president remarked. “I think this will actually put us in the posi-
tion of showing what happens when people take leadership. Po-
lice and fire have shown more responsibility in the management
and in not taking the easy road.”
A time to bill
Amid the optimism and enthusiasm, whispers somewhat in-
filtrated the State House on both Feb. 1 and Feb. 5. Some of those
might have been inspired by Senator Declan O’Scanlon, a Re-
publican who represents the 13th District in Monmouth County
and was the lone dissenting vote at the Budget Committee hear-
ing. Some have come from League of Municipality contentions
that the pension bill will hit the towns and taxpayers hard. Some
have been the result of postings in the digital world.
The whispers also seem to suggest that the bill will allow the
public safety unions to stick their snouts in the trough. Nixon at-
tributes some of the whispers to the fact that “people in Trenton
are so conditioned to a bill of this magnitude having an ulterior
motive.”
President Colligan would like to address the whispers:
“My frustration is with a lot of the bad information that is out
there,” he charged. “A lot of websites that report to be experts are
putting information out there that hurts the cause. Under this
bill, I can’t gain anything. I can’t even take a piece of candy. We
wrote that in.”
A more substantive discussion has been raised about how
municipalities and counties will have to pony up additional dol-
lars with the passage of the bill. That’s not the bill’s fault.
“When they say they are paying, it’s because they skipped
years of pension payments, so it’s not a genuine argument,”
Senator Sweeney reminded. “There was a pension holiday for
the towns and the counties, and because they skipped their pay-
ments, their funding went down. It went down with the state
managing the pension fund, not because of the police and fire.”
License to bill
So that leads to the question of whether the bill that transfers
management of PFRS to a Board of Trustees of PFRS will pass
and be signed into law.
Senate President Sweeney said the bill should be included in
the next voting session, scheduled for Feb. 26. The next voting
session in the Assembly is scheduled for March 26, but the sena-
tor said, “I’m expecting to get it done and get it on the governor’s
desk. And I’m expecting Governor Murphy to sign it.”
That’s the consensus. With his sound fiscal management
background from his 23-year career at multinational finance
company Goldman Sachs, as well as serving as finance chair-
man for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-to-late
2000s, the governor would seem to have the necessary acumen
to see how the bill makes sense.
“He has proven he knows a thing or two about how to make
money,” Nixon quipped.
As far as the Assembly, the PBA plans to continue to meet
with Speaker Craig Coughlin to work on getting the bill vetted in
committee and bringing it to the voting phase. And then there
are high hopes if and when it goes to the governor.
“We have a governor we have spent a lot of time with and an-
swered all of his questions and concerns,” Donnelly confirmed.
Added Colligan: “We had a strong commitment from him be-
fore he was elected, and we certainly hope he sticks to his com-
mitment.”
This is, of course, New Jersey politics, and anything can hap-
pen. So Senator Kean advises to maintain the position of con-
tinuing to work with legislators.
“You still have some miles to go,” he submitted. “So keep on
pushing.” d
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