Governor Christie continues his misguided practices and attempts to push further reform on the men and woman on the front lines of defense for NJ. He recently issued an Executive order and added another Trenton commission to provide a detailed study and recommendations on pensions. NJ currently has individual boards and an investment council for every pension system. Governor Christie, again, neglects the interests of NJ and continues to add bureaucratic red tape and waste taxpayer monies. Here are some facts he doesn’t want you to know about the Police and Fire retirement system:
1. The Police and Fire pension system is sustainable, healthy, and our members contribute the most of all the systems.
2. We don’t need more actuarial studies, we need the monies being put in the fund to stay in the fund. Actuaries have been manipulated over the years and standard practices have been argued and challenged time and time again. I can put a panel of experts together and come up with a different plan for the system.
3. The 2011 pension reform raised our contributions from 8.5% of salary to 10% of salary. Those added funds by Firefighters and Police equated to over 50 million dollars. Those monies were removed from the pension system by the Christie administration. That is criminal! We have lobbied the legislature to close this loophole, the bill (A 3310) which was passed with bi-partisan support in the Assembly and Senate sits in Governor Christie’s “pay no mind stack of papers” on his desk.
4. Governor Christie refuses to meet with the men and woman who rely or will rely on this system. It is in our best interest, not only as pensioners but as taxpayers, to preserve this system.
5. Most municipalities do not contribute to Social Security on behalf of Firefighters and Police officers. That was a standard implemented decades ago, which is a huge savings to taxpayers and a huge loss of a benefit to Firefighters and Police Officers.
6. Governor Christie was the one who traveled across the country promoting and publicizing his landmark pension reform. His reform failed and will continue to fail if you allow it to be underfunded and raided. We lived up to our end of his deal, he has not. He talks about “no pain no gain” our members have endured the pain and continue to.
While Governor Christie continues to make hollywood videos and travels around the country promoting his national agenda, NJ firefighters continue to stand tall and always ready to respond for our residents in need.
NJ IS STRONGER THAN CHRIS CHRISTIE
Eddie Donnelly
NJFMBA