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You can view the message in its entirety on NJN live, as well as via the internet on the New Jersey Legislature website. GSCS will be present at the Message. Here's a sampling of news articles from this morning...As always, "Education Issues are in the News"
Star Ledger ‘Christie's budget address may kick off rocky stretch for Governor, Democrats’..."Chris Christie's budget address today will launch a tumultuous budget season in the state as lawmakers debate cuts to business taxes, re-tooled school aid and reformed pension and health benefits for public workers...Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Union) said today is the beginning of a long process. "It’s just a speech," he said. "I don’t suspect that every single line (of the budget) has been filled in."
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘In Evesham and across New Jersey, school-budget battles loom’ “…Even if state aid is not reduced, costs have risen, including for employee health benefits. The money has to come from somewhere, but in many parts of the state, parents are already unhappy with what their schools have lost."It's highly likely it's going to be a volatile budget discussion in many communities," said Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. She gave the example of Millburn, in North New Jersey, where tensions have flared over a possible switch from full-day kindergarten to half-day. While such a move could save the district money, she said, few would disagree it will cost the children educationally and possibly increase parents' child-care costs…”
New York Times ‘For Christie, Ailing Economy at Home May Test His Allure’
Njspotlight.com ‘Administration Argues That Federal Stimulus Has Helped Offset School Aid Cuts’
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘In Evesham and across New Jersey, school-budget battles loom’
“…Even if state aid is not reduced, costs have risen, including for employee health benefits. The money has to come from somewhere, but in many parts of the state, parents are already unhappy with what their schools have lost. "It's highly likely it's going to be a volatile budget discussion in many communities," said Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. She gave the example of Millburn, in North New Jersey, where tensions have flared over a possible switch from full-day kindergarten to half-day. While such a move could save the district money, she said, few would disagree it will cost the children educationally and possibly increase parents' child-care costs…” New Jersey may be heading for a rocky school budget season. For Evesham Township, it would be more of the same. Residents are already up in arms over contemplated cost-cutting measures that could close a school, increase some class sizes, and result in up to 82 lost positions. The reason: closing a budget shortfall caused by previous state-aid cuts and increased salary and benefit costs, while sparing education programs. Superintendent John Scavelli estimates a deficit of between $4.2 million and $5.7 million, depending in part on how big a tax increase the district is able to get. And that's even before Evesham hears if Gov. Christie will propose education-aid cuts in his new budget, which he will unveil Tuesday. "Obviously, this has been a difficult process," Scavelli said. It's only the beginning. District officials and residents all over the state will likely be making hard decisions in the next months. Nearly a year after state school formula aid was slashed by about $1 billion, to help close an $11 billion budget hole on top of a $475 million mid-year cut in 2009-10 state aid, superintendents and business administrators have been put on notice that the new budget may include more cuts. "For the purposes of developing your preliminary budgets, districts should make allowances for the possibility of a reduction in state aid from your 2010-11 amounts," read a Jan. 19 memo from a state education official to district administrators. No amounts were given. Last year, districts were shocked to learn that in most cases, formula aid was being cut by about 5 percent of their total budget - in many districts, much more than they were anticipating. Fifty-nine districts lost all state aid. Jobs and programs were cut. The New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest education union, lost more than 9,000 members between December 2009 and December 2010, including about 5,400 teachers, said spokesman Steve Baker. Those numbers do not include retirements. The Newark Teachers Union, an American Federation of Teachers unit and the state's largest local, lost about 250 teachers, president Joseph DelGrosso said. In Evesham, 20 positions were lost, staff took a pay freeze and, as in other districts, parents this year are paying for after-school sports, clubs, activities, and school trips. Adding to this year's budget challenge statewide is a 2 percent tax levy increase cap, instead of the previous 4 percent. And a still-ailing economy and a dismal jobs picture may find taxpayers unwilling or unable to agree to that much of an increase. Even if state aid is not reduced, costs have risen, including for employee health benefits. The money has to come from somewhere, but in many parts of the state, parents are already unhappy with what their schools have lost. "It's highly likely it's going to be a volatile budget discussion in many communities," said Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. She gave the example of Millburn, in North New Jersey, where tensions have flared over a possible switch from full-day kindergarten to half-day. While such a move could save the district money, she said, few would disagree it will cost the children educationally and possibly increase parents' child-care costs. Still, those conversations, however difficult, must take place now. Districts only have until March 4 to file itemized preliminary budgets with their executive county superintendents. The budgets will go to voters on April 27. The challenge for district officials, said New Jersey School Boards Association spokesman Frank Belluscio, is to communicate the rationale for the cuts. "Obviously, nobody likes to see their kids' education programs cut," he said. Not cutting education programs was what Evesham's Scavelli said was his goal in putting together the district's proposed preliminary budget. All the cuts discussed in a series of recent public meetings are proposals in a $65.7 million spending plan. The possible closing of the Florence V. Evans Elementary School in Marlton hinges on two conditions, according to Scavelli: if there was no tax increase and if the state formula aid is cut by the amount received in federal jobs-bill funding. The state has not said it plans to do that, but education observers are speculating it might. Scavelli, who became superintendent about a year ago, said the district is looking ways to generate additional revenues and save money. Yet people move to Evesham because of its schools, and changes can bring an almost visceral reaction. Last fall, residents thwarted a revenue-raising proposal to apply to become a receiving school in the state's interdistrict choice program, despite being warned of a looming budget shortfall and a continued enrollment decline. The budget debate raises many issues and emotions. Sharyn Pertnoy Schmidt is rallying fellow parents to fight one proposal that could mean children from her Colts Run section would cross busy Evesboro-Medford Road to get to and from school. "Our argument is, in the budget-cutting you're doing, how can you put safety below savings?" she said. Even with a promised crossing guard, she still thinks it would be too dangerous. Several residents interviewed said they want to see administrative cuts. Scavelli said the district was making such cuts. Sandy Student, a school board member, said district officials, including the board members, need to take a harder look at how money is spent, including administratively. Amid the angst, however, as cuts threaten to hit ever-closer to home, people say, public involvement is seen as increasing. Janet Kimenhour, head of the Evesham Township Education Association, said her members are scared about the possible staff cuts, but since last year they also have become active in school issues. "I've seen a huge upswing in people organizing and reaching out to their legislators," she said. Holly Zeitz, a lawyer and mother, felt too busy before to attend many district meetings. But between last year's cuts and the possibly closing of Evans, she is finding the time. "I think a lot of people are coming out and becoming more involved," Zeitz said. Mark Little, another parent, is one of them. "I'm part of that silent majority," he said. He went to work, paid his taxes and trusted district officials to run the school system. But since he heard that his children may be among those crossing the 45-m.p.h. road, he has been to meetings, talked to the superintendent, and requested to see the budget. "I think a lot of people are going to stand up and raise awareness of these issues solely for their children's sake," he said. |
New York Times ‘For Christie, Ailing Economy at Home May Test His Allure’
by Richard Pérez-Peña and David M. Halbfinger
In a year as governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie has captivated conservatives across the nation, with an in-your-face frankness and nonstop aggressiveness that few have seen from a chief executive.
Last week, his swaggering talk — about tackling the really big problems, taming unions and cutting a ballooning deficit without raising taxes — earned him a hero’s welcome in Washington, where journalists pressed him on his presidential aspirations.
But while it is clear that Mr. Christie, 48, a Republican, has already upended the status quo, putting powerful interest groups on the defensive, and all but having his way with a Democratic-controlled Legislature, the challenges of the coming year could cinch his reputation as a political superstar — or puncture it.
Without question, Mr. Christie, who is proposing his budget on Tuesday, has torn into the financial problems he faced with gusto. He has cut spending, limited taxes, forced government workers to give more and get less, and insisted on legislative reforms that could put the state on a firmer footing.
His biggest tests, indeed, are not likely to come from New Jersey’s public-sector unions, which appear almost cowed compared with their counterparts in Wisconsin, where labor protests have brought government skidding to a halt. Mr. Christie, after all, has invested energy in turning public opinion against those public-sector workers.
Yet his agenda of balancing the budget, rescuing a pension fund that could go broke within a decade and curtailing rising property taxes — the holy grail of politics in his heavily suburban state — is far from achieved. And he still could face the wrath of voters who discover that the costs of government have merely been shifted onto their local tax bills.
“People have heard the tough talk, but they haven’t felt the full effect of what he’s done,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “That may happen in the next year. And voters tell us that if their property taxes don’t go down, they will hold him responsible.”
In his first year, Governor Christie closed a yawning budget deficit that he estimated at almost $11 billion, though in part by skipping a $3 billion payment to the pension system. At $29.4 billion, spending is down more than $5 billion from its peak two years earlier.
In proposing his budget on Tuesday, the governor is expected to call for more cuts to close another huge deficit. With major union contracts set to expire in June, he is calling for a wage freeze, which polls show the public supports.
But the state will still be deeply in debt, and facing a growing shortfall in its pension fund — $54 billion and counting — that helped spur a downgrade of the state’s bonds.
Much of the effort to reduce benefits, shore up retiree funds and require workers to contribute more for their benefits began under Gov. Jon S. Corzine, the Democrat whom Mr. Christie ousted in 2009.
But comparisons with his predecessors make Mr. Christie look only more formidable.
From the moment he took over, Mr. Christie has flexed more of the muscle of New Jersey’s strong governorship, and with greater evident glee, than any recent occupant.
The state has a thick layer of unelected authorities, for example, with responsibilities like operating sports arenas and overseeing sewage. Governors can void their actions merely by vetoing the minutes of their meetings, something Mr. Christie did more often in his first four weeks than Mr. Corzine did in four years.
“It gained him a high degree of public trust,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “People figured, he’s watching our tax dollars.”
Mr. Christie’s office also took over contract talks with highway toll collectors, threatening to privatize their jobs, and he capped school superintendents’ salaries, forcing two out of three to take pay cuts.
When the teachers’ union resisted his demands for a wage freeze, he persuaded voters to defeat hundreds of school budgets. And he got nearly everything he wanted in the budget negotiations last year, making the deepest cuts in generations.
Those cuts included aid to schools, and many districts responded with higher property taxes. But the governor and the Legislature imposed a cap on property tax increases, which will pressure local officials to squeeze unions further, and they capped the salary increases public employees can win in arbitration.
Though Democrats control both houses, the Legislature has repeatedly given the governor some version of what he wanted, dismaying allies in organized labor. “He has created a political climate where he’s perceived as being such a winner that nobody wants to defy him,” Ms. Harrison said.
In a fortunate bit of timing for Mr. Christie, Stephen M. Sweeney, Democrat of Gloucester County, took over as president of the Senate; his predecessor was both more liberal and more antagonistic toward the governor.
Senator Sweeney is a union official himself, but from the construction industry, and he had long advocated rolling back the gains made by government workers, who had not given up as much as their private-sector brethren.
Last year, the governor and the Legislature quickly agreed on changes for new public employees: cutting pension benefits, requiring employee contributions to health coverage, excluding part-time workers from the pension system and capping lump-sum payouts of accrued sick leave when workers retire.
Now, Mr. Christie and Mr. Sweeney are each calling for similar cutbacks for current workers. In the past, such changes were enacted after being negotiated with the unions. Under Mr. Christie, the approach is the reverse: use the laws to constrain coming contract talks.
“What it really amounts to is doing away with collective bargaining,” said Hetty Rosenstein, state director of the Communications Workers, the largest state employee union. “It’s a pretty radical shift to gut public-sector labor unions.”
Mr. Christie’s record has not been unblemished. He botched an application for $400 million in federal education money at a time when he was cutting twice that amount.
And in December, Mr. Christie was at Disney World during a blizzard that paralyzed the state. He refused to apologize, saying he had kept in touch with the acting governor, Mr. Sweeney — but Mr. Sweeney said they never spoke.
Yet such gaffes have not transcended the state’s borders, while Mr. Christie’s YouTube rants against teachers and their union leaders have become widespread. Mr. Christie is less popular in New Jersey than with national Republicans: polls show that only about 50 percent of residents approve of his performance.
Where his poll numbers head now may depend on whether Mr. Christie can begin to show success in solving seemingly intractable problems like high property taxes before voters start to hold him responsible.
“When you cut billions of dollars from local government, you can’t turn around and say ‘It’s the mayor’s fault’ — you’re the one who did it,” Mr. Sweeney said. “In Chris Christie’s New Jersey, class sizes are going up, and crime is going through the roof in our inner cities. Eventually, people are going to realize, ‘I’m paying a lot more now, and I have a lot less.’ The people have not realized it yet. But he’s the governor, and the music’s going to stop.”
Njspotlight.com ‘Administration Argues That Federal Stimulus Has Helped Offset School Aid Cuts’
At Abbott v. Burke hearing, debate over last state budget may portend issues in next one
, February 22 in Education |Post a Comment
Gov. Chris Christie makes his case today for how he will fund New Jersey's public schools. Yesterday, the administration's lawyers made their case that last year's cuts were not as deep as decried. Indeed, they argued that budgets in urban districts could still be cut further.
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The setting was a near-empty courtroom in Hackensack, where fact-finding hearings continued -- even on a holiday Monday -- in the ongoing Abbott v. Burke school equity challenge that is before the state Supreme Court.
The administration has been challenged over its and the legislature’s $1 billion in state aid cuts to schools in 2010, which have led to thousands in layoffs and millions in program cuts this school year.
And in a timely argument to the governor’s budget address today, the state's lawyers laid out that the aid cuts, while painful, did not leave schools as decimated as claimed and that there was even room for further adjustments.
Christie has hinted that he would make some of those adjustments in this coming budget, openly saying that he wants to shift at least some of the preponderance of state aid going to urban districts to suburban ones.
State Deputy Attorney General Shannon Ryan yesterday presented through her final witness a variety of charts and statistics that helped build that argument.
For instance, one showed that many of the state’s neediest districts not only withstood the cuts this year, but even offset them through an infusion of federal aid and other sources.
Overall, the 31 so-called Abbott districts saw a 4 percent increase when factoring in federal stimulus money, other federal aid, and the use of their own fund balances, testified Kevin Dehmer, a data analyst with the state education department.
Still, Dehmer also testified to the depth of the state funding hole left by Christie's and the legislature's cuts. He presented a district-by-district breakdown of what would have happened if the state’s funding formula had been fully paid for. According to his analysis, that would have led to a $600 million increase in aid, instead of the $1 billion cut.
"So the reduction from the required level of funding was $1.6 billion, is that accurate?" pressed David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center (ELC), the Newark advocacy group leading the challenge.
The federal funds are a central piece of the state's case that Sciarra and the ELC will seek to counter in their coming arguments. A particular issue is $263 million in so-called EduJobs funds that New Jersey districts received last fall to help hire back lost staff and other personnel.
Since the money came in late, many districts banked it for this coming budget, a move encouraged at the time by the state’s acting commissioner, Rochelle Hendricks. But some superintendents and school board leaders have raised worries that the extra money will now be used against them to make up for further state aid cuts next year.
With the state closing its case yesterday, next up is the Education Law Center’s witnesses, starting on Wednesday with Superintendent Walter Whitaker of the Buena Regional schools in Atlantic County.
Sciarra said he expected his case would not take more than a three or four days. State Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, who is presiding over the hearings, said closing arguments could come as soon as early next week, after which he will issue a report to the state Supreme Court.
Star Ledger ‘Christie's budget address may kick off rocky stretch for Governor, Democrats’ Jarrett Renshaw/Statehouse Bureau
‘Chris Christie's budget address today will launch a tumultuous budget season in the state as lawmakers debate cuts to business taxes, re-tooled school aid and reformed pension and health benefits for public workers.’
TRENTON Gov. Chris Christie will unveil a state budget today, after months of saying he plans to cut business taxes, revamp school aid, reform pension and health benefits for public workers and bring back some property tax relief.
The governor, who also suggested cuts to Medicaid may be in the offing, will deliver his annual budget address this afternoon at the Statehouse. The talk will kick off what is expected to be a contentious budget season, following one that produced a controversial $29.4 billion spending plan last June.
Christie’s office refused to disclose any details of the budget in advance of the speech, rankling leading lawmakers who won’t be briefed until Tuesday morning.
"We’ve heard nothing from the administration. This is not a good start," said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester).
The 2 p.m. speech will be aired on the New Jersey Network and News 12 New Jersey. The Star-Ledger Statehouse Bureau will be live blogging the speech on nj.com.
Christie revealed his priorities in a series of town hall meetings and interviews the past six weeks. He said he would include tax cuts for businesses in the budget, and that his campaign vow to slice income taxes would come only after the economy improved. With revenues rebounding slightly, Christie also talked optimistically about beginning to restore taxpayer rebates he drastically cut last year.
Christie also promised to revamp how New Jersey funds its public schools. In the past several years, the state has spent about $10 billion annually on education, though Christie cut funding to local districts in the current fiscal year after federal stimulus money expired.
Those cuts prompted a court challenge now being examined by a special master appointed by the state Supreme Court. Senate Republicans are pushing Christie to send more money to suburban districts, and cut pre-school programs in the state’s poorest districts from full-day to half-day.
Christie has said there will be no increases to state aid to towns and cities even as many communities are trying to live under a 2 percent property tax growth cap without reductions in services.The governor told the state’s mayors his "tool kit" of reforms would help them cut costs and keep taxes in line, but only one major piece of his plan was approved by the Legislature.
Christie also pledged to make a contribution to New Jersey’s ailing pension system after skipping a $3 billion payment last year. A law the governor signed last year calls for paying at least one-seventh what actuaries say is needed, which would be in the $500 million range. The governor said any contribution this year would be far less than $3 billion.
Meanwhile, Christie wants to raise the retirement age for state workers, rework the formula to make pensions less lucrative and require state employees to contribute significantly more to their retirement fund. Democrats have their own reform plan, but both sides are far apart.
Christie and Sweeney (D-Gloucester) have public health benefit reform proposals that share much common ground, particularly in their calls for employees to kick in more for their coverage. Christie could factor savings from such reforms into his budget as he begins contract negotiations with state workers.
The governor also signaled the budget can’t sustain the current level of Medicaid funding, given the loss of about $800 million in federal stimulus dollars used to prop up the program last year during the economic downturn.
New Jersey is expected to spend about $4.4 billion during the fiscal year that ends June 30 to cover about 1.3 million of the state’s poorest residents. That includes millions for optional services like prescription medicines, vision and dental care that the governor could slice out of the budget.
He could also save money by reducing the number of people who are Medicaid-eligible, a move that would need the blessing of the federal government. The health care overhaul President Obama signed last year requires states to maintain coverage for their Medicaid-eligible populations.
Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Union) said today is the beginning of a long process. "It’s just a speech," he said. "I don’t suspect that every single line (of the budget) has been filled in."
Star-Ledger staff writers Matt Friedman and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
