these cracks have been appearing for years, anyone remember Detroit?
Is the judge’s pension on the chopping block?
Michael Moore size cracks.
Actually Jersey’s public pension system is not “open-ended” - it is funded at set levels of payback as in effect delayed compensation through contributions made by state-workers and supposedly by the state - up until about twenty years ago the system was one hundred percent funded by these set levels until Governor Christie Todd Whitman - a Republican - “borrowed” a billion or so dollars from the fund to cover shortfalls in other areas of government, especially her pet environmental projects - governors since then have not only continued to “borrow’ funding, but have failed in many cases to make the state’s payments into the fund as required by law - a couple of issues probably not addressed in the article (I didn;t read the whole thing) are that Christie’s proposal is to turn the pension system over to the unions to run (and we all know how trustworthy unions have been with pension money in other venues) and his proposal will require the public to approve by vote a constitutional amendment allowing the move because as of now the Jersey constitution requires the state to provide the pension - the Jersey pension system is on shaky ground, but more so because politicians have been siphoning money out of the fund and refusing to pay into it as required by law (although a judge only a few days ago ordered Christie to pay 1.5 billion dollars which he was refusing to do) than because of the rapaciousness of the state workers......
Pennsylvania is at the tipping point also, allowing overtime to be counted for retirement. This is an issue that is not going away. It will eventually destroy th pension system.
Scott Walker started this trend in Milwaukee 10 years ago. And he cut his own salary as County Executive in HALF as an example.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.