In his budget address on Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) touted his ability to work with adversaries to find solutions to fund the state’s failing pension system. He dedicated most of his speech to boasting about an “unprecedented accord” reached by the state’s largest teachers’ union and a commission he set up to address the problem.
But this agreement was news to the union president, who quickly refuted Christie’s claims, saying the governor “overstated the nature of the understanding.”
“The governor over-embellished,” New Jersey Education Association president Wendell Steinhauer told ThinkProgress. “To be clear, there is no agreement. There is no deal on anything.”
Christie said in his speech that the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefits Study Commission — which he appointed to look into the pension system last year — reached an agreement on a “Roadmap for Reform” to solve the state’s “long-term problems with the pension and health benefit systems.” Under the agreement, Christie said the pension system would be transferred into a trust which would be overseen by the NJEA. The state would make periodic contributions into the trust to pay off the unfunded liability, Christie said, but the unions will also have to make significant cuts to their healthcare costs.
But Steinhauer told ThinkProgress that Christie overstated the nature of the commission document. Steinhauer was hesitant to sign any documents the commissions produced, but eventually agreed to put his name on the commission’s report. “I was very careful to say that this just illustrates the principles we discussed,” Steinhauer said, adding that the members of the commission were “business men” who were eager to get a signature.
In addition, the NJEA said it only agreed to one page attached to the commission’s 55-page document, not all of the commission’s recommendations for common ground outlined in the report. Only the one page tacked on the end was labeled “roadmap” — although Christie called the entire document a “roadmap” eleven times during his budget address.
“The common ground is a skeleton and there’s a lot more meat we have to put on the bone there before there is any type of agreement or a deal or an accord,” Steinhauer said. “There are a lot of things in there that have to be hashed out. They are concepts and you can’t legislate concepts and you can’t put them into action.”
The NJEA maintains that it is crucial to get a dedicated funding stream for the state pension system through a constitutional amendment, Steinhauer said, an idea that was outlined in the one page “roadmap.” Otherwise, the pension system is going to continue to fail because Christie has “never fully funded” the payments he promised in legislation he signed in 2011.
The governor’s budget address on Tuesday afternoon focused on the state’s struggling pension system and ignored other issues like the Transportation Trust Fund, which will run out of money for new projects by July, and issues regarding the state’s property taxes. Early in the address, Christie promised New Jersey residents he would impose “no new taxes” despite the state’s dire financial situation.
The address came one day after a state judge ruled that Christie’s administration is on the hook for almost $1.6 billion in delayed pension payments. Christie has blasted the decision and vowed to appeal, but Steinhauer said the governor has an obligation to follow through with the payments.
“He’s spending the taxpayers’ money,” Steinhauer said. “He did this with funding cuts from schools earlier in his tenure… The court said he had to pay it. He berated the judge and at the end of the day, he had to pay it. I’m not sure why he wants to keep fighting things that are obvious. He knows the law.”