New Jersey Pension "Deform"!
Republican Christine Todd Whitman, running on a tax-cutting platform, defeated Florio in the 1993 governor's race. To help pay for her promised tax cuts, Whitman, like her predecessor, turned to the pension fund. In 1994, at her urging, the legislature adopted another pension"reform" act that allowed her to reduce state and local contributions to the plan by nearly $1.5 billionin 1994 and 1995, according to the task force report. Florio's and Whitman's accounting changes were "the one-two punch from which the retirement system has never recovered," says Douglas Forrester, who was the assistant state treasurer under Kean.
For all the miscues, New Jersey's pension woes can't be blamed on particularly poor investment results. An examination of state reports shows