After ignoring Christie's many vetoes, editors do flip-flop

This Englewood intersection is near homes, apartments and condos, but snowbanks left over from several storms discourage pedestrians.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

With every column or news story on Governor Christie's flip-flops on important issues, The Record is confessing vetoes -- not compromise -- are what really define his first five years in office.

Today's Charles Stile column on the GOP bully's veto of $7.5 million in funds for women's health centers and family planning clinics is a prime example (A-1).

Stile, more than any other reporter, has been burnishing Christie's image as a moderate willing to compromise with the majority Democrats in the state Legislature.

Now, he writes, Christie is running for president and boasting he vetoed women's health funds five times because he is "pro-life," not because he was trying to solve a budget crisis.

The editors still ignore the biggest story of Christie's reign since early 2010 -- what is likely a record number of vetoes for a New Jersey governor of tax surcharges on millionaires and other important bills and budget appropriations.

I've never seen the total number of vetoes published in The Record, and don't think I ever will.

See WNYC-FM's podcast, Christie Pivots

Relevance?

Today, Editor Martin Gottlieb fashions another front page that is long on "controversy" and short on relevance.

I can't recall the last time I drove on lightly traveled Route 19 in Passaic County at night, and can't figure out why reporter John Cichowski is devoting an entire column to "the stealing of the light" by drug addicts (A-1).

Bergen County's antiquated road network -- narrow, congested main thoroughfares without turn lanes, many poorly lit at night -- are of far more concern and relevance to the majority of readers, drivers and pedestrians.

Hackensack news?

Hackensack news seems to have gone missing in Local, a section that also struggles for relevance, as shown by today's long obituary on a former school administrator who worked in Atlanta and Newark (L-6).

I guess head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, had nothing local with which to fill that gaping hole.