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5-9-10 'Gov Christie to propose permanent caps on salary raises for public workers'
Star Ledger-TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will propose on Monday a permanent 2.5 percent limit on annual raises for public workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, and will allow towns to discard civil service rules governing employee hiring and firing..."We’re going to work with him. We’re going to provide him a tool kit, as he says, for these communities," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said last week. "It’s not necessarily going to be exactly what he says." Sweeney said he favors civil service reform and arbitration reform, but believes the constitutional 2.5 percent property tax cap goes too far..."

‘Gov. Christie to propose permanent caps on salary raises for public workers’

By Statehouse Bureau Staff , May 08, 2010, 6:45PM

 

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will propose on Monday a permanent 2.5 percent limit on annual raises for public workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, and will allow towns to discard civil service rules governing employee hiring and firing.

 

The 33-bill package of legislation marks the Republican governor’s most audacious move yet against the state’s public employee unions since it strikes at the heart of time-honored-practices — the power to bargain for substantial raises for workers and the assurance they are covered by civil service protections. At the same time, the administration argues, those curbs on union power would give towns, school boards and public colleges new leverage to control costs.

 

And the changes, described in administration briefing details and draft legislation obtained by The Star-Ledger, could pave the way for more radical steps. Christie will also direct top administration officials to study reforms including raising the retirement age to 65 from 62, increasing employee contributions to their health benefits and pensions, keeping new hires out of the state pension system, and cutting back cost-of-living increases for the pensions of current and future retirees.

 

"People in New Jersey now feel as if there have become two classes of people in New Jersey: Public employees who receive rich benefits, and those who pay for them," Christie said in a recent speech to mayors. "We collectively have to do something about it."

 

Union leaders today criticized the proposals as a power grab by a governor who disrespects organized labor, and doubted the changes would save the state much money.

 

"It looks like an illegal attack on the constitutional rights of public employees disguised as reform," said Carla Katz, a former labor leader who is now an attorney representing the state Firemen’s Mutual Benevolent Association and several other public worker unions.

 

The legislation to be introduced tomorrow includes:

• A constitutional 2.5 percent cap on the annual increases in municipal, school and county property tax levies. The only exceptions would be for debt service payments, or if local residents vote to override the cap.

• A 2.5 percent limit on the annual increases of employee contracts — including wages, health benefits, vacation time and other perks — for all local workers including police, firefighters and teachers. That would include contract awards made through the binding arbitration process for police and firefighters. School boards also could invoke a "last, best offer" if negotiations with a local teachers union reached an impasse.

• Allowing towns to opt-out of the civil service system through an ordinance or a petition by 15 percent of the voters. Civil service protections — including "bumping," when newer employees lose their jobs before their more senior colleagues — also would not apply to furloughed employees or those laid off because of shared services agreements.

• Limiting the amount of unused sick leave that current employees can cash out at $15,000, and only allowing them to carry over unused vacation time for one year. That mirrors changes Christie signed in March for future hires, although current workers who have already accumulated more than $15,000 could still keep it.

• Making union leaders on an extended leave of absence from their normal job duties, as well as employees of advocacy groups like the state League of Municipalities and New Jersey School Boards Association, ineligible to enroll in the state pension system.

• Moving school board elections from April to November.

Christie says the changes will give local governments the "tools" to hold down New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes even as they cope with his proposed cuts in state aid. Christie’s $29.3 billion budget would slice aid to school districts by $820 million and to towns by $446 million.

 

The salary, benefit and collective bargaining changes, long sought by towns and school boards, represent "a big piece of the puzzle" of providing property tax relief, said William Dressel, executive director of the League of Municipalities.

 

"That is unprecedented, and that is huge, given the fiscal realities of the day," Dressel said.

The suggested changes will have to be approved by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Democrats have said recently they support the concept of a "tool kit" for local governments but disagree with some of Christie’s ideas.

 

"We’re going to work with him. We’re going to provide him a tool kit, as he says, for these communities," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said last week. "It’s not necessarily going to be exactly what he says."

 

Sweeney said he favors civil service reform and arbitration reform, but believes the constitutional 2.5 percent property tax cap goes too far. He said closing some loopholes in the current 4 percent cap would continue a trajectory that brought average annual increases to 3.3 percent in 2009, from the 7 percent range several years ago. And wealthier towns would be more likely to vote to exceed the limit when they demand more services, he said. "Communities that have money override the cap. The middle class and the poor don’t. So the divide between the two becomes greater," Sweeney said.

Union leaders said allowing towns to opt-out of civil service would open the system to more hiring decisions based on patronage.

 

"Layoffs will be entirely based upon an effort to throw out your political opponent and put in your political friend," said Hetty Rosenstein, area director for the Communications Workers of America, the largest state workers union. "In municipal government, or county government, every single layoff will be subject to political patronage and corruption."

By Claire Heininger/Staff Writer and Matt Friedman/Staff Writer