Herb Stern gets an earful

Stop the presses! An elected official has finally found the cajones to stand up to Herb Stern, the hand-picked hatchet man of Chris "He Works for Me" Christie.
Stern has been billing the taxpayers $500 an hour since December, when the former US Attorney was appointed by his pupil Christie to monitor the scandal-plagued UMDNJ. (He's also entitled to hire whomever he likes for however long he pleases at $325 an hour -- a rate he's lavished upon cronies from across the state.)
Those who cross Stern have a habit of finding themselves the target of Christie's prosecutorial zeal. So it's little wonder that NJ's elected officials have rolled over on the blank check Christie awarded his mentor. But all of a sudden, people are starting to ask questions about the direction Stern is steering the nation's biggest medical school as it struggles to regain its footing. Stern has had no luck attracting a new president for the school. According to the Record he "asked Christie to intervene to speed up the process." It's unclear why Christie would have a shred of expertise in hiring a president for a medical school.
State Senator Raymond Lesniak (photo) is quoted as saying "Herb Stern is trying to breathe life into a corpse." Lesniak, one of Jim McGreevey's best friends, has joined Senator Joe Vitale in reviving a proposal to merge the school with Rutgers, which should have happened when it was originally suggested a few years ago but died because McGreevey was too embattled to steer it.
Whether the schools should be merged is an issue we're content to leave to the education experts (like lifelong lawyers Christie and Stern). What's newsworthy here is the unprecedented willingness of anyone in the state of New Jersey to stand up to the Christie-Stern steamroller.

Comments

I am not surprised that no one in their right mind would want to take such a high profile job under the watchful eye of Stern and Christie. Christie would prosecute his own mother if it would help him make headlines, and people are scared that he imposed CC laws, which vary from those written about in the good ol Constitution.

in a state like NJ, where every liittle town has its own police and fire depts, it would be a miracle to make these two huge schools merge. They should, and soon.