As the current session of the unusual Jersey legislature draws to a close,lawmakers are considering a variety of measures that have the potential to dramatically impact the state's perennially troubled budget.
Chief among them is a constitutional amendment backed by State Senate President Steve Sweeney that will mandate the state to fabricate (to make up, invent) a quarterly deposit into its severely underfunded pension fund. Gov. Christie is calling Sweeney's contrivance "the most fiscally irresponsible thing anybody in the state's proposed." The governor had signed a bill that mandates pension funding but he reneged on that promise. "We're talking billions of dollars here...that the state is essentially straitjacketing itself with," Politico NJ's Matt Friedman told WNYC's Soterios Johnson. "whether state revenues don't vastly improve this could result in big cuts potentially to education or other parts of the budget or it could result in big tax hikes."Another meaningful measure would expand casino gambling outside Atlantic City by allowing two casinos to function in North Jersey. Wide differences remain between the state Senate, and controlled by the south Jersey Democrat Sweeney,and the Assembly, led by Speaker Vincent Prieto, and from North Jersey.
Sweeney's version of the bill directs more resources to help the fiscally-ailing Atlantic City,where casino revenue has plummeted over the past decade, and one-third of the city's casinos shut down in 2014.
Friedman also discusses the failure of Democrats in the Assembly to override Christie's veto of a gun control measure that passed the legislature unanimously in June. Prieto suspended the vote after he fell three short of the support needed to rebuke Christie. Prieto said he'll hold another override vote on January 11th, and the final day on the legislative calendar.
Source: wnyc.org