Governor Christie was at it again today, cranking up the manufactured hysteria more than usual. If they ever make temper tantrums an Olympic event, I'm sure he'd do us Jersey proud. His target today? Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, who the Governor claimed has been ignoring the issue of COAH:
With Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo hovering in the wings, Christie singled out Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-East Orange) - an Essex County county employee - as off the reservation on the toolkit.
"I am dumbfounded by Sheila Oliver not doing anything on COAH," Christie said. "We avoided this obstructionism in the first seven months. I'm here, and Ive been waiting to get work done."
The only problem? The Assembly has been working on COAH for some time, including ongoing, substantial negotiations with the Governor's office, described in the Assembly Dems response to the Governor's temper tantrum:
Assembly Majority staff met just last week with the deputy commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, Commissioner Grifa's chief of staff and the governor's counsel office, and they were all well aware of the plan to introduce affordable housing reform legislation today.
As a matter of fact, the administration has seen two drafts in the last week.
In addition, Majority Leader Cryan and Speaker Pro Tempore Green had meetings with the Senate to reach agreement on a reform plan that passes constitutional muster.
This issue is too serious and important to New Jersey to be reduced to juvenile press releases and misleading public comments from the governor's office.
Shorter Christie: I am SUUUUUPER PISSED that you aren't working on that thing you are actively and substantively working on...with my own staff.
I know much of the press is still fawning over Christie, whose Tough Man image easily fits into their Jersey-guy-stands-up-to-Feckless-Tax-Raising-Democrats narrative. But seriously, hissy fits are not a message and histrionics aren't going to lower anyone's property taxes. We saw this same kind of ego cost us in the Race to the Top application. The question is when are the press going to start calling out Christie for this kind of crap? |
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