Chatting about… the blog post I was asked not to write, or my experience with Chris Christie’s Administration on corruption.
08 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in America, Christie, Corruption, Corzine, Daggett, Government, New Jersey, Uncategorized, Women's issues Tags: 2012, Christian Mom, Christie, Corruption, Government, Governor, Nerds, New Jersey, politics, progressive, Republican, Scandal, workplace
I start this blog post with heavy heart. It’s heavy because while I’m not a perfect person, I allowed myself to be a hopeful person. After the disaster of the Corzine Administration, everything in my gut told me to vote for another person for Governor. Once Daggett indicated he wasn’t above working for the Corzine Administration, I smelled the proverbial rat. So I voted for the first time in my life as an independent progressive for a Republican….Chris Christie. There were no other viable choices and I refuse not to exercise my franchise.
Initially, changes abounded. The people at my government job were actually running scared and looking scared. Multiple meetings took place in the building, hushed management whispers in the Hall. And my heart thought that finally corruption would be addressed in New Jersey.
I’m not originally from New Jersey. I am from a city with its own corruption issues. Sadly, I have never seen the type of “we steal because we can” attitude that is evident across government as I have in New Jersey. As a Christian, I have come to believe that this is a deep spiritual problem. There seems to be something about the state that breeds a weird “look the other way” on corruption.
I’ve shared with blog readers some of the details of what happened at my job. But I’ve held back on blogging about it thinking that an ongoing investigation might be compromised if I shared too much information. After all, I had personally talked to the Lt. Governor by chance meeting. I had delivered documents to her office via PDF. I had been told an investigation was happening in Summer of 2010.
And I heard nothing for a year. Nothing until I sent emails asking about the status of the investigation. More than once.
Then I eventually heard I should have taken my concerns to Civil Service. So I proved that I’d done that in December of 2008 to no avail. Faxes and time stamped emails are a wonderful thing. Let me tell you how the conversation started that day. It started with someone from the Lt. Governor’s office telling me that I should have gone to Civil Service about my wage theft complaint and that nothing was on file there. “Then that’s consistent”, I explained. “We were told by an agent of civil service ‘Let’s just do nothing’ and it seems that is what they’ve done.”
The response was short of a gasp, but I could feel the surprise. By allowing the woman on the other end of the line to talk, I’d allowed her to back herself into the corner of the truth. Like everyone else we’ve encountered, she never said to me that I was incorrect in asking where the money went. NO ONE has ever said to the two of us who pointed out the missing funds that the funds were not missing. NO ONE has ever said that the fact we were never paid for a paid position didn’t matter. All anyone has ever said is We don’t handle that”.
Our Senator Robert Menendez couldn’t handle it.
The EEOC in Northern New Jersey never responded to my complaint.
The U.S. Attorney at the time never responded to our concern.
The Public employment Relations Commission refused to respond to the lack of a union contractual process and told us to go to Civil Service.
A Civil Service Rep. told us he couldn’t handle it.
So when the changing of the guard came in New Jersey, we hoped that the Lord had put people into office who actually cared about honestly, truth, etc. And on a vacation day, while in the Statehouse to see my child off to a school event, I thought I’d come across one.
I was wrong.
The last correspondence I received from the New Jersey Lt. Governor’s was no different than any I’d ever received along the way. Not only did it not indicate the results of any supposed investigation starting in 2010, but it states that Civil Service has no method for dealing with the wage theft. And then it does the unbeleivable.
The email tells us that the people who stole from us are the ones we have to go to for resolution… for them stealing from us. For harassing us when we pointed it out. Thus, the official position of the Lt. Governor’s office, the New Jersey Department of State (which oversees my job and its state regulatory agency) is that the only ones who have any control over the New Jersey taxpayer’s monies are the local municipalities who might just be misusing them.
Not the State Comptroller’s office.
Not the State Attorney General’s office.
And certainly not anyone from the Governor’s office.
I’m trying not to speak motivation, just to facts. But part of me feels like little old me and my co-worker, two people alone, African-American, Christian, not politically motivated, not motivated my limelight…well, we weren’t going to land that news grab for an Administration running for the Presidency of the United States. Our little local story isn’t sexy enough, I guess. Two people standing up and screaming WHERE IS THE MONEY OUR GOVERNMENT JOB WAS PAID? Who cares, right?
We have to sign a sheet every other week showing receipt of our paystubs… and just yesterday there were two sheets. And one paystub. And we were told in no uncertain terms that if we didn’t sign both sheets in order to receive a “memo”… we would not get our paystubs. Period.
Welcome to New Jersey.
You should care, America. Our Governor should care. Because there are always more than two people screaming about government weirdness in America. I always say by the time a system is blatant with disdain for the people it’s supposed to protect as New Jersey seems to be, well, it’s been going on a LOOOOOOOONG time. No one ever reached out to talk to us. But our documents yielded change ideas in policy that I’m sure benefited the political ambitions of those who had them. No one ever said “you are wrong”. But we were surely treated as though our concerns were in error.
And those in our state that continue to make the big bucks sit back and smile. They feel secure in the knowledge that their impenetrable field of corruption continues. It doesn’t matter who is driving the Death Star. It’s still the same weapon in the end.
Ahhhhhhhhh……. but any nerd like me knows that the Death Star ends up destroyed. Spoiler alert to those who look the other way…. evil and apathy result in a lot of pleasure now. A surge of powerful feelings, of indestructible strength. And just like in my beloved Star Wars movies… there’s a Force in the Universe that is greater than any one individual. I believe in that Force as the Son of the Living God. I’m not that important in the scheme of things. But doing the right thing in the Universe is always important.
Should a Christie Administration take over America, what happens when Wall Street is corrupt and stealing? What happens when someone calls upon the Justice Department to enforce regulation? What happens with missing monies in various government agencies? Mr. Christie’s Administration came in on an anti-Big Government platform. We pointed out government misuse of funds. Inexplicably, no one cared.
I end this post with some words for those that harbor hope that we in New Jersey are currently living in the era of anti-corruption and citizen rights renewal. I stand to tell you that hasn’t been my experience. I may be limited in that journey. Perhaps there are others who have blown the whistle to better response. And guess what? People change. Things could be in the mix right now that I’m unaware of.
But being unaware isn’t helping ease the feeling that New Jersey is still not responding to constituents. You know. Unless someone can get a cable news interview or a photo op out of it. Am I frightened sharing my experience? Well, either God is King or he isn’t. So I stand in faith with Isaiah 54:17:
New King James Version (NKJV)
17 No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
And every tongue which rises against you in judgment
You shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
And their righteousness is from Me,”
Says the LORD.
Make no mistake, Satan pays his people BIG MONEY. But sooner or later folks finds out he’s a deadbeat who floats checks that bounce. I guess we who live in New Jersey cannot give up hope for fairness, compassion and correction; though it really seems hopeless at times to me. I can’t understand how New Jersey comes out of municipal corruption if every agency to regulate it says “it’s not me”. So I’m not trying to figure it out and leaving it to the Lord. In the past three years, I’ve suffered a lot as a woman and in my family. A seriously ill child who was even hospitalized this Spring. An ongoing campaign to get me to leave the job I asked to be regulated. My mother facing new widowhood. I’m still standing, or perhaps flying, ready to face the newly constructed Death Star if need be one more time with a good friend. She initially thought it was pointless to even write this blog post after all we’ve been through. We shouldn’t have to do it alone.
So I share the plans with you. Please consider carefully whomever you are voting for, choosing or seeing as viable. Whether they be Democrat or Republican or third party, count the cost. Pray for discernment. Look for compassion and wisdom. Vote for a better country.
And be not afraid to tell the truth when something is out of control. Make no mistake. To paraphrase Dr. King, The Universe and it’s Creator do indeed bend slowly towards justice.
My most recent email from the current New Jersey Administration includes the phrase “While I realize that this is note (sic) the response you most likely desired, I hope that it will help clarify the appropriate avenue to further your concerns.”
I hope the same for you, dear reader. May God bless New Jersey.
