EDITORIAL
The Packet Group
Like hard-core addicts who finally seek outside intervention because they can’t stop themselves from doing what they know is wrong, the New Jersey Legislature may soon be asking voters to help cure its regrettable habit of shortchanging the state pension system.
The Legislature’s compulsive behavior which has particularly harmful consequences for police, firefighters, teachers and other public employees has been evident for some time now. It has, until recently, been abetted by a succession of governors, who have simply looked the other way or, worse, given lawmakers the fiscal fix they needed to continue their irresponsible ways for more than a decade.
Since the early 1990s, the state has been making inadequate annual contributions to its pension funds. In some years, governors and lawmakers used smoke and mirrors to make contributions that existed only on paper. In others, they resorted to one-time gimmicks. And in still others, they simply skipped making any payments at all.
This record of irresponsibility is now producing a snowball effect, threatening to bury the state beneath a blizzard of debt. The shortfall in public employee retirement funds has doubled in the past two years. It is growing by roughly a billion dollars every two months. The treasury now holds $25 billion less than what is necessary to cover retirement benefits already promised to public employees.
The Legislature knows all this. Its members know they have a responsibility to make the retirement system solvent. They know they have an obligation, to both current and future retirees, to whittle away the shortfall in those retirement accounts, and make adequate annual payments into the system thereafter.
But, like the addict who can’t kick the habit, the Legislature fears it can’t change its reckless behavior on its own. Some lawmakers are thus calling for an amendment to the state constitution that would require them to fully fund the pension system every year.
"The state has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar far too many times," explained Sen. Shirley Turner, the Lawrence Township Democrat whose district is home to thousands of state workers, "and it’s time we crack down on irresponsible budget gimmicks."
No responsible New Jersey resident would disagree with Sen. Turner’s description of the problem. But few reasonable observers would agree with her conclusion that the solution is a constitutional requirement that the Legislature do what it is already supposed to do by law produce a balanced state budget, including adequate appropriations to finance its future pension obligations.
Instead of resorting to a constitutional amendment, it seems to us legislators should have the constitutional fortitude to keep their hands out of the cookie jar. As retiring Hudson County Democrat Bernard Kenny, the Senate majority leader and chairman of its budget committee, put it: "What we’re elected for is to take responsibility for budgetary matters. This is a significant budgetary matter, and the Legislature can’t abdicate its responsibilities."
Gov. Jon Corzine took a significant step in this year’s budget, and had proposed similar action in next year’s, to start closing the gap in the state’s pension accounts. The Legislature doesn’t need a pound of constitutional cure to join in this effort. All it really needs is an ounce of political will.

