Chris Christie's signature law called unconstitutional in court ... by Christie administration
Daily Kos
Chris Christie's signature law called unconstitutional in court ... by Christie administration
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration is in court arguing that Christie should be able to violate the public employee pension law he pushed for and signed in his first term in office. According to the law, "members of the public-pension systems shall have a contractual right to the annual required contribution amount." That shouldn't have been groundbreaking, but it would have been—had Christie followed it—since the previous nine governors, Democrats included, had shorted the state's contribution to the pension fund even as workers put in their share every year.
Christie's signature pension law required workers to pay still more toward pensions and eliminated cost of living adjustments, but the claim was that in exchange for that, the state would start making its full contribution. Instead, it didn't take long for Christie to start shorting the pension fund.
In court on Wednesday, New Jersey Assistant Attorney General Jean Reilly argued that use of the word “contractual” didn’t guarantee a binding contract because the New Jersey state constitution didn’t allow that. In response, Justice Barry T. Albin asked why, if the Christie administration believed the state constitution prevented such contractual obligations, it signed into law a bill containing them.
“The language is not aspirational,” Albin said. “The language is saying this is a contract.”
But Justice Jaynee LaVecchia suggested to attorney Steve Weissman, who represented public employees, that the state needs to maintain enough flexibility to adjust to changing financial circumstances. “You are still arguing for this law to require every legislature for I don’t know how long to put a certain specified amount … in the budget for every single year,” she said.
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/07/1383126/-Chris-Christie-s-signature-law-called-unconstitutional-in-court-by-Christie-administration?detail=email
