Faced with a $72 million gap in the Newark school budget — and a plan to raise the state-controlled district’s school taxes by 10.3 percent — Mayor Ras Baraka went on the offensive.

Baraka blamed former Superintendent Cami Anderson — who was appointed by Gov. Chris Christie — for the shortfall, claiming that there was a $40 million budget surplus when she took office.

“But that money was wasted away. Wasted away,” Baraka said in a YouTube video.

Christie wasted no time in firing back.

“Now, this of course, comes from a school district that gets hundreds of millions of dollars from New Jersey state taxpayers every year because of a failed, and I believe, unconstitutional court requirement that we put disproportionate funds into a small number of school districts,” he said.

Read the full story on NJTV News Online, a content partner of NJ Spotlight.