Christie's Bridghazi scandal is about money and union busting.
The earlier notion that it was about a political endorsement went away yesterday at the Christie press conference. Mayor Sokolich was not on the list, was not asked for an endorsement.
Governor Christie's trouble with the George Washington Bridge started with emails from Bridget Anne Kelly that went out in August, 2013. Coming up with the plan to shut lanes on the GW Bridge -- timed for early September -- was a stroke of media lightning.
So what was the motive?
What was happening August '13 that threatened to derail Christie's re-election campaign? What could have blown out big enough to bring Christie down?
Sex? Money? Drugs? What?
For one plausible answer here, take a look at the blog of Diane Ravitch. She focuses on New Jersey education.
She and her friends at Education Law Center in Newark dug out a proposal that Christie submitted to the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which in turn is famous for the oxymoron "entrepreneurial philanthropy." They do privatization projects that turn a profit.
Christie's School Turnaround Proposal goes for union busting. "Schools will be freed from the [School D]istrict's collective bargaining agreement and the school's [privatizing] operator will have control over personnel decisions." The rest of the document is a puffy set of excuses for pulling 5% of New Jersey schools out of union contracts.
Diane characterizes Christie's scheme as a "shell game." That is exactly what has happened with the Special Ed schools.
$43,000 vs. $90,000.
That's what Christie's "shell game" has produced privatizing school for New Jersey's Special Ed students. Cost more than doubles going over from New Jersey Education Association members and public Special Ed schools to Christie's friends and their privatized, non-union profit centers.
$43,00 was the annual cost to School Boards to educate a heavily disabled, wheelchair bound student.
$90,000+ is where this billing stands with the privatized schools. That is the real current billing.
Bundles of money are wasted at the item-level costs. One part of that is because these operators cannot be protected with sovereign immunity. They end up lawyering themselves. For example, they spend two and three times as much transporting these students.
It is all about money.
Christie ran a campaign for governor of New Jersey where he belittled NJEA. He blamed the NJEA union for NJ school problems, despite that the system ranks 2nd, 3rd, or 4th in everything nationally. Meanwhile the one thing, the only thing that Christie had done with education was his privatization of the Special Education schools.
Barbara Buono, his opponent, got zero for earned media attention, despite nailing him for the hypocrisy. Come September, 2013, there were cities and towns and counties who could have ripped Christie a new one.
Fights over the land underneath these schools are where you get numbers in the millions of dollars.
So, consider the privatization story back in August, 2013. Opening day for schools was coming up for early September. The $90,000 bills for Special Ed were going out. Bergen County was on the front burner.
Enter Bridget Kelly with “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” and her brilliant wipe-out of local television news coverage.
How's that for plausible motivation? The "mayor's endorsement" story never quite made sense. For more in the way of documents and analysis for this FOLLOW THE MONEY approach, read on below the orange muffin: