By Samantha Marcus, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
TRENTON — The state Assembly took its final step Monday toward placing a referendum on the fall ballot asking voters to commit to spending billions of dollars to repair the public worker pension system.
With the governor cut out of the ballot question process, it is now up to the Democratic-controlled Senate to see the referendum onto this fall’s general election ballot.
The Assembly approved the measure 50-25 with two absentions. Both houses approved the referendum last year, and need to do it again this year to get it on the November ballot.
The proposed constitutional amendment (ACR109) would put an end to two decades or erratic funding and replace the governor and Legislature’s broken promise to fully fund the system with a constitutional one.
The amendment would put the deeply underfunded government worker pension system on a path toward more solid footing, but it would also fence off a big pot of money Gov. Chris Christie has used to hedge against hard times.
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