Christie Cabinet Filled With Prosecutors and Business People

As a candidate, Republican Chris Christie promised parents more school choice, promised mayors relief from affordable housing mandates, and promised taxpayers to clean up corruption and reduce the size of their government and taxes.

To help him do that, he has chosen a Cabinet made up mostly former prosecutors and business people whose backgrounds and philosophies clearly support the agenda he laid out on the campaign trail.

"He picked people who think like him," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "It looks like it's the ex-prosecutors full-employment program."

"It's an interesting message," Murray added. "It says he's more interested in people who will root out waste and fraud than people who have a better handle on the breadth of issues that many of the departments handle."

Four of his top picks worked directly under him when he was U.S. Attorney, including his picks for attorney general and homeland security director, and the heads of the Board of Public Utilities and the Schools Development Authority.

His choices for the departments of Environmental Protection, Labor, Health, Banking and Insurance, and to some extent, Community Affairs, have strong ties to the business community.

Department of Environmental Protection nominee Bob Martin worked for the largest business and technology consulting firm in the world; labor pick Hal Wirths owned a furniture store and founded a bank; Dr. Poonam Alaigh, Christie's choice for health commissioner, is the head of the state's largest health insurance company and was the medical director for a major drug maker; Banking and Insurance nominee Tom Considine headed up MetLife insurance group, and DCA nominee Lori Grifa represented major developers who were fighting the state's affordable housing regulations.

The announcement that he was tapping former Jersey City mayor Bret Schundler, a proponent of charter schools, to run the Education Department sent a strong signal to the state's powerful teacher union that he intends to carry out education reforms that it opposes. Schundler tangled with the national and state teachers unions over his support of school choice when he was mayor of Jersey City.

And many see his pick to head the Department of Community Affairs as a clear signal that he plans to change the way the state mandates affordable housing requirements.

While most DCA heads have been former mayors or those with strong municipal ties, Grifa, also a former prosecutor, has worked to force the state to rewrite those mandates to the benefit of developers.

In a series of decisions in the 1970s and '80s, New Jersey's Supreme Court outlawed zoning aimed at keeping out the poor and required communities to have plans that include space for low-income residents. The state formed the Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, to oversee that requirement and decide how many affordable homes each town must provide.

But the political and bureaucratic implementation of the court's wishes has been hairy.

In 2007, Grifa successfully represented the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks in the appellate court matter that resulted in the court forcing COAH rewrite its rules. As the head of DCA, she'll oversee COAH, which Christie's transition team has suggested getting rid of altogether.

"I don't think he made it a secret that he was going to gut COAH," said Bill Dressel, the executive director of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, which favors more simple rules for municipalities to follow.

Martin, the DEP nominee, has been advising Christie on energy and environmental policy since the campaign. On his first day in office, Christie signed executive orders to freeze unfunded rules and regulations, including environmental ones, which Christie said was done to cut red tape that discouraged businesses from coming to and staying in New Jersey.

Martin played a large role in crafting the order, Christie said.

Christie's Cabinet is slightly smaller than Corzine's. His lieutenant governor will also oversee the Department of State and economic development, eliminating those two Cabinet-level posts. The governor also appears poised to get rid of the Public Advocate but has said he's still figuring out what to do with the office.

On Thursday, the Cabinet met for the first time. Christie told its members he expects both transparency and for them to understand how their actions affect other areas of government. And while his choice of Cabinet members appear to align with his policy preferences, he told the group, "No one around the state has a monopoly on good ideas."

"We have some big problems to deal with," Christie said. "One of the things the transition reports pointed out very clearly is much of the state government has been dysfunctional and siloed — people not talking to each other, not working with each other, not understanding how your responsibilities, your actions or inaction affects other areas of government, other areas