Back in N.J., Christie resumes pension debate

SPARTA, N.J. - Between forays to the presidential testing grounds of New Hampshire, Gov. Christie on Thursday picked up his New Jersey pension battle where he left it off, debating a retired teacher at a town-hall-style meeting.

The Republican governor, who argues that the state can no longer afford its public-worker pension system without changes, presented what he said were the only options for fully funding it: large hikes in the sales tax or in the income tax for every New Jerseyan.

While the state's top elected Democrat is backing a tax increase on income over $1 million to help fund the pension system, "you cannot get it from just taxing rich people," Christie told several hundred people at a school gymnasium in Sussex County. "They're going to tax you."

Mark Worobetz, 59, a retired high school science teacher from Sparta, questioned why the state could not find $3.1 billion - the pension payment required by a 2011 law Christie signed to shore up the long-underfunded system - within the $33.8 billion budget proposed for the year beginning July 1. Christie's plan includes a $1.3 billion pension payment.

This month, the state Supreme Court heard the Christie administration's appeal of a court's ruling against Christie's decision to cut the pension payment in the current fiscal year from the $2.25 billion mandated by the 2011 law to $681 million.

Advocating for a "shared sacrifice," Worobetz told Christie that workers were "paying more and getting less," having lost cost-of-living increases in their benefits as part of the pension changes passed during Christie's first term.

"Are you serious?" Christie said. "You're telling me that's a sacrifice, that you don't get an increase in your pension every year?"

"It was once a benefit that was taken away," Worobetz said.

Christie said workers "are still not paying anywhere near what they should be paying."

He said the state budget had no extra money for the pension system, pointing to public school funding levels mandated by the state Supreme Court and the costs of Medicaid. And he pushed back on Worobetz's mention of tax credits for "corporations" and "some of the rich," saying that taxes on the wealthy had increased since 2001 and that tax credits were phased in over a period of years.

"If you want shared sacrifice, then have health benefits that everybody else has," Christie said, referring to his push to reduce worker health benefits and use the savings to pay down the pension system's unfunded liability.

Christie also went back and forth with Worobetz over his veto of a bill that would have required the state to make quarterly payments into the pension system, rather than an annual payment at the end of each fiscal year.

"If you don't have the money, what difference is it if you don't have the money in every quarter?" Christie said.

Worobetz drew a comparison to waiting until the end of the year to pay his property taxes and then saying, "Well, I don't have enough money."

He got applause. So did Christie when he said: "Here's the difference. . . . If I don't have the money, it's not because I didn't work hard. It's because I didn't take it from all of you."

With a possible Christie presidential candidacy on the horizon, the meeting also touched on national topics, including immigration.

"I call it an invasion," one woman told Christie, later asking: "What will you do to save our country?"

Christie repeated the answer he's been giving in New Hampshire: Building a wall across the southern border would be expensive and inefficient. And people in the country illegally are not going to self-deport, and there aren't enough law enforcement officers to make them leave, he said.

"We need to have an adult conversation," he said.

He also discussed his signing of a law letting undocumented immigrants pay in-state tuition rates at New Jersey colleges and universities. Noting that the state already pays for those students to attend K-12 schools, Christie called the law "an economic decision."

If students the state is already paying to educate "want to improve themselves," Christie said, "why should we make it more difficult for them?"

While many in the gymnasium appeared to support him, at one point a man stood and asked Christie to resign, referring to corruption and "cronies."

Christie said he would refer the man's complaints to law enforcement. As for the "kind invitation" to resign, he said, "I'll decline, respectfully."