Christie Overstates Pension Accord With Union, Sweeney Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-04/christie-overstates-pension-accord-to-win-votes-sweeney-says

By Elise Young

(Bloomberg) -- Governor Chris Christie, who has vilified leaders of New Jersey’s biggest teachers’ union as “political thugs,” is overstating a new alliance with educators to boost his national standing, said Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Christie said in a budget speech last month that he’d reached an “unprecedented accord” with the New Jersey Education Association on a “road map” for controlling pension costs. The union says only the rough framework for a deal has been worked out. No other labor groups were part of those talks.

Fourteen unions -- including the teachers’ -- are preparing a lawsuit over Christie’s third straight year of reduced payments to a pension system with an $83 billion unfunded liability. The governor’s strategy of including only the educators in pension talks may backfire, Sweeney said.

“Announcing this road map and basically burning the teachers publicly creates an atmosphere that makes it harder,” Sweeney, the highest-ranking Democrat in the state legislature, said in an interview on Wednesday in his office.

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