CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT IS ONLY SOLUTION TO NJ’S PENSION CRISIS
WENDELL STEINHAUER | JULY 29, 2016 Every year for 20 years, the state has made some excuse, but there’s never been a full payment into public-employee payment plan New Jersey’s public-pension systems are large and complex, but the principle underlying them is very simple. In exchange for a career of service, the state promises public employees a secure pension. To fund that pension, the state and employees alike make regular contributions. Those contributions are invested to harness the power of the market over many years and create a fund that is able to pay the pension benefits earned by...
Read MoreOp-Ed: Retirees Suffer After Pension Reform Failures
By Janice DiGiuseppe/Burlington County Times/February 4, 2016 Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlan’s guest opinion, published Feb. 1 in the Burlington County Times, which stated that a constitutional amendment mandating pension payments would be a disaster for the taxpayers of New Jersey and for the people the amendment is supposedly intended to benefit, projects more useless political rhetoric. If agreements made in 2011 were executed due to reasonable economic growth that the legislators and the governor were counting on but did not happen, as O’Scanlan stated, puts forth that...
Read MoreChristie-Appointed Panel Pans State Pension Plan Touted by Democrats
By John Reitmeyer/NJ Spotlight/February 12, 2016 After largely staying out of the political debate over funding public-employee benefits for nearly a year, a commission of experts impaneled by Gov. Chris Christie has jumped back into it, issuing a new report that roundly criticizes a pension-funding constitutional amendment proposed by Democratic legislative leaders. The new report also provides new details on the panel’s own plan to save roughly $2 billion by making sweeping changes to government worker and retiree healthcare plans. That money, under the plan, would then be used to...
Read MoreChristie Spits Fire at Democrats, But He Wants a Deal
By Tom Moran/Star-Ledger Editorial Board/NJ.com/ February 17, 2016 Gov. Chris Christie’s budget speech Tuesday had two basic themes. One was that he has done great things for New Jersey, scoring major wins on jobs, housing, crime - even transportation, if you can believe he had the nerve. “If you listened to the left wing groups and some in this chamber, you’d would think it’s just the opposite,” he said. So, pay no attention to those potholes and credit downgrades, we’re doing great. The second is that Democrats and their buddies, the union thugs, want...
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