Former New Jersey Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, who was fired today by Gov. Chris Christie (R) amid accusations that he’d lied to the governor about an error in the state’s application for federal Race to the Top money, is now saying that he did not mislead the governor at all.
The state lost out on $400 million in funds as a result of an error in its application, which provided budget numbers for the wrong years, causing New Jersey to lose enough points to miss out on the money. On Wednesday, Christie held a press conference in which he strongly blamed the Obama administration for the loss of federal funding, saying that Schundler had tried to fix an error in the state’s application during his presentation to federal education officials, but they would not let him.
Then on Thursday, the federal Education Department released a video of the presentation itself, showing the officials pointing out the error to Schundler, who was unable to correct it. As a result, Schundler was fired for seemingly misleading the administration about what had happened.
But now he says he did not mislead them at all.
The Associated Press reports:
In an interview at his Jersey City home Friday, Schundler responded that he gave Christie the right story.
“In fact, I was very direct with him that we didn’t get the panel the numbers,” he said.
He also shared printouts of e-mails which he says show that he accurately told the governor’s public relations office what happened during the meeting in question.
In response, Christie press secretary Michael Drewniak put out a statement firing back at Schundler:
“We regret that Mr. Schundler continues to sully his own image by engaging in revisionist history. His attempts to cover up misleading the Governor are evidenced by the contrast between his letter to Secretary Duncan, in which he describes making a verbal clarification at the presentation, and the video released by the U.S. Department of Education. Mr. Schundler was the Administration’s only source for what occurred in the Race to the Top presentation. All of the Governor’s statements were based on Mr. Schundler’s account.”
An interesting wrinkle in the this story is that Schundler claims to have asked to be fired, rather than submit a letter of resignation, so that he would be able to collect unemployment benefits. Christie’s office has responded to this claim, as well. “The chief of staff called Bret Schundler last night and requested his resignation, at which point in time Mr. Schundler indicated he would resign in the morning,” said a statement from Drewniak. “This morning, he refused to sign the resignation letter and was subsequently terminated.”
