New Jersey Senate to vote on budget veto overrides

TRENTON - The Senate will meet at 10 a.m. Monday to begin voting on overriding some of Gov. Christie's line-item vetoes in the budget passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, though Democrats do not have the two-thirds majority needed to reverse the governor's actions.

Republican support for the overrides appears unlikely.

"Our chances are slim," Majority Leader Barbara Buono (D., Middlesex) acknowledged on Thursday.

But, she said, "Monday will be a day of reckoning, because our Republican colleagues have an opportunity to make a choice. And to me the choice is very simple: You either stand with the working men and women of New Jersey . . . or you stand with the governor's politics of retribution."

Christie, a Republican, and GOP legislators contend that the budget Democrats sponsored relied on revenues that the state doesn't have.

The governor cut more than $900 million from the Democrats' budget last week, paring it down to $29.7 billion. He vetoed another $400 million in education spending that Democrats wanted to fund through a higher income tax on millionaires.

The attempt to override the governor's vetoes is the latest act in a budget drama that observers have said has been unusual for the lack of negotiation between the Legislature and the executive office.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas H. Kean Jr. (R., Union) blamed Democrats for that, saying in a statement Thursday, "We would not be here if the majority had chosen to negotiate a balanced budget with the governor and legislative Republicans rather than use the budget process to make a political statement."

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester) declined to list the cuts the Senate will seek to override. They are expected to include cuts to an AIDS drug distribution program, legal services for the poor, aid to struggling cities such as Camden, and funding for abused children.

"This ain't politics," Sweeney said. "This is personal. [Christie] hurt people who were vulnerable."

He said the Senate would hold two or three voting sessions to try to override the governor's vetoes. To take effect, those measures, if successful in the Senate, would then have to pass the Assembly, where, too, Democrats lack a veto-proof majority.

Sweeney said that every Democrat in his chamber was on board, but that he had yet to talk to Republicans.

Republicans and Democrats alike would be affected by a reduction in legislative staff members' salaries that the governor made using his veto power. But Sweeney brushed off questions over whether he would seek to undo that cut, which was not present in Christie's original spending plan.

"That's the last of my concerns," he said.