Sweeney assails Christie on N.J. economy

TRENTON - New Jersey's top elected Democrat on Tuesday accused Gov. Christie of ignoring the state's slow economic recovery, suggesting the governor's presidential ambitions were impeding progress at home.

"He needs to be back here with a plan on what we're going to do to fix this place, 'cause you can't fix it when you're not here," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester) said at a Statehouse news conference late in the day. "You don't fix anything when you can't look anybody in the eye. I get his ambitions, but he's the governor of the state of New Jersey, and enough of the blaming."

Christie has repeatedly assailed the senator and other Democrats at town hall-style meetings and on social media for refusing to support his proposed overhaul of the state's pension and health benefits systems.

"The governor is running for the president of the United States," Sweeney said. "I guess he thinks he's practicing the role by doing Washington gridlock politics, which is nonsense tweets, the accusations that are false, don't ever let the truth get in the way. It's enough."

Sweeney disputed that New Jersey needed a pension overhaul, saying the state's main problem was what he described as Christie's failure to grow the economy.

A recent forecast by Rutgers University economist Nancy Mantell projected that New Jersey wouldn't reach its prerecession peak of 4.09 million jobs until mid-2017. By contrast, the national economy had recovered all the jobs it lost in the recession by May 2014.

"This economy is in a death spiral," Sweeney said.

For starters, he said, the state needs to invest more in infrastructure and higher education.

To help fund the pension system, Sweeney said he would propose a tax hike on income above $1 million, a measure Christie has vetoed multiple times. "We really don't have much of an option at this point," Sweeney said.

Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said Tuesday that "increasing taxes on New Jersey families to pay for public employee entitlement programs is a very confused way to argue for strengthening the economy."

Sweeney's news conference showed just how little traction Christie's proposal for restructuring the pension and benefit systems has gained in Trenton as Democrats and public-sector unions seek a state Supreme Court ruling against the administration.

The court next week will hear Christie's appeal in a lawsuit brought by unions alleging that the governor violated public workers' contractual rights to greater pension funding, established in a 2011 law, when he slashed the state's contribution by about $1.6 billion in June amid a revenue shortfall. A Superior Court judge sided with the unions in February.

The high court's ruling could have significant implications for the budget - both for the current fiscal year that ends June 30 and the next.

Christie has lashed out at Democrats, accusing them of bowing to special interests instead of tackling a long-term fiscal crisis. The pension system for nearly 800,000 retired and active public workers has an unfunded liability of greater than $83 billion, according to a commission Christie impaneled to propose solutions. Spending on pensions and health benefits would consume 23 percent of the budget next fiscal year if the state were to meet its full obligations, according to the commission.

At a town-hall meeting last week in Essex County, Christie said taxpayers would be on the hook if Democrats did not agree to reduce benefits.

"They're coming to the same money tree they've come to every time," he said. "There's only one money tree in New Jersey, everybody, and I'm looking at you."

The state's largest teachers' union, the New Jersey Education Association, broke off talks with Christie's pension commission last week amid considerable backlash from other unions.

The union called on Christie to make a full contribution to the pension system for fiscal 2016. His $33.8 billion budget proposal includes $1.3 billion for the pension fund, about $1.8 billion short of what was required by the 2011 law.

"There's no progress at the moment," Christie said Monday night during a radio interview on NJ 101.5. He said he was "disappointed that the teachers' union walked away from their willingness to be able to sit at the table and talk about solving the problem."

Christie has continued to promote himself as a pragmatic leader capable of governing in the face of partisan opposition.

In New Hampshire this month, he cited his work with a Democratic-led legislature as the factor that set him apart from other Republicans in the 2016 presidential field.

"I've governed in a very difficult place that looks much more like Washington, D.C., than anybody else has governed," Christie told reporters, saying he had worked "to forge compromise to get things done."

While Christie hasn't achieved agreement on his pension proposal, "right now he gets what he needs with the battle" as he tries to convince Republican voters nationally that he's a true conservative, said Patrick Murray, a political analyst at Monmouth University.

But the pension focus draws attention to Christie's failure to fulfill the 2011 law he signed, making him look to critics "like a typical politician who can't keep his word," said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. "Which undermines one of his most effective arguments to be the Republican nominee in 2016."

Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature but not enough seats to override a potential veto, want Christie to abide by the law he heralded as a signature accomplishment that would save taxpayers billions by requiring workers to contribute more toward their pensions, raising the retirement age, and suspending cost-of-living adjustments.

It also required the state to contribute more money to the pension system.

That law is at the center of the legal dispute that will reach the Supreme Court next week.