By Patricia Alex, Staff Writer, The Record.
A consultant’s report commissioned by Rowan University months before Governor Christie announced a proposal to merge the school with Rutgers’ Camden campus calls for the state to make a “substantial, upfront investment” in creating a new research university in South Jersey.
The report, commissioned in November and made public on Monday, didn’t put a dollar figure on that investment, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg on Monday renewed his call for the Christie administration to provide more details.
Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, called Lautenberg’s request “more bitter nonsense” from the senator, “who, remarkably, has suddenly found a voice for higher education after all his years in Washington.”
Christie, who is on a trade trip to Israel, has rebuffed earlier calls from Lautenberg and others for cost estimates. Last week, Christie called Lautenberg a “partisan hack” after the Democratic senator asked the U.S. Education Department to review the merger plan.
The consultants’ report was prescient in anticipating resistance to the merger from Rutgers, and advises Rowan to have a communications strategy in place to deal with the fallout.
“This secret report shows that the fix was in long before the merger was even presented to the public,” Lautenberg said Monday.
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