This will be a story down the road and we wanted to chime in now

Governor Chris Christie, hero of Superstorm Sandy, has a problem. His chosen no-bid contract (and oh how he hates calling it a no-bid contract, he prefers piggyback bid but really, it's the same thing) with Ashbritt, the company "hired" to haul away debris, might just cost quite a few New Jersey municipalities a few million dollars.

First off, Christie is chief executive of this state. For him to not have known or understood that Congress passed tougher FEMA bidding contract laws after Hurricane Katrina is no excuse. For him to have led mayors far and wide in some kind of "just submit the invoices" Pollyanna thinking was and is reckless.

Here's the crux of where we're headed:

The Christie administration says it’s followed all the rules and is confident towns will get their full reimbursement.

Ernest Abbott, a Washington-based attorney with FEMA Law Associates, a private firm, who has been practicing disaster relief law since 1997, said FEMA pays special attention to the rates, and the agency will compare the reimbursement applications submitted by individual towns and cities to help draw some conclusions.

Christie said he's confident but not assured the money he told towns to spend will be reimbursed. They might not. Talk about leading millions down a primrose path.

This will be debated and talked over and hashed out and in the end we think some of these towns will be left holding at least a partial bag where federal money would have been IF Christie had really done things right, again, reading and implementing the new tougher FEMA laws.

Here's how this plays out. A lot of New Jersey towns will get stiffed based on bad advice and then Christie will bloviate and try and blame the bureaucrats in Washington for "stiffing" the voters and taxpayers of his state. Forget the fact this is of HIS making, he'll never miss a chance to blame someone else (Brett Schundler et al) when he screws up. Christie will again become the mouth that roared blaming everyone but himself, it's what presidential candidates do.

We just want to get waaaay out ahead as we see how this plays out and would suggest to the governor that yesterday might have been a good time to bone up on the laws you'd be using to reconstruct your state. If towns don't get their money Governor YOU will be the reason, you took the no-bid "piggyback" contract and sold it.

By the way, towns NOT using Ashbritt and using their own contracted trash haulers are saving MILLIONS in costs and will never be left waiting for money that the governor promised that may not be coming. Imagine that.