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ohhh THOSE ethics

ohhh THOSE ethics

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by: ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   Feb 24, '15 1:30am  
Judge tells Chris Christie: Put more money in pension funds
 

 




By MICHAEL CATALINI and GEOFF MULVIHILL
7 hours ago





 








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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Republican Gov. Chris Christie and the
state's Democrat-controlled Legislature must find $1.57 billion to put
into pension funds for retired public workers, a judge ruled Monday in a
decision that comes as a major legal blow to the governor as he
prepares to run for president.
Unions for public workers sued Christie after he announced last year
he would not make the full pension payments he had agreed to in a 2011
overhaul that was one of his main accomplishments.
Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson's ruling could force big changes in the state budget late in the fiscal year.
"In short, the court cannot allow the State to 'simply walk away from
its financial obligations,' especially when those obligations were the
State's own creation," she wrote in the ruling, released a day before
Christie is scheduled to make his budget proposal for the fiscal year
starting July 1.
The judge didn't issue a deadline for a solution, but she was clear
the state's obligation was to pay $1.57 billion more into pension funds.
The state government will appeal, the governor's office said in a combative statement.
"Once again, liberal judicial activism rears its head with the court
trying to replace its own judgment for the judgment of the people who
were elected to make these decisions. This budget was passed by the
Legislature and signed by the governor with a pension payment," Christie
spokesman Michael Drewniak said in a statement. "The governor will
continue to work on a practical solution to New Jersey's pension and
health benefits problems while he appeals this decision to a higher
court where we are confident the judgment of New Jersey's elected
officials will be vindicated."
Representatives of government employees, meanwhile, declared victory.
"It's a win for all of the participants in the fund and the
retirees," said Kenneth Nowak, a lawyer who argued the case on behalf of
the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers'
union.
Christie, who's laying the groundwork for a presidential run but
hasn't announced a candidacy, said reducing payments last year and this
year was the only reasonable way for the state to balance its budgets
after tax revenue fell short of expectations last year.
The legal dispute centered on whether the state was contractually
bound by the governor's 2011 promise to make up for missed or reduced
pension payments over a seven-year period.
The 2011 pension deal was one of Christie's major accomplishments as
governor and served as evidence he could work with Democrats to deal
with one of New Jersey's persistent financial issues. But it has become a
thorn in his side.
Last year, even before the
scramble to balance the budget, Christie decried the cost to taxpayers
as too high. When revenue came in under projections, he funded most of
the gap by cutting contributions. He said he's still making good on the
state's current obligation while suspending efforts to catch up from
past underpayments.
He reduced the contribution from a
planned $1.7 billion to $700 million last year. He wants to contribute
$681 million rather than the planned $2.25 billion this year.
The Legislature adopted a version
of the budget that would have made the full pension payment, but
Christie used a line item veto to implement his approach. Democratic
lawmakers on Monday said in light of that the judge's ruling was no
surprise.
"If the governor had signed the
budget we presented to him last June, we would not be confronted with
this massive fiscal crisis," state Senate President Steve Sweeney said.
At a court hearing over the cuts
in January, the state attorney general's office, representing the
Christie administration, was in the unusual position of arguing that a
law signed by Christie to make the deal more ironclad violated the
state's constitution. It argued that a law should not require spending
of future legislatures.
Unions say the law is
constitutional and it's only fair: Public workers had their
contributions increased and saw their retirement ages raised, while
retirees had their cost-of-living increases suspended.
___
Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield. 4951
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Stealth83 Active Indicator LED Icon 16
~ 9 years ago   Feb 24, '15 7:44am  
Removed By Request 4951
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ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   Feb 25, '15 5:22pm  
 actuaries have been warning for 40 years that pension funds are underfunded to remain solvent longterm when the boomers begin drawing down the funds and thus the investment income will be curtailed as the principal of the pension fund decreases. then to meet those legal obligations the responsible entities will have to redouble their contributions to keep the fund whole. in addition, these are CONTRACTUAL obligations which means to deliberately refuse to make those contracted payments leaves the state itself liable for the back payments, interest and including damages. in some locales, the damages can be 3 times the amount they are in default by legal statute. and picture this,...you are hired as a contracted employee,,,then your employer refuses to pay the contracted amount saying it is too high...how can you say the employees then need to make sacrifices? if you read the story, they already made sacrifices to GET a contract agreement. Public workers had their
contributions increased and saw their retirement ages raised, while
retirees had their cost-of-living increases suspended. 4951
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Retired_Engineer Active Indicator LED Icon 13
~ 9 years ago   Feb 25, '15 5:41pm  
We may soon be facing similar problems here in Texas.  Our newly elected Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has endorsed tax cuts of $4.6 BILLION.  While my bank account sighs with pleasure, it also means that there may not be any money to do infrastructure repairs to buildings/bridges/etc, build new highways, cover pensions, etc., etc., etc.If they are going to **** away the money, then I agree with letting us keep more.  But, as the fastest growing state in the nation, we ARE going to have both short- and long-term needs that must be addressed.  Our state is in pretty good shape.  I don't want to see it fall apart because of very short-term thinking. 4951
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ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   Feb 25, '15 10:33pm  
people have a tendency to love the words without thinking about the actions. those tax cuts that are being used to promote the governors  and /or lt governors politically are going to GUT the states when they then have to make up the difference during someone else's incumbency. and that is why you have all these ******s carping about the greed of the public workers or the teachers or the police and firefighters or whoever because the pension funds weren't being fully funded and thus were liable for the arrears. so these bragging posturing ******s are hurting their states, the citizens they represent, their own public workers who keep the state functioning and the future of their state to promote their own personal goals and down the line the states will have no discretionary funds and very little operating capital as the tax revenues will be more and more shunted to pay the obligations that were not met by refusing to engage in the necessary long term investment 4951
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thegoodwife Active Indicator LED Icon 10
~ 9 years ago   Feb 26, '15 2:01pm  
This is my pension I'm waiting to collect.
Plus she was more corrupt than any male politician the state of NJ has ever seen - And that has nothing to do with this  screw up of the pension system she broke.
 
In America; Whitman Steals the Future
By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 22, 1995
Over the past 25 years the State of New Jersey has struggled, under a succession of Democratic and Republican governors, to reverse a social and economic decline that, by the 1960's, had hit many Northeastern industrial areas.
 
Difficult budget decisions were made, often at significant political cost. But the benefits for New Jersey residents were many. A vastly improved higher education system was developed and state aid to local public schools surged. The environment was cleaned up. Mass transit was improved. The state's budget was balanced without gimmicks and its credit rating was triple-A.
There is a strong link between those developments and the fact that New Jersey residents today are among the best educated in the country, and rank near the top in per-capita income.
Now many of the gains made over a quarter of a century are in danger of slipping away because the current Governor, Christine Todd Whitman, has chosen to finance her political ambitions with a popular buy-now, pay-later economic policy that will place a financial stranglehold on future generations of New Jerseyans.
This is best illustrated by Mrs. Whitman's decision to withhold billions of dollars that should be going into the public employee pension funds over the next few years, and using the bulk of that money to balance the state budget. Then, with an audacity that dazzles her supporters and even draws grudging admiration from opponents, Mrs. Whitman smiles and characterizes the withheld funds as savings.
Of course, they are not "savings" -- not in any sense of the word. The pension obligations at some point will come due and future generations will have to meet them.
Not only will the money have to be made up, but future taxpayers will be deprived of the income that the money -- if properly invested now -- would be expected to generate.
Mrs. Whitman's pension maneuvers have not gotten a lot of publicity -- in part because the eyes of reporters and readers alike tend to glaze over when confronted with complex budget details. The changes that she has made have been drastic. According to the New Jersey Education Association, which has filed suit against the state, the employer contributions to the pension system this year will be as much as 96 percent below the amounts contributed in the early 1990's.
By all accounts, the employer contributions have been reduced by nearly $1 billion a year. The Whitman administration insists that this is not a problem. Needless to say, others disagree.
"There is no question but that this is creating future debt," said Richard C. Leone, a former New Jersey State Treasurer who is now the president of the Twentieth Century Fund. "This is just another way of getting around the balanced-budget requirement, a kind of deficit spending. It is the sort of thing that comes back to haunt you."
Until the changes adopted by Mrs. Whitman, New Jersey had been very conservative in its approach to its pension obligations. For example, the state had started to pre-fund the health care benefits of its retirees, building up reserves against post-retirement liabilities. As one state official said: "That was prudent. Health-care costs are a big problem."
Prudent or not, Mrs. Whitman scrapped the pre-funding. She used the reserves that had already built up to help balance her budget. For Christine Todd Whitman, the pension funds have become a budget-balancing machine.
Mrs. Whitman and the long-term interests of New Jersey appear to be at odds. The Governor won election by promising tax cuts, and any further advances in her career will be powered by her ability to "deliver" on that promise. Like most politicians, her eyes are on the short term: today's budget, tomorrow's election. It requires courage to look beyond Election Day to the long-term interests of constituents.
Young men and women who were children in New Jersey 20 or 25 years ago are benefiting from the vision and courage of the politicians in power then, politicians who were not afraid to lead. They weren't perfect but they had a sense of responsibility toward the generations growing up behind them. It's a quality that nowadays is in extremely short supply. And not just in New Jersey. 4951
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