarian stand that the Governor has chosen to take with regard to the issue of gay marriage; namely, that only New Jersey voters – not politicians – should have the final say on bumping up the status of gay unions to that of a marital institution.  
 
Thanks for reading, and have a good week.

(Click on any image for an enhanced view.)