Flashback Nov. 2010: Veteran cop takes on Christie, draws raves

http://www.cliffviewpilot.com/public-safety/1839-small-town-cop-takes-on-christie-draws-raves

Police statewide are hailing a veteran cop in a North Jersey town who is fed up with “the current climate of public employee bashing” and challenges Gov. Christie to “do the right thing” with taxpayer-funded pensions.

(snip)

“Long before I became a police officer, the state of New Jersey enacted a law which required police officers and firemen to contribute a certain percentage of their salary into the state’s ‘secure’ pension fund,” the 22-year veteran explains. As a result, he says, followed the law throughout his career, paying 8.5 percent of his salary every period into the Police and Fire Pension System.

(snip)

State law originally required municipalities to match that 8.5 percent, he notes. So when Christine Todd Whitman become governor, the fund was flush, at more than $100 billion. Pension costs for police and firefighters "were funded at 104 percent, well into the future," which he says "was a prudent and financially responsible plan that worked" because it "provided security for the families of these men and woman who risked their lives every day serving and protecting the citizens of New Jersey.”

Whitman, he says, proceeded to “raid that fund,” drawing down from it “indiscriminately” to pay for tax cuts and to balance the state budget, which gave “the false appearance that all was fiscally sound under her watch.”

(snip)

State lawmakers let municipalities pay back the money in 20-percent annual increments. But Gov. Christopher Christie, after inheriting a fiscal crisis, “has chosen a similar route , but one with a more vilifying tone,” the officer writes. “He has again found the same victim: Your public employees.”

(end snip)

Raiding the workers' funds to cover their shortcomings.