The teachers union Chris Christie says he struck an agreement with says not so fast
(Update, 4:55 p.m.: This post was updated to reflect further information about the pension reform proposal.)
The plan touted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in his Tuesday budget address is far from complete, according to the union with which Christie says he struck the deal.
“You may have the skeleton, but you don’t have the meat on the bone,” Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, said in an interview with New Jersey Public Television after the speech. The group has agreed to a short roadmap for reform, while a broader set of recommendations was released by a Christie-appointed commission.
Christie, a potential GOP presidential candidate, devoted most of his budget address to his state’s substantial pension problem. In the speech, Christie touted what he described as “an unprecedented accord with the NJEA.”
The $33.8 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 included no new taxes, keeping in line with each of Gov. Christie’s last six proposals. It also included a $1.3 billion payment to the pension system for the 2016 fiscal year, which Christie described as “the largest single pension payment that has ever been made in New Jersey history in one year.”
But the core of his speech was focused on a “Roadmap for Reform,” the short, broad-strokes agreement between the NJEA and the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefits Study Commission, which itself issued amuch-longer reform proposal.
“The recommendations by the Commission that make up the Roadmap are far-reaching, and they’re groundbreaking,” he said. “At their core they seek to bring fairness to a system that has long been unjust and create parity between public and private sector employees.”
In the speech, Christie twice described pension reforms achieved during his tenure as a “national model” and referred to this and other pension deals as the result of “real leadership.”
The roadmap would require the state to make contributions to a trust overseen by the NJEA each fiscal year for the next 40 years, Christie said. To commit the state to the payments, the plan could be put to voters as a constitutional amendment in the fall, he added. While Christie The teachers union Chris Christie says he struck an agreement with says not so fast - The Washington Post:
