Let’s take a look recent news headlines about Murphy campaign workers that landed top state positions (political patronage):
And the most recent today on northjersey.com:
A culture of corruption exists when things are rotten
at the top.
New Jersey taxpayers pay a high cost for the bloated state bureaucracy that is supposed to provide some form of oversight to boards of education and municipalities. Residents of Lodi cannot expect the political
hacks that make up the Murphy administration to care about Lodi corruption.
Residents of Lodi cannot rely on the state department
of education for any oversight.
Residents of Lodi should not depend on the political
appointees at the School Ethics Commission to address Lodi corruption. The commission members are all appointed by
the governor. They take years to do
anything when they do anything at all. They do favors and look the other way for friends.
They earned their do-nothing reputation.
There are still multiple pending cases against three former BOE members
long after they resigned from the board.
If
Lodi residents want to clean up corruption, they need to do it themselves. They need to defeat “Children First” at the
polls.
Side note: I was also critical of the Christie administration for not providing any oversight to the out of control Lodi BOE. Below is just one letter to the editor where I was critical of the Christie administration:
The "handing of the reins over to his son Marc Capizzi" was nothing more than a power play by Lodi school administrator Joseph Capizzi to preserve the political patronage system that he has become famous for. The father will collect the pension, the son will collect the salary, and together they can continue handing out the jobs and the contracts.
Side note: I was also critical of the Christie administration for not providing any oversight to the out of control Lodi BOE. Below is just one letter to the editor where I was critical of the Christie administration:
The Record:
Letters, Aug. 12, 2012
Sunday
August 12, 2012, 8:53 AM
Regarding "School official to
retire, son hired" (Page L-3, July 29):
The "handing of the reins over to his son Marc Capizzi" was nothing more than a power play by Lodi school administrator Joseph Capizzi to preserve the political patronage system that he has become famous for. The father will collect the pension, the son will collect the salary, and together they can continue handing out the jobs and the contracts.
The article stated that school
superintendent, Frank Quatrone, only interviewed one candidate for the position
Joseph Capizzi was going to vacate. Quatrone apparently sees nothing wrong with
this because he was hired as superintendent in the same manner: Lodi was told that he was the only
candidate at the time he was retained.
Board of Education President Joseph
Licata should disclose his conflicts of interest when commenting on
administration. His mother is a teacher in the district. If the board did not
invoke "doctrine of necessity," Licata would have been bared from
voting on all administration and collective bargaining agreements with the
teachers union.
The board votes unanimously on
everything, not because its policies are working, but because almost the entire
board has immediate family members employed in our schools.
The Lodi politicians can
scream all they like that their relatives are "qualified." The
numbers show what they are doing isn't working and nepotism hurts the children.
Lodi collects $38.1 million in taxes for its schools and receives $14.2 million
in state aid, second-highest amount of state aid in Bergen County. Yet our high school is ranked second
to last in the county according to NJ Monthly Magazine.
These conditions represent failures of
the Christie administration for not monitoring how the state's millions are
being spent, the Bergen County superintendent for
rubber-stamping Lodi's bad behavior and
Lodi for its apathy.
Ryan Curioni
