Judging by Gov. Christie’s experience in New Jersey, not so well. As you may have heard, the state’s Race to the Top application was disqualified, costing the state some $400 million, “because some clerk in Trenton turned in the wrong Excel spreadsheet”; out of a thousand-plus-page application, one page was incorrectly submitted, so the U.S. Department of Education threw out the whole thing. As you can probably imagine, the governor was not at all happy.
Was the administration being petty, seizing an excuse to deny funding to a political opponent? Maybe; and then again, maybe not. After all, one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained perfectly well by incompetence. Either way, though, this is exactly the sort of thing that Barack Obama promised us his administration would not be about. I don’t blame him for not keeping his promise to change Washington—it was beyond human capability; but I don’t think it speaks well of him that he made it, or of so many others that they actually believed it. And if preventing these sorts of occurrences is too much to ask, one would think they could at least show some sort of commitment to setting them right. (Unless, just maybe, they actually are playing petty politics.)
It should be noted that the DoE did have one rejoinder to Gov. Christie: they released a video proving that NJ state education commissioner Bret Schundler had not in fact verbally given them the correct information. When the governor found out that his education commissioner had lied to him, he fired Schundler after all.
My son refuses to apply for any government job because of the outrageous length and number of pages required. I'd like to see the application from other states. Were there any mistakes?
It is an interesting question, isn't it? Speaking of paperwork, though, can you imagine the FOIA application you'd have to file to find out?