By Samantha Marcus, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
EAST BRUNSWICK — Senate President Stephen Sweeney defended his proposal to constitutionally mandate billions of dollars in public-sector pension contributions on Friday from a Republican budget officer who argued that without union concessions New Jersey would go bust.
The debate at the Public Employment Conference, hosted by the state bar, was a replay of the debate in the Legislature last session and a telegraph of disagreements to come as the summer deadline for putting constitutional amendments on the ballot approaches.
Support for the amendment, which requires the state to gradually increase its annual payments into the public retirement fund, has fallen on traditional partisan lines. Democrats say the state must pay now or pay more later, while Republicans’ opposition is rooted in protecting taxpayers from severe spending cuts or tax hikes if the state economy is too sluggish to generate the cash to make the payments.
Democrats have enough votes to put the question on the November ballot without any Republican support. The Democratic-controlled Legislature needs only to approve the measure with a simple majority in back-to-back sessions.
The constitutional amendment would create a guarantee public workers thought they had secured under a 2011 pension reform law that committed the state to incrementally paying more over seven years until it was making the full contribution recommended by actuaries. But Christie went back on that promise when the state ran into revenue problems, and the state Supreme Court ruled in June that he didn’t have to make the payments.
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