Kyrillos To Seek Vote on Unused Sick Leave Reform

Will Attempt to Force Senate Consideration of Governor’s Conditional Veto

Trenton— In an effort to offer relief to property tax payers and prevent public safety layoffs, Senator Joe Kyrillos (R- Monmouth/Middlesex) will attempt to force consideration of the Governor’s conditional veto of S-2220, which eliminates payouts of unused sick time for public employees, at tomorrow’s Senate session.

“Rather than trying to override the Governor on bills the Majority cannot find the funds to support, the Senate should be passing unfinished toolkit legislation that will help avert public safety layoffs and property tax increases,” Kyrillos said. “Sick leave cash outs present an enormous strain on local government budgets that must be stopped. The Governor is absolutely right in requiring that these cash outs be phased out for all employees, current and future, in his veto message. Sick leave should be used when you are sick, not as a cash gift upon retirement.”

Kyrillos will motion that the conditional veto be taken up as the Senate’s “Order of the Day”. It is up to the Senate President to decide whether or not the motion is in order.

“I hope that the Senate President will hear, as I have, the call of police and firemen who are concerned about the impact of layoffs on our communities,” said Kyrillos. “We need to make tax dollars go farther by giving towns and counties the tools they need to reign in unnecessary costs and fund priorities that matter. Unused sick leave is a perfect example of a cost to local government that no longer needs to exist.”

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Christie: “I already know I could win”

By Art Gallagher

The National Review’s Rick Lowry met with Governor Chris Christie last week.  Here’s what the governor told Lowry about his non-candidacy for president:

Yes. Believe me, I’ve been interested in politics my whole life. I see the opportunity. But I just don’t believe that’s why you run. Like I said at AEI, I have people calling me and saying to me, “Let me explain to you how you could win.” And I’m like, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I already know I could win.” That’s not the issue. The issue is not me sitting here and saying, “Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.” I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity. 

But I’ve got to believe I’m ready to be president, and I don’t. And I think that that’s the basis you have to make that decision. I think when you have people who make the decision just based upon seeing the opportunity you have a much greater likelihood that you’re going to have a president who is not ready. And then we all suffer from that. Even if you’re a conservative, if your conservative president is not ready, you’re not going to be good anyway because you’re going to get rolled all over the place in that town.

I just see how much better I get at this job every day, and I do, and I learn things. If not every day, at least every week. And my wife and I were actually talking about this last night. We had dinner together with the family after the [New Jersey budget] speech and she was saying how much better she thought I was yesterday than I had been before in my speech. She said, “You are getting better.”

That’s just the nature of life. So, I see the opportunity, I recognize and understand it and I’m really flattered that people think of me that way. But, if I don’t believe it in here [pointing to his heart], I’m not going to be a good candidate on top of everything else.

And remember in the context of sitting there on election night 2009, and my wife and I were convinced we were going to lose. It is a bit to get your arms around, too. You’re a successful United States attorney and then within a year of that time you have people talking about you and I was running around campaigning for folks. All of these handmade “Christie for President” signs in the crowds when I was in Michigan and Iowa and all the other places that I went, Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida. It’s also been overwhelming, too.

Like I said before, I am who I am and people have to trust, they don’t have to but they should trust, my instincts on this. I know me better than anyone else knows me. If I felt like I was ready, I’d go, but I’m not. But I’m also not going to go if I don’t think I’m ready.

When I walked into the Governor’s office last January there have been some difficult days in the job. There has never been a day where I’ve felt like I’m over my head, I don’t know what to do, I’m lost. I don’t know whether I’d feel the same way if I walked into the Oval Office a year and a half from now. So, unless you get yourself to the point where you really believe you have a shot to be successful, then I don’t think you have any business running for it.

Lowry noted that Christie is better prepared than Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were when they took office.  I would add Truman, Kennedy and Carter to the not as prepared as Christie list of modern day presidents.  Since FDR, the only prepared chief executives America has had were Eisenhower,Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

Unless a Republican leader emerges in the coming months, the “readiness” argument will become weaker and weaker to a country hungry for leadership.  Unless that Republican leader emerges the pressure of Christie to fill the leadership vacuum will increase.

I don’t know Christie that well, but I don’t think the question of seeking the presidency is truly a matter of readiness for him.  I think it is a matter of calling.  A truly great president is called to the office, as Reagan was.

Christie is conducting his governorship as a mission he is called to.  He is in the process of becoming a transformational governor.  His leadership is having national consequences.  He appears to be called to the work that he has started in reducing the size and cost of government on the state and local level.

If Christie is called to a higher office, like the presidency, such calling will probably not happen until there is significant progress in New Jersey and elsewhere throughout the country where his example is making a difference.

For Christie to seek the presidency because of the opportunity when the level of accomplishment in his current calling is far from complete would diminish his current work and the future opportunity.  Christie frequently says “I know who I am.”  Who he is is someone who doesn’t leave a job undone to take a “better” opportunity.

If Christie stays on his current course as governor and a national leader in bringing fiscal sanity to state and local government he has the potential of making a bigger difference, domestically, in the quality of life and freedom for Americans than any modern day president.

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Beck, Oroho Submit Legislation to Stop Simultaneous Collection of Pensions, Public Paychecks

Trenton— Senators Jennifer Beck (R- Monmouth/Mercer) and Steve Oroho (R- Sussex/Hunterdon/Morris) have submitted legislation aimed at ending abuse of the state’s pension system. The bill, S-2716, would prohibit retired public employees that return to government service from collecting pension payments while on payroll.

“Pension payments should only be collected by those who have left the government payroll,” said Senator Beck. “Public employees who game the system by collecting a paycheck and a pension check simultaneously commit the worst kind of double dipping. New Jersey’s taxpayers are tapped out, our pension system woefully underfunded, and neither can tolerate this sort of abuse. Nobody should be able to line their pockets in this manner at public expense.”

The bill prohibits any public employee in the state retirement system from collecting a pension if he or she resumes public employment and is compensated more than $15, 000 annually. Those returning to service after retirement would not accumulate additional pension credits. The bill applies to all state pension plans.

“We must protect New Jersey’s pension systems and it is critically important that we protect the qualified status of those pensions, as well as end any unnecessary strains on the funds,” Oroho added. “There are a variety of good reasons retirees may wish to return to the workforce. However, for the purposes of collecting a pension, and to protect the qualified status of the plans, retired means retired.”

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Will Christie’s Reforms Reduce Property Taxes?

By Art Gallagher

In a column published in The Star Ledger and at NJ Spotlight, Mark Magyar says no.  Magyar says that like all the governors before him, except Florio, Christie is simply tinkering at the margins and that whether Christie serves one term or two, New Jersey’s property taxes will still be the highest in the nation.

Magyar, who was a policy advisor to Chris Daggett’s Independent gubernatorial campaign against Christie and Jon Corzine, makes the case that unless New Jersey increases income taxes and sales taxes with the State taking over a higher burden of education funding, that property taxes will continue to be a dispropotionate and inequitable source of funding for education and government services.

A good tax system is generally considered to be one in which income, property and sales taxes are in some rough balance, with each providing somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent of total revenue for these three major taxes. That is the case in most states, but it is not the case in New Jersey, where property taxes actually make up 58 percent of the income/property/sales tax pie, with income taxes accounting for just 24 percent and sales for the remaining 18 percent.

The only way to actually lower property taxes in New Jersey to a competitive level with other states is to shift billions of dollars of the cost of K-12 education or municipal or county services to another major tax or taxes — with the income and sales taxes being the most logical choices — while simultaneously making sure that an effective cap prevents any new increase in school district and local government spending.

That is what Democratic Gov. Jim Florio tried to do in 1990 when he dedicated half of his $2.8 billion tax package to property tax relief, but most of the money was quickly eaten up by school districts and municipalities for new spending, and by the second year property taxes were rising again as rapidly as ever. Voter repudiation of Florio led to the election of a Republican legislature and GOP Gov. Christie Whitman, and scared politicians in both parties away from any meaningful attempt at overall tax reform.

Magyar makes a compelling case.  Middletown Committeeman Gerry Scharfenberger made a similar case last August.

However, Magyar’s argument is a non-sequitur to the current debate happening in Trenton (and nationally).

Even if Christie and the legislature were to institute Steve Lonegan’s flat tax, increasing income taxes on the poor and middle class while reducing them on the rich, and even if they instituted Chris Daggett’s $4 billion sales tax increase, and used the new revenue to reduce property taxes, the problems that Christie is addressing would remain.  They would just be paid for differently.

New Jersey, and many other states, has too much government.  There are too many government employees making too much money and getting benefits that are too generous to sustain regardless of how the revenue is generated.

It is only by reducing the size of government on all levels, which means less government employees making less money with less generous pensions and benefits, that our overall tax burden will decrease.  That is what Christie’s reforms are designed to do.   By forcing the downsizing within the current system, rather than radically changing the way New Jersey taxes its citizens and then implementing cuts, Christie is demanding that municipal, county governments and school boards make the hard choices now.  If Christie did it Magyar’s way, government and taxes would continue to expand.

Let’s first reduce the size of our governments.  Once that is done we can address the way we pay for them.

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Christie: “I won’t be governor in 2014”

By Art Gallagher

While criticising President Obama’s comments to the nation’s governors about public employee unions and health care, Governor Chris Christie told reporters that he will not be governor in 2014, according to Herb Jackson of The Record.

“I’m not going to even be governor in 2014, so the fact that he’s offering flexibility in 2014 is really of no moment to most governors who need to balance their budgets this year,” Christie said.

If reelected in 2013, Christie would be sworn in to his secord term in January 2014.

At his Town Hall meeting in Middletown on January 26th, Christie said he was going to seek a second term as governor.

The governor has repeatedly declared that he is not running for president in 2012.

Maybe his plans are changing.

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