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Star Ledger - Analysis: Gov. Christie's work after two years in office a mixed bag
N.J. Democrats must not block Opportunity Scholarship Act January 01, 2012 - Star-Ledger Editorial Board
NJ Spotlight - 2011: The Year in Review in Politics…Pension and benefits reform, legislative power struggles, and the Big Guy himself -- Irene wasn't the only hurricane to hit New Jersey this year, by Michael Aron
Star Ledger - Analysis: Gov. Christie's work after two years in office a mixed bag
Published: Tuesday, January 03, 2012, 12:20 PM Updated: Tuesday, January 03, 2012, 12:21 PM
TRENTON — Governor Chris Christie has used his first two years in office to control property taxes, cut spending, reinvigorate New Jersey's economy and restore ethics to a state long known for corruption — all while working harmoniously with Democrats.
That's the version promoted by the governor and his supporters that has been widely accepted by many across the country, sparking national media attention and even a push for a presidential run until Christie quashed that himself.
But there's another version of the reality of life in New Jersey that is at odds with such a uniformly happy image.
Average property tax bills remain at an all-time high even as many towns have laid off public workers and cut services to abide by a new 2 percent cap on overall tax levies.
Unemployment is still stuck above 9 percent, while low-income workers have seen the earned income tax credit reduced.
And in Trenton, state spending went up this year but steep cuts in property tax relief remain largely in place. New Jersey is also skipping all but a fraction of the pension payment that actuaries recommend this year despite a downgrading of the state's credit in February that was brought on partially by the state's already-huge unfunded pension obligation.
New Jersey's weak ethics and campaign-finance laws also remain unaddressed as Democratic lawmakers continue to ignore Christie's calls for reform.
Yet Christie — a Republican who promised to turn Trenton "upside down" when he took office in early 2010 — has tackled much in two years, taking on high property tax bills, poor state finances and a sagging economy, among other items that include a historic restructuring of public worker benefits.
The self-styled, straight-talking governor has also been unafraid to promote himself, using live-streamed news conferences, YouTube videos, frequent social-media updates, high-profile speeches throughout the country, town-hall-style meetings and with numerous network and cable television appearances to get out his own message.
His efforts seem to be working, as recent polls in New Jersey found the Republican governor's approval rating is comfortably above 50 percent as 2012 begins. Nationally, many in the Republican Party were convinced last year that the former U.S. attorney and Morris County freeholder should be the GOP candidate running against President Obama in 2012.
Christie has confronted long-standing problems that have stymied governors for decades — and has made progress. However, perceptions of Christie's successes may not always match up with the realities in New Jersey.
Here's a closer look at Christie's first two years in office, and how the perception compares with the reality on some key issues.
Perception: Property taxes addressed.
Reality: Local property tax bills soared by 4 percent to an average of $7,576 statewide and the overall burden on taxpayers grew by a combined $1 billion in 2010. But that was before Christie's general 2 percent cap on levy hikes went into effect on Jan. 1, 2011. Property tax levies increased because the new cap allows several exceptions, including debt payments and employee pension and health benefit costs. But the increases were among the smallest in the last decade.
Perception: Public employee benefit costs controlled.
Reality: The state's costs to cover government workers' health care are driven by these factors: the price tag for a health plan and what percentage of that is covered by the state versus how much workers must cover themselves. Christie's push to let workers sign onto new, cheaper plans failed to make significant savings; just 309 of the 397,000 employees elected any of the cheaper coverage this year. Workers start to contribute more toward their health care in July, and by 2014 will, on average, cover 20 percent of the insurance cost, leaving the state carrying the 80 percent margin. Christie's brag of $100 million savings this year turned out to include an unrelated $90 million windfall available through federal health reform — not part of Christie's own policy. Meanwhile, Christie's reforms do not press insurers to keep costs from rising, leaving local governments squeezing other services to pay more of their revenue every year toward insurers' bills. State costs rose $3.5 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30, an increase that alone eclipses the predicted 10-year savings of $3.1 billion from the new public-worker health reforms.
Perception: Unfunded public pension system on the way to solvency.
Reality: While Christie on Dec. 20 said state pension funds would soon be solvent, the best-case scenario under Christie's public-pensions reforms is to bring all the major funds to 88 percent solvency within 30 years. The state, having skipped payments into public pension funds for more than a decade, budgeted $484 million this year, a fraction of the $3.3 billion ideal scheduled payment toward a $54 billion deficit. Lower-than-ideal payments are scheduled for the next six years. If Christie or a future governor refuses to pay as planned, or if state investments don't earn as much as the 8.25 percent expected, pensions will be kept underfunded and eat into the funds' solvency. And that outcome is further endangered by a lawsuit headed to the state Supreme Court, challenging whether judges must follow other public workers and pay increased contributions.
Perception: Budget and spending under control.
Reality: The state constitution does not allow a budget deficit and Christie has enacted two balanced budgets to meet that obligation. He's done so, in part, by ignoring several laws that seem to require spending, such as on property tax relief, education and the state's pension obligation. But that required spending is trumped by the state budget bill. And though Christie has cut spending on many programs since taking office to reach a balanced budget, overall state spending has grown slightly during his first two years in office as federal stimulus aid has ended.
Perception: New Jersey's economy back on track.
Reality: New Jersey has gained thousands of private-sector jobs during Christie's first two years in office, but there have been losses in the public sector and the state's unemployment rate still tops 9 percent — higher than the national unemployment rate and unchanged in November even as 30 other states saw improvement. But the governor felt confident enough in his economic policies back in the summer to project more than $1 billion in additional revenue for the new fiscal year that began on July 1, and so far revenue collections are up 5 percent over the same period last year and nearly meeting Christie's projections.
Perception: Divided government working in New Jersey.
Reality: Christie has been able to persuade the leaders in the Democratic-controlled Legislature to compromise with him on some major issues, including the limit on property tax hikes, public employee benefits cuts and his first state budget. But in most cases, Christie has won only the minimal amount of votes necessary from Democrats to move his initiatives forward, and he's done so by cutting deals with lawmakers tied to the Camden and Essex Democratic machines, organizations that rely heavily on the old-school systems of patronage and pay-to-play that Christie has criticized.
Perception: The former U.S. attorney is cleaning up New Jersey government.
Reality: Christie built his reputation as a federal prosecutor who took on some of New Jersey's most corrupt politicians. As a gubernatorial candidate, he heavily stressed ethics during the 2009 campaign, devoting 11 of his 88 ways to fix New Jersey to the ethics issue. But he has yet to use the same hardball tactics he employed to win Democratic votes on other initiatives and to convince the Democratic power brokers it's time to ban local pay-to-play, wheeling and the holding of more than one public office or job — which is banned in many other states but is still legal in New Jersey. And though Christie has taken on waste and corruption at New Jersey's many authorities, boards and commissions, the governor has been questioned by those who believe he is not holding recent examples of wasteful spending at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — an agency Christie oversees along with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — to the same standard.
Perception: Christie is a straight-talking, blunt governor.
Reality: As much a part of Christie's political power as his policies, the governor's public persona allows him to rip his political rivals, host dozens of public town halls and spin policy debates, all at high volume and for maximum exposure. The reality is that he is adept at tailoring answers to each audience, a tactic used by many politicians but which backfired last September when his remarks about working with Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver leaked out of a private fund-raiser in Colorado, endangering his political alliance with Essex County Democrats. And in national interviews, he repeats claims that have been debunked. Trenton watchers have learned to pay more attention to what he will not speak about publicly: His closed-door deliberations with Cabinet members, but also his discussions with high-ranking Democratic allies, whom he may criticize publicly while negotiating with them in private.
By John Reitmeyer and Juliet Fletcher/Statehouse Bureau Staff
N.J. Democrats must not block Opportunity Scholarship Act
January 01, 2012 - Star-Ledger Editorial Board
For more than a year, the Legislature has been prodding and poking at a bill that would provide a lifeline to poor students in failing districts by giving them a voucher to attend private schools.
Enough. This is a small pilot program that will affect about 5,000 students in a public school system of nearly 1.4 million. It will be restricted to the worst districts in the state, where most of the opponents of this bill would never send their own children.
To block this experiment in light of the persistent failure of these schools, and the demonstrated desire of so many parents to find better alternatives, is to deny the basic civil rights of these kids.
The bill, known as the Opportunity Scholarship Act, would allow businesses to divert tax dollars into a scholarship fund, money the state would use to award scholarships of $6,000 a year to K-8 students and $9,000 to high school students.
The first objection is that this would divert money from needy urban schools. That would be a valid reason to kill the bill if it were true. But the bill would compensate the host districts by leaving them with a portion of the money earmarked for the children who take these scholarships.
So if a district gets $16,000 in state aid, for example, as many of the failing districts do, the state would provide a $6,000 scholarship for the K-8 child and leave the remaining $10,000 for the district. Per-student spending in conventional schools would not fall — it would rise.
Remember, too, that New Jersey’s urban districts spend enormous sums of money. Some, like Union City, have used it to remarkable effect, lifting student performance. This program would be restricted to districts that have squandered the opportunity, such as Camden.
A more reasonable concern is that ambitious families would abandon conventional schools, leaving them even weaker than before. But a small program like this won’t have a big effect either way. And if allowing ambitious kids to leave bad schools is harmful, then we should eliminate charter schools as well, and magnet schools that admit only the best students. In effect, this argument says that while families with money should be free to leave, families who are poor should have no choice, even when they reach for it.
Finally, some object because many of these scholarships will be used at parochial schools, mixing church and state. But the state pays for busing and textbooks at parochial schools today, a more direct form of support. And the point of the church-state separation is to ensure that government shows no preference for one religion over another. This program achieves that by leaving the choice up to parents.
What is holding this up? In a word, Democrats. The teachers union, a pillar of the party’s support, is dead-set against this and party leaders are hesitant to anger the union again after passing pension and health reforms last summer.
But this bill would benefit only poor children in cities, which should be a core concern. It is no wonder that polls show stronger support for vouchers among minority voters, or that the pioneering voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland were sponsored by black urban legislators.
This is a gut check for Democrats. If they act fast, there is time to start the program this fall. If they delay again, as expected, it underscores how badly the party needs a housecleaning.
NJ Spotlight - 2011: The Year in Review in Politics…Pension and benefits reform, legislative power struggles, and the Big Guy himself -- Irene wasn't the only hurricane to hit New Jersey this year
By Michael Aron, December 30, 2011 in Opinion|1 Comment
(While NJ Spotlight is on winter hiatus, we've asked some of the state's thought leaders to share their opinions and expertise with our community. We'll be back soon, rested and ready.)
2011 was the year the Big Guy talked about taking on "Big Things," the Democrats in Trenton tried to serve as his foil without ripping themselves apart, and the politically minded in New Jersey continued to be entertained by the fights, the foibles, the substance, and the personalities.
In January, New Jersey got a new congressman, Jon Runyan. It wasn't the first time a giant ex-professional athlete went down to Washington, D.C., to represent us in Congress. I'm thinking of Bill Bradley, who went straight to the U.S. Senate in the election of 1978 and spent eighteen years there. One wonders whether Runyan will have that kind of staying power. Or that level of impact.
Three months later, John Adler, who lost his seat to Runyan, died of a heart infection acquired during emergency heart surgery. He was 51, and it was one of the saddest early passings the state's political community had seen in many years. The funeral, in Cherry Hill, was a somber affair. Two qualities threaded through the many tributes and remembrances: John's wit and his smarts. You couldn't help but wonder whether the loss of the seat he appeared to love had taken a toll beyond the usual.
January was also the month that Gov. Chris Christie declared in his first State of the State Address that "the New Jersey comeback has begun." He might as well have added, "Well, of course it has, now that I'm here." What can be said of our high-octane governor that hasn't been said already?
I've covered nine New Jersey governors, not counting John Bennett. This one is nimble, quick on his feet, quick with a quip, sharp-edged, and well-versed. He seems to devour material whether it comes from a briefing book, a discussion, or the many newspapers and broadcasts he appears to include in his daily fare. He is a showman and an agile politician. He can be eloquent, charming, funny. He can also be nasty, vindictive, stubborn.
2011 was the year that the rest of the United States discovered what those of us who cover him in New Jersey have gradually learned between 2001 and 2010: this guy is a piece of work!
The pension and benefits reform bill he pushed through and signed in June was the crowning New Jersey political achievement of the year. I say that because of its scope, the degree of difficulty, and the continuing fallout. Christie couldn't have done it without Steve Sweeney and Sheila Oliver, the Senate president and Assembly speaker, both Democrats.
Sweeney was philosophically on board from the start. In fact, Sweeney could argue (and did) that he was the progenitor of pension reform going back to 2006. Oliver was a different story. She played footsie with the bill. Her members seemed to have deeper ties to the public employee unions than the senators do, and so she proceeded cautiously. She said she had real problems with the idea of ending collective bargaining over the terms of employee health benefits, so the governor and Sweeney agreed to let that sunset after four years --essentially giving the unions back that power in 2014 -- and that roped her in.
What we don't know is the degree to which the legislative leaders' patrons -- George Norcross in the case of Sweeney and the combo of Joe DiVincenzo and Steve Adubato Sr. in the case of Oliver -- were influencing the process. An eleventh hour attempt to slip into the bill an in-state hospital provision that would have required public employees who live in New Jersey to seek their hospital treatment in state if they wanted maximum reimbursement appeared designed to bolster Cooper Medical Center in Camden even more than it's been bolstered already by Norcross's taking over as chairman of the board. But it died as soon as people grasped that getting to Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania or Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York might be a lot harder for New Jersey cops, firemen, teachers, and the rest.
2011 was the year that we openly started questioning whether the troika of Christie-Norcross-DiVincenzo was really running the state. And if so, whether that's healthy. When it came out that Joe D was collecting a pension on top his salary for, in part, doing the same job, Christie's tepid criticism underscored a penchant for selective outrage he has exhibited before.
Jay Webber stepped down as Republican state chairman in mid-winter. He was replaced by Sam Raia, who has yet to give an interview, as far as I can tell. Webber said he stepped down to focus on his law practice and the legislative reapportionment battle coming up in the spring. You had to wonder if someone in the governor's camp successfully argued that Webber was getting too much attention as a mouthpiece for Christie or said something that displeased the governor. But in the absence of evidence, the rule of thumb is to take what a man says at face value.
At budget time, the governor shocked us all by red-lining out of the budget $139 million in municipal aid plus state aid to about twenty do-good programs, like New Jersey After 3, AIDS drug distribution, general assistance welfare, tuition grants for low-income college kids, and the Wynona Lipman Child Advocacy Center. As we were absorbing the news of the cuts, Christie left on a two-week Western swing that took him to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, among other places. It was part vacation, part political trip. The Sunday after he left, the Star-Ledger ran the infamous interview with Sweeney in which the Senate President fumed at the Governor and called him a "prick". I'd never seen that word in 30 years of covering New Jersey politics. I've heard it in the Statehouse probably hundreds of times but had never seen it in print. And yet, the two men work together. That was a head-scratcher for a few weeks. Was Sweeney's anger genuine? Was it fake, to appease the unions he had just alienated in the pension fight? It seemed real to me.
Then Christie came home from the West and undid many of the cuts that looked so callous and, in some cases, vindictive, leaving us to wonder whether his inner circle was telling him to get back here and put a little salve on a few wounds. Or maybe instinctively he knew to do that, and part of why it got so bad while he was away was that the front office couldn't function fully without him.
Then Hurricane Irene came along, and we forgot all about budget cuts. Christie assumed the role of commander-in-chief. While we in the press corps tended to look at it cynically, as an opportunity for Christie to thump his chest and make people forget the December 2010 blizzard that found him at Disneyworld, the Governor just took command un-self-consciously and appeared to be totally in charge. He used the local media the way they should be used in an emergency. He erred on the side of safety. And he got it right tonally. I remember Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana during Katrina going on and on during a press conference in a way that appeared totally self-referential. Christie just said, "Get the hell off the beach." You can't quite call it a dress-rehearsal for being President, but there are parallels.
As his national profile kept rising in 2011, Christie did a few things that appeared designed to keep himself viable with the right wing of the Republican party, like pulling New Jersey out of RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and declining to join other states in a clean-air lawsuit. He heaped scorn on New Jersey judges, another popular posture for a Republican with national ambitions. And yet -- after he took himself out of the presidential running -- he sided with moderates and liberals on not honoring other states' right-to-carry gun permits. That seemed like Christie channeling a core conviction.
I was travelling in China in September-October when the Christie for President boomlet exploded. I was in the airport in Xi'an, a little town of about twelve million, and it was surreal to see Chris Christie on a monitor there tuned to CNN. I couldn't hear a thing but could tell from his body language what the English words at the bottom of the screen were blaring: "NOT RUNNING," and I thought, good, I don't have to rush home. I missed his speech at the Reagan Library, which sounded very presidential from the text on my Blackberry. I got home in time for the Romney endorsement and have been watching the Christie-Romney dance ever since. Christie makes a better case for Romney than Romney himself does. I think he wouldn't mind being on the ticket.
November produced the legislative election. The Democrats spent $32 million, the Republicans spent $13 million, and one seat changed hands. It was a sleeper of an election, although the Whelan-Polistina and Gordon-Driscoll races provided some drama. Everyone blamed the new legislative map for robbing the electorate of choices and the press of races. Alan Rosenthal of Rutgers, who presided over the reapportionment and called it the most difficult task of his professional life, deserves a mention in any roundup of the year.
Far more interesting than the election was the Democratic leadership fight that broke out 10 days or so before the balloting. Majority Leader Joe Cryan tried to take out Speaker Oliver in the Assembly, and Majority Leader Barbara Buono got demoted in the Senate. It was yet another deal that seemed to have to the handprints of George Norcross and Adubato-DiVincenzo on it, as well as in this instance Sen. Nick Sacco.
When Sweeney and Oliver held a joint press conference to introduce their new leadership teams two days after the election, they promised a more combative approach toward Christie going forward. That prompted Jarrett Renshaw, a fairly new reporter at the Star-Ledger, to ask a very insightful question: "There are two people not in the room who helped put this new leadership team together. Given that those two people are sympathetic to the governor and often work well with him, how can the public believe that you're gonna get tougher with him?" To which Sweeney gave the de rigeur answer, "Those people have less influence than you think."
The year ends with us anticipating a good Congressional race next year in the newly combined 5th and 9th districts, a good U.S. Senate race if Joe Kyrillos decides to take on Bob Menendez, and still trying to sort out what happened between Christie and former Governor Dick Codey this month. I can't remember a governor openly exacting revenge on a rival by taking away his state police driver and firing his buddies from key positions. But that's what Christie did. The guy played hardball in high school literally and has been playing the political version for awhile.
On a Friday night Codey is on "NJ Today" saying Christie lied twice in two minutes: first, when he said Codey was holding up the nomination of acting education commissioner Chris Cerf; second, when he said he'd spoken to Codey about it. "I haven't spoken to the man in a year," Codey said of Christie. "Two lies in two minutes." Monday morning Codey loses his driver , his cousin gets fired at the Port Authority, and a former top Codey aide loses his job at the Division of Consumer Affairs. This is cold politics. This is New Jersey. Bring on 2012!
Finally, 2011 was the year the TV news organization that took all this most seriously passed into memory. NJN, where I spent 29 years, is no more, replaced by NJTV, which is supporting itself without the direct support of the taxpaying public. I'm proud to have learned my craft and worked with so many good journalists at NJN. And I'm equally proud to be a part of the new operation and its smaller team of equally committed professionals. They're finding New Jersey politics as compelling as we used to at the old shop, and I'm lucky to be still in the game.
Michael Aron is chief political correspondent of NJTV and vice-president for news and public affairs at the Foundation for New Jersey Public Broadcasting.
