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Star Ledger - Moran: In face-off with N.J. Supreme Court, Gov. Christie is defiant one...Sunday, May 01, 2011
Northjersey.com May 2 - The Record, Herald News - Christie, Senate president reach deal on Supreme Court nomination
NJ Spotlight - Agenda: N.J. State Board of Education
...On the docket for the Board of Education's monthly public meeting: superintendent certification, key department personnel and teacher evaluations
NJ Spotlight.com - State Board of Education meetings Tuesday and Wednesday this week
, May 2 in Education |Post a Comment
Time: 2 p.m.
Place: NJ Department of Education 1st floor conference room, 100 River View Plaza, Trenton.
People: Thirteen members appointed by Gov. Chris Christie for staggered six-year terms, including four new appointees who have already taken an active and vocal role on the board. The meeting is led by the board’s president, Arcelio Aponte, and the acting state education commissioner, Chris Cerf, also attends, as do his top assistants and staff.
Alternative certification for superintendents: The state board is weighing a proposal to loosen the rules on whether formal certification is required to lead a school district. The proposal specifically targets districts with low performance records and says they could hire, with state approval, non-traditional candidates from, say, business, military or other government sectors. Still, some have questioned the plan and said certification is now in place to help ensure school leaders have the needed experience and training.
The board has the proposed administrative code under consideration for vote later this year, and it holds a public hearing on Wednesday afternoon to take public comment and questions. The hearings, often lightly attended and late in the day, are one of the few opportunities for public input in the board’s deliberations.
Personnel: The state board has final say on many top department staff, and as it takes up personnel matters in closed executive session before its meeting this week, it has a bunch of key jobs on its plate. Cerf has yet to pick most of his top assistant commissioners and office directors. He says he’s conducting an internal review of the entire operation, both in Trenton and the county field offices. But many of the appointments will also require confirmation by the state board, and while each is usually approved, the executive sessions are typically where the questions get asked.
The board must also give final approval to the imminent appointment of the Newark school superintendent, a closely watched choice not just in New Jersey but also nationwide. Press reports say there are two finalists for the job: New York City regional superintendent Cami Anderson, and former Seattle superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. The administration has yet to show its hand, but Christie said in March that a decision will be made by early May.
The head of a Christie task force charged with developing a new teacher evaluation system for the state will come before the board on Wednesday. The chairman, North Brunswick superintendent Brian Zychowski, will give an overview of the report that will become a central piece in Christie’s proposal for reforming teacher tenure and accountability. The state board doesn’t have direct say on the plan until it becomes law and comes back as administrative code and guidance for districts to implement. But the board often hosts such presentations on major education issues facing the state.
Star Ledger - Moran: In face-off with N.J. Supreme Court, Gov. Christie is defiant one
Published: Sunday, May 01, 2011, 11:45 AM Updated: Sunday, May 01, 2011, 12:35 PM
By Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — What if Richard Nixon had refused to give up the Watergate tapes when the Supreme Court demanded them?
What if Al Gore had rejected the decision granting the presidency to George W. Bush, and instead called on his followers to storm the White House?
It’s hard to imagine because it is an article of faith in America that the courts have the final word. Judges are the referees of democracy. Without them, we face chaos, raw power struggles and the loss of basic constitutional rights.
That’s what we’re taught as kids, and that’s what America is preaching in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where democracies are under construction.
But in New Jersey, not so much.
Gov. Chris Christie is threatening to defy the state Supreme Court if it requires him to spend more money on public schools.
"Be paying attention," he says, "because this is going to be a very important moment in the history of our state."
Important is one word to describe it. Appalling is another. Because if this is more than a bluff, we are entering a strange new zone. This is a power grab like no other in New Jersey history.
"It’s a big deal," says Professor Robert Williams of Rutgers School of Law in Camden. "It would really be a constitutional crisis. What the governor is suggesting is to defy the basic structure of our government. It’s pretty extraordinary."
You have to wonder how far this governor would go. Once he crosses this line, would he also defy rulings on housing, or the environment, or government secrecy?
And if he can defy the court, can private parties do so as well? Who makes that call, the governor?
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The school funding cases have driven governors of both parties to distraction for years. And yes, it is frustrating that New Jersey spends so much on urban schools and sees such modest gains.
But the governor has options that don’t require the dismantling of judicial checks on his power. He could press for a constitutional amendment. He could follow former Gov. Jon Corzine’s example and convince the court and the Legislature to embrace a new funding formula more to his liking.
He could, in other words, abandon the Mussolini act and play by the rules of democracy like everyone else.
But this is the climax of a campaign that began when Christie removed Justice John Wallace from the bench. He is trying to influence the court not with convincing arguments, but with political pressure.
At a town hall meeting recently, he turned his wrath on Justice Barry Albin. During the court hearing on school funding, the administration argued it didn’t have enough money to provide promised funding.
So Albin asked the obvious question: Didn’t you just reduce taxes on millionaires?
"This guy, sitting on the bench as a judge, is telling you how much your taxes should be raised, on who, and how the money should be spent, by judicial order," the governor said later at the town hall meeting. "He can take his hand and put it in your pocket and take your money, and you have no way to hold him accountable."
Albin said no such thing, but that misses the point. The governor is trying to discredit the court, as if preparing the political ground for a confrontation.
For the court, this is already a crisis. If it sides with Christie in the case, it may seem as if the governor’s campaign of intimidation succeeded. So one irony is that the governor is actually making it harder for the justices to rule in his favor.
If the governor does defy the court, it could hold him in contempt and even fine him. It could issue an injunction closing all public schools, as the court did in 1976 when the Legislature refused to comply with a school funding ruling.
The Legislature could move to impeach Christie as well. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said she will consider that, and Williams, the law professor, said defiance of the court could be considered a violation of his oath of office.
There are precedents for defiance of the courts. Several Southern governors defied integration rulings, but were overruled when federal forces moved in. President Abraham Lincoln defied the court during the Civil War by imprisoning opponents and refusing habeus corpus. And President Andrew Jackson famously defied the court when it ordered a halt to his ethnic cleansing of Native Americans in the Deep South in what became known as the Trail of Tears campaign.
These are not what you would call proud moments in American history.
On Thursday, by coincidence, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer visited Newark to tape a coming episode of NJN’s legal affairs show "Due Process" in front of students at Rutgers.
Breyer may not have intended it, but he offered an elegant argument against what Christie is doing.
Why, he asked, should people obey the court when it makes unpopular decisions and when everyone knows justices can make mistakes like all human beings?
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a copy of the U.S. Constitution and held it up for the students to see.
Without the power of judicial review, he said, "This will be a beautiful document that no one will follow."
Northjersey.com - The Record, Herald News - Christie, Senate president reach deal on Supreme Court nomination
Monday, May 2, 2011
BY SALVADOR RIZZO
State House Bureau
STATE HOUSE BUREAU
After a yearlong standoff, Gov. Chris Christie said today that he and Senate President Stephen Sweeney have struck a deal to advance the governor's stalled nomination of Anne Patterson to the state Supreme Court.
"We've had talks over the weekend," said Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), the Judiciary Committee chairman. "They're going to withdraw the name and renominate her for the spot of Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto, who's going to be finishing up his term shortly."
The two sides clashed last year when Christie broke with tradition and refused to grant tenure to Justice John Wallace Jr., the only African - American on the bench. Saying he wanted to reshape the high court, Christie nominated Patterson, a former special assistant to the attorney general and deputy attorney general of the state now in private practice, to fill Wallace's seat.
Sweeney, who is a friend of Wallace, had refused to hold a hearing on Patterson.
