CASAGRANDE & O’SCANLON WANT VOTERS TO SAY WHETHER STATE SHOULD STOP IGNORING ITS BILLS

NEW JERSEY HAS ONE OF THE NATION’S HIGHEST TABS FOR UNFUNDED LIABILITIES BECAUSE GOVERNOR CORZINE SKIPPED REQUIRED PAYMENTS

    New Jersey owes its current and retired workers $55.9 billion worth of health benefits – a figure that increased by $5.3 billion in fiscal year 2008 because of Governor Corzine’s decision to neglect the state’s pension and health benefit obligations, according to a Bloomberg report.

    Combined with $23 billion worth of unfunded pension liability, New Jersey is on the hook for $79 billion in unfunded retirement benefits, which is one of the highest totals in the nation and part of the reason Moody’s Investors Service recently downgraded the state’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

    Assembly members Caroline Casagrande and Declan O’Scanlon, both R-Monmouth and Mercer, said today that the report is further proof why voters should be allowed to decide whether to change the state Constitution to require all levels of government to make full actuarially-sound payments to retirement systems and prohibit early-retirement incentives that would create an unfunded liability.

    “For years, Governor Corzine and legislative leaders have created a ticking time bomb by ignoring the state’s mounting problems for political expediency,” Casagrande said. “We must give taxpayers the chance to begin reclaiming their future by forbidding elected leaders from acting with reckless disregard for future generations by shirking the state’s bills, which despite their foolish hopes, will not suddenly disappear.”

    Casagrande and O’Scanlon sponsor legislation, ACR-204, that would put a Constitutional amendment before voters, but that too has been ignored by Democratic leaders since it was introduced in December.

    “We did not pull this out of thin air – it was one of several common sense solutions that came out of the Legislature’s special property tax session three years ago,” O’Scanlon said. “Legislators from both parties supported the idea and Governor Corzine said he did too until he pulled the plug on benefits reform saying he could handle it himself in negotiations. Three years later, our obligation continues to rise. We must tie the hands of elected leaders who are more interested in drumming up political support from the public employee unions than serving the taxpayers who must pay for their mistakes.”