Richard Bagger

After discussing the budget at a meeting with State Treasurer David Rousseau and two officials from the Office of Management and Budget, Gov.-Elect Christopher Christie said his reaction was a "rueful chuckle." 

And at a press conference today talking about that meeting, the faces of Christie and his two top budget advisors, Richard Bagger and Robert Grady - who were also present at the meeting -- were dour. 

That $8 billion structural deficit we've been talking about for 2011?  If things remain the way they are and infusions like the one that came from the federal stimulus for the 2010 budget are not repeated, the men said, that's "the low end of the range."  Moreover, the revenue projections for the 2010 budget, which were about $190 million short in the first quarter, are set to continue to come in below projections, while there are expected to be supplemental needs in agencies that will increase spending. 

"If you add together the fact that revenues are continuing to come in light and there are supplemental needs, it's clear that we will have a problem in Fiscal 2010 that will need to be addressed," said Grady to a room packed shoulder-to-shoulder with a few dozen reporters and cameramen. 

Christie and his advisors did not give details about how they planned to solve the problem, but said they will deliver a letter to Gov. Jon Corzine today about it and said they would undertake four steps:

Richard Bagger first showed a penchant for making a reasonable argument as an eighteen-year-old Princeton University sophomore when he testified before Assembly Judiciary Committee in support of legislation that would raise the age for carry-out alcohol sales while allowing the drinking age in bars and restaurants to remain at 18.  He argued that the compromise would at least stop teenagers from being able to buy large quantities of liquor that could be distributed to underage drinkers.  The sponsor of that bill was Chuck Hardwick, a freshman Assemblyman from Bagger's hometown, Westfield.  Twelve years later, Hardwick backed Bagger's bid to succeed him in the Legislature. 

Gov.-elect Christopher Christie announced today that the 49-year-old Bagger would serve as Co-Chairman of his transition task force on budget and tax issues.

Bagger became involved in politics at a young age, backing George H.W. Bush for President in 1980 and Thomas Kean for Governor in 1981.  At age 23, as a Rutgers law student, Bagger was elected Westfield Councilman.  He became Mayor six years later.  When he ran for Assemblyman in 1991, he just narrowly won the Union County GOP convention against Alan Augustine, a Union County Freeholder and former Scotch Plains Mayor.  Augustine joined Bagger in the Assembly a year later when he won a special election convention and they two became political allies.

After winning an Assembly seat, Bagger sought an ethics ruling about his position as an associate at McCarter & English, one of the state's largest and most prestigious law firms. Told that he might have a conflict because some of his firm's clients did business with the state, Bagger quit his job.  He spent some time as a lawyer at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey before joining Pfizer at the invitation of Hardwick, a top executive.

Former State Sen. Richard Bagger, who will head Gov.-elect Chris Christie's budget transition team, served as Assembly Appropriations Committee Chairman from 1998 to 2002

Two Democrats who served with former state Sen. Richard Bagger when he chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee hailed him as a wise choice to co-chair Gov.-elect Chris Christie's transition task force on budget and taxes.

"What an impressive and talented guy," state Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Metuchen), chair of the senate budget committee, said of the legislator turned top Pfizer executive who Christie today named to the transition post along with venture capitalist Robert Grady.

"When he left it was a great loss to the New Jersey Legislature," Buono added of Bagger. "We're lucky to have him back. It says something about Chris Christie that he wound find someone that both parties hold in very high regard. And he's a nice guy on top of that. A real gentleman."

Former Assemblyman Bill Payne (D-Newark), older brother of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Newark), also praised Bagger.

Gov.-elect Christopher Christie's first big move - putting Richard Bagger and Robert Grady in charge of the state budget transition team - is an impressive display of gravitas and seems to avoid some of the early mistakes made by his predecessor, Jon Corzine.  Bagger and Grady offer an interesting contrast to Bradley Abelow and Gary Rose, two Goldman Sachs executives with no government or campaign experience, who were brought in by Corzine to run his economic shop. Christie has picked government insiders-turned-private sector outsiders who understand politics.  Democrats complained about Abelow and Rose all the time, but never about Bagger.

Bagger, who spent nearly a dozen years in the Legislature, knows his way around the state budget; he chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee for four years, and was well-liked and respected by legislators from both parties.  He left the State Senate in after one year to move up within the Pfizer corporate structure, so he bears no responsibility for budgets passed by Democratic governors.  He also understands local government; he was a Mayor and Councilman in Westfield before his election to the Assembly.

Grady is an expert on budget matters; he was the Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President George H.W. Bush, and understands New Jersey politics - and the media - from his years as Gov. Thomas Kean's Communications Director and as Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Millicent Fenwick.  He returns to New Jersey after spending more than fifteen years as a partner at the Carlyle Group, one of the nation's largest private equity firms.

Former State Sen. Richard Bagger (R-Westfield), left, and former OMB official Robert Grady, will head Gov.-elect Chris Christie's budget transition team

Former State Sen. Richard Bagger and former Kean aide Robert Grady will chair Gov.-elect Christopher Christie's transition task force on budget and taxes.

Bagger, a top Pfizer executive, chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee for four years.  Grady, a millionaire venture capitalist who retired in June from his post as Chairman of Carlyle Venture Partners, served as Communications Director under Kean, and as Executive Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Bush.  He also served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Millicent Fenwick.  He also spent ten years as a professor at the Stanford University Business School. 

The Task Force Co-Chairmen will help develop recommendations to address the fiscal deficit that state experts have estimated at over $8 billion for the coming fiscal year 2011, and to respond to the shortfall in projected state revenues in the current fiscal year 2010, according to a statement released by Christie's transition office.

Frustrated by over a decade of failing to win a single seat on the freeholder board, Union County Republicans are circulating a petition that would allow county residents to vote on whether they want to change the way freeholders are elected. 

Union County Republican Chairman Phil Morin said last month that he would like to see at least a few of the county's nine freeholder seats change from being elected at large to a district-based system.  That way, the county's suburban, traditionally Republican leaning towns would not be drowned out by larger Democratic cities in the eastern end of the county.  Morin, however, asserted that it is about geographic representation, not partisanship, and that there are Democrats supporting the effort as well. 

"Many large areas of the county go completely unrepresented.  Creating a district-based system would provide a fairer distribution," he said.  ‘I think people will recognize that the freeholder board is essentially appointees of Club Charlotte [DeFillippo] and that all the residents of Union County would be best served by having equal representation throughout the county."

Walter Long, the former mayor of historically Republican Summit, brought up the idea of secession starting in the 1990s, after Republicans went from having a majority on the freeholder board to having no members, and in 2002, the town's council commissioned a study that toyed with the idea because, they argued, they were getting a tiny proportion of county services compared to what they were paying in taxes.

Eric Munoz, M.D. (1947-2009)

There will be no announcements regarding the scheduling of a special election convention until after Assemblyman Eric Munoz's funeral on Friday, but Republican leaders in the 21st district were busy yesterday talking politics and considering options for the upcoming Assembly race.  The early speculation is that there are two contenders for the Assembly seat: former Summit Council President Kelly Hatfield and Phil Morin, the Union County GOP Chairman and a former Mayor of Cranford.  Hatfield appears to be locking up some key endorsements in a campaign that won't officially begin until Friday, but Morin may have the backing of Nancy Munoz, the wife of the late Assemblyman.

Assemblyman Eric Munoz (R-Summit) passed away on Monday at the age of 61.

Eric Munoz first went to the Legislature in 2001 amidst a game of political musical chairs in the old 21st district, which was about equally divided between Essex and Union counties.  The six -term State Senator, Republican Louis Bassano, resigned to take a job at the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.  The district had already been chopped up, with Bassano's home town, Union, being placed in the heavily-Democratic 20th district, where Raymond Lesniak was the Senator.

Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole won a special election for Bassano's State Senate seat, knowing that he would return to the Assembly eight months later.  His hometown, Cedar Grove, had already been redistricted into District 40, which was represented in the Senate by Henry "Tapioca" McNamara. 

Munoz defeated former Cranford Mayor Thomas Denny in a special election convention to fill O'Toole's Assembly seat.  At this point, four incumbent Assemblymen lived in the new 21st district: Richard Bagger, Thomas Kean, Jr. (who had won a special election convention earlier that year after Alan Augustine died in office), and Joel Weingarten, an Essex County Republican who had beaten Kean and Michael Ferguson to win the Union County GOP Convention in his 2000 campaign for Congress.  Bagger was unopposed for the GOP State Senate nomination; the incumbent, Senate President and Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco, was not running for the Legislature.

Republicans, who have not won a Freeholder race in Camden, Gloucester, Mercer, Middlesex and Union counties since the 1990's, missed an opportunity to change the playing field when they failed to act on a proposal to create district Freeholder seats in those five counties. 

In 2000, then-Assemblyman Richard Bagger (R-Westfield) introduced legislation that would require those Democratic-controlled counties to move from electing At-Large Freeholders to an all-district format beginning in 2001.  At the time, New Jersey had a GOP Governor and Republicans controlled both houses of the Legislature.

Bagger's bill was carefully crafted to include three restrictions: it applied only to the state's nine counties classified as second class, and to those that either had more than seven Freeholders or seven Freeholders and a geographical area of between 200 and 400 square miles. Union County was the only second-class county with nine Freeholders.  Republican-controlled Burlington County, with five Freeholders, was not included in the bill, nor was GOP-dominated Morris and Somerset. 

Passaic County, which is 192 square miles, was left off the Bagger bill at the urging of then-Republican County Chairman Peter Murphy, who opposed the District Freeholder Plan even though Republicans had lost Freeholder races in 1997, 1998 and 2000.  Any reasonable carving up of Passaic would have given Democrats three solid seats in Paterson and Passaic, and control of the Board of Freeholders might have rested with a Clifton-based seat.  Murphy, prior to his criminal conviction, believed he could put his winning machine back together and wasn't willing to look at a best case scenario of a 4-3 Republican majority.