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Christie's Cuts - Higher property taxes, fewer cops in NJ
Badges of laid-off police officers are shown inside the Little Egg Harbor, Ocean County, police department. The township has lost 11 of its 49 police officers due to budget cuts and lost state aid. / TOM SPADER/ASBURY PARK PRESS
11:26 AM, Oct. 25, 2011
**********Click here for the full article on MYCENTRALJERSEY.com**********
Last in a series on the impact of Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts.
First, the good news: Property tax increases have slowed in many New Jersey towns. But the bad news is, many residents have seen municipal services cut as their taxes have continued to climb.
Cities and suburbs all over New Jersey have laid off police officers and other public employees in the last 12 months as a drop in state aid and lingering economic doldrums have put the squeeze on municipal finances.
While many towns were able to keep property tax increases at or below a newly imposed 2 percent cap, municipal officials have been forced to cut jobs and slash services to keep from raising taxes even more.
The average property tax bill in New Jersey rose $167 this year, to $7,754, according to an NJ Press Media analysis of certified property tax rates in 545 of the state's 566 municipalities. (The 21 other municipalities, including some of the state's largest cities, have not yet set their rates.) New Jersey has had the highest average property tax in the nation for a number of years.
From 2010 to 2011, the average property tax bill rose 2.2 percent, slightly more than half of the 4.1 percent increase seen between 2009 and 2010. Property taxes cover spending for municipal and county governments, and public schools.
The smaller increase is little consolation to Brick resident Barry Mintz. Property taxes on his Royal Drive home are now $8,500, up from about $5,000 when he moved in 12 years ago. As taxes rose, municipal services have declined, he said.
"We used to have twice-a-week garbage collection and now it's down to once a week," said Mintz, 71. "When you downsize the public works department and cut services, what am I paying for?"
Brick taxpayers saw a 6.5 percent property tax increase, to an average of $5,909, after voters approved a cap waiver that preserved police jobs and curbside garbage collection but added $8.4 million to the $86.5 million municipal budget
Christie's overhaul may not save N.J. pension system
Published: Sunday, October 23, 2011, 6:00 AM
By
**********Click here for the full article on NJ.com**********
Chris Christie in this September, 2011 Star-Ledger file photo.
Despite Christie's assessment that his pension overhaul would
save taxpayers millions, estimates show the pension system will
again lose ground because the state isn't chipping in its full share.
TRENTON — For months, Gov. Chris Christie has told audiences that his historic pension overhaul helped save taxpayers millions and turned around a system in financial free-fall.
But a far more sober assessment of the future of the pension system is emerging in bond documents and administration estimates released last week, signaling that New Jersey taxpayers have not escaped the ballooning pension costs that the reform measures promised to control.
While an overhaul that suspends retirees’ cost-of-living increases and requires public workers to pay more for pensions brought an immediate financial boost, the pension system will again lose ground because the state still isn’t chipping in enough money — and won’t until at least 2018 — the administration recently told Wall Street.
The result: By 2018, state taxpayers will begin paying more than $5 billion a year for pensions, roughly 10 times higher than the partial payment being made in this year’s budget. The tab for local taxpayers will rise by about $600 million by 2020, estimates show.
Experts say taxpayers could be hit with much higher pension bills if the state doesn’t pay what it promises — or if it doesn’t make as much as the 8.25 percent it expects to earn each year on investments.
"I call it generational theft," said Richard Dreyfuss, a pension expert at the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative think tank in Pennsylvania. "Any relief that you are getting now by not making payments goes on the backs of the next generation. That’s a huge transfer of costs, and immoral."
Christie’s office said that it never hid the fact that the pension funds will worsen in the short term and that without major changes to a problem decades in the making, things would be far worse — and taxpayers would pay even more.
"You can’t fairly look at this in such a narrow window when we’re dealing with long-term reforms that are fixing a broken pension system and providing huge savings to the state and municipalities all along the way," said Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman.
The administration says its changes significantly restrained costs and immediately made the pension funds stronger. Drewniak said the governor’s reforms will save state and local taxpayers $121 billion over 30 years.
But because the state won’t be making full pension payments, the gap will swell again to $58 billion by 2019, according to the state’s estimates.
"While admirable, this was paper reform," said Fred Beaver, former state pension director. "The state is going to need a big shovel to get out of the hole they are digging themselves by not making the payments."
This year, the state should be paying roughly $3.3 billion into the pension fund, but will kick in about $468 million. As part of a measure that passed in 2010, the state will increase its payments by one-seventh each year over the next seven years.
Dreyfuss equates this to a homeowner taking out a mortgage and making only partial payments for seven years. After those seven years, the missed payments are added and the homeowner is saddled with a much bigger mortgage and higher monthly payments.
The new law requires public workers, from police officers and firefighters to state workers, to pay more toward their pensions. The increases are being phased in starting this year, and Christie said they brought immediate savings of $267 million at the local level. He was in Paramus and Mount Laurel last week touting the savings and urging local officials to use the money for property-tax relief.
Unlike the state, local governments rarely skipped pension payments, which made the police and firefighters fund one of the most solvent in the state. But that didn’t safeguard police and firefighters from having to pay more under the new law.
John Sierchio, chairman of the police and firefighters pension board, said he hopes history doesn’t repeat itself when the state gets hit with much bigger payments down the road.
"We made the payments, so if the state wants to skip theirs, that’s their prerogative, but leave us alone," said Sierchio at Wednesday’s pension board hearing in Trenton. Police pay 10 percent of their salaries for their pensions, which Sierchio says is the highest rate in the nation.
"The state should clean up its own house before coming after us," said Sierchio. "They give political hacks part-time jobs to get in the pension system and then before they retire they get a six-figure job and big pension."
The state’s decision to delay making full payments caught the attention of rating agencies that recently downgraded the state’s bond rating. Fitch Ratings acknowledged the success of the pension overhaul, but noted that only making partial payments until 2018 will force "sizable" increases in taxpayer contributions "likely to conflict with other long-term challenges, such as property-tax relief, school funding, and infrastructure needs."
In February, at one of his town-hall meetings, Christie was confronted by a police officer who said the state has repeatedly "stolen" from pension funds to balance the budget. "I would love to send a bill to Whitman, McGreevey, Codey and Corzine," Christie said of the ex-governors who failed to make full pension payments. "I would love to replace the money and put it in there. But where am I going to get it from?"
Jersey City cops on flight to Honolulu win praise for subduing passenger
Published: Friday, October 21, 2011, 3:03 AM
By
**********Click here for the full article on NJ.com**********
Jersey City P.O. Robert Taino Jr. & Jersey City P.O. Paul Fennel
When a hysterical passenger aboard a Hawaii-bound flight made a dash for the cockpit, two Jersey City police officers heading to a wedding tackled and guarded him until touchdown before turning him over to authorities, officials said.
“They are two fine outstanding officers and they carry on in the fine tradition of the Jersey City Police Department,” said South District Commander Charles Nierstedt of officers Paul Fennel and Robert Taino Jr., who were on U.S. Airways Flight 20 from Phoenix, Ariz., to Honolulu when the man “apparently went crazy.”
Taino said the flight was about two hours out of Honolulu at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday when they realized there might be a problem and alerted the crew that they were cops. Taino and Fennel saw flight attendants scurrying about and then rush to the back of the plane with an oxygen tank, Lt. Edgar Martinez said.
Next, the cops saw a man in a sweater having a panic attack and saying he had to get off the plane and was going to try to get off at 40,000 feet, Martinez said Taino told him.
All of a sudden the head flight attendant had the other attendants station themselves at all exit doors and by then the man had no shirt on, was waving his hands in the air and screaming “He’s got a gun. Who’s gonna shoot me?” Martinez said.
“Stop him!” yelled the head flight attendant as the man bolted toward the cockpit and the two Jersey City officers, along with two passengers, tackled him at the front of the plane and held him down, Taino told Martinez.
A flight attendant gave Taino a set of plastic wrist restraints and the cops cuffed the man and led him to the rear of the plane, where they watched him until the wheels touched down, Martinez said. They turned the man over to agents of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Honolulu Sheriff’s Department at the gate, Martinez said.
The cops were on their way to Honolulu to attend the wedding of a Jersey City police sergeant, Martinez said.
Taino is a recipient of the department’s Combat Cross award and Fennel is a recipient of the department’s Excellent Police Service award, Martinez said.
According to a Honolulu newspaper, the FBI said the man was suffering from alcohol withdrawal and authorities have declined to prosecute him.
U.S. Airways spokesman Andrew Christie said the airline has no comment since the incident is in the hands of law enforcement.
Ohio Wages Fierce Fight on Collective Bargaining
Andrew Spear for The New York Times, By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: October 15, 2011
**********Click here for the full article on NYTIMES.com**********
A union-backed television commercial shows 3-year-old Zoey Quinn slumped on a Cincinnati firefighter’s arm as he rescued her from her family’s burning house. The advertisement warns that firefighters might not be able to save Zoey next time, because the law bars bargaining over minimum staffing levels.
Zoey’s great-grandmother, Marlene Quinn, says in the advertisement, “I don’t want the politicians in Columbus making decisions for the firefighters, police, teachers, nurses or any organization that’s helping people. Fewer firefighters can mean the difference between life or death.”
Ms. Quinn is now at the center of a controversy because the side fighting the repeal has run a broadcast advertisement using her words, without her permission, and then goes on to say that without Senate Bill 5 there will be more layoffs of firemen. Repeal supporters say that is twisting her sentiments.
Jeff Berding, a former member of the Cincinnati City Council and one of the most outspoken Democratic supporters of Senate Bill 5, said the union-backed ads were misleading, arguing that government officials would never ignore safety concerns. “You’re not going to have elected officials do things that are terribly unfair to firefighters and police and jeopardizing public safety,” he said. “Officials want the firefighters and police endorsing them in the next election.”
He said he backed Senate Bill 5 because “I want some options besides raising taxes and laying off police and firefighters.” He said government officials often had little recourse but to increase taxes or dismiss public employees, thereby cutting public services, because unions, usually dominated by more senior workers, often refuse to make concessions. Union leaders recognize that concessions would hurt the more senior workers, while in a financial shortfall resulting from unions’ not granting concessions, those laid off would be the more junior workers. Senate Bill 5 allows government to lay off workers outside of seniority.
Tim Burga, the president of the Ohio State A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Senate Bill 5 was an assault on the state’s 360,000 public employees and was based on numerous misunderstandings. He said that many government employees already contributed heavily toward their health and pension costs, and that many had accepted wage freezes to help cut budget deficits.
“This shows that collective bargaining works,” Mr. Burga said. “I’ve never seen an issue catch fire like this. You look at the 1.3 million signatures we collected and the outpouring of opposition because this was such a blatant politically motivated attack. The energy is there on our side.”
Mack D. Mariani, a professor of political science at Xavier University in Cincinnati, said an unrelated issue on the Ohio ballot would hurt the repeal effort. The Tea Party is backing a proposed state constitutional amendment that would let Ohioans opt out of the mandatory requirements of the health law that Congressional Democrats enacted last year. That should lead to higher-than-normal conservative turnout, undercutting labor’s repeal effort.
“Right now, the unions are definitely winning the ground game in terms of getting people on the streets, knocking on doors,” Mr. Mariani said. “If the unions win, it will certainly be seen as a big blow for Kasich.”
Many union leaders and Democrats say that if they win the repeal vote, that should give President Obama momentum in Ohio in the 2012 elections, a pivotal swing state. But if Mr. Kasich’s allies prevail, then Ohio Republicans will have a lot to crow about going into 2012.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 16, 2011, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Limits on Collective Bargaining Face Fierce Repeal Fight in Ohio.
