New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration is in court arguing that Christie should be able to violate the public employee pension law he pushed for and signed in his first term in office. According to the law, "members of the public-pension systems shall have a contractual right to the annual required contribution amount." That shouldn't have been groundbreaking, but it would have been—had Christie followed it—since the previous nine governors, Democrats included, had shorted the state's contribution to the pension fund even as workers put in their share every year.
Christie's signature pension law required workers to pay still more toward pensions and eliminated cost of living adjustments, but the claim was that in exchange for that, the state would start making its full contribution. Instead, it didn't take long for Christie to start shorting the pension fund.
In court on Wednesday, New Jersey Assistant Attorney General Jean Reilly argued that use of the word “contractual” didn’t guarantee a binding contract because the New Jersey state constitution didn’t allow that. In response, Justice Barry T. Albin asked why, if the Christie administration believed the state constitution prevented such contractual obligations, it signed into law a bill containing them.
“The language is not aspirational,” Albin said. “The language is saying this is a contract.”
But Justice Jaynee LaVecchia suggested to attorney Steve Weissman, who represented public employees, that the state needs to maintain enough flexibility to adjust to changing financial circumstances. “You are still arguing for this law to require every legislature for I don’t know how long to put a certain specified amount … in the budget for every single year,” she said.
Judges who don't get that we're talking about deferred pay, that public workers have negotiated lower pay during their working years in exchange for a secure retirement, can really go right to hell. It's where they'll end up anyway, in the event that it exists. Yes, the legislature has to pay the employees of the state for the work that they do.
Meanwhile, the pension's Wall Street fees have ballooned on Christie's watch, with New Jersey paying nearly $1 billion in fees to financial management firms even as the performance of the state's pension investments have lagged badly.he was large and in charge the raging bull elephant republicans tried to bill him as the crass obnoxious take no crap bully but you gotta love him, did anyone including Christie take a loo at what he was doing to the people? the whole thing sounds like a scheme to line the pockets of financial management co.'s and give him the funds to govern Christie style which is putting NJ in the red
and his deal to sell out the environment, trying to privatize the state lottery sounds like a sound and solid republican plan to screw the people of NJ did i mention Bridgegate? how can he have his pudgy fingers in all questionable criminal acts that were suppose to advantage the state yet they are facing multi million dollar deficit? and they are still considering running him for president if he muffed up NJ as ad as it looks think what he would do to the national budget with his cohorts in the locked cabin only admitting their agenda in.
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/09/nj_budget_shortfall_was_even_worse_than_christie_thought_document_shows.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/chris-christie-lottery_n_2853057.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-chris-christie-new-jersey-pension-battle-presents-a-test-for-2016/2014/07/27/9447a21e-1374-11e4-9285-4243a40ddc97_story.html
