WyBlog

Jon Corzine sticks it to the taxpayers again

Yesterday while still catching up on my backlog of newspapers I was treated to this wonderful little gem about how Jon Corzine is blocking even modest public employee pension reform.

Corzine promised to sign this legislation in exchange for lawmakers support of his new state budget. Now he has reneged on that promise on the most specious of grounds. Joyce Powell, the head of the powerful New Jersey Education Association teachers' union, asked him to postpone signing the law because she had no way of notifying her members about its provisions while they were on summer vacation. It's the twenty-first century Ms. Powell; perhaps you can spend some time during your November convention teaching your members how to use some newfangled gadgets like telephones, voice mail, and email. I assume they already know how to use the US Postal Service (an entrenched bureaucracy that featherbed-for-featherbed would give the NJEA a run for its money).

Corzine ridiculed criticisms of his delay by saying that any potential cost savings are "de minimus". Maybe to him the estimated $1.42 million this delay will cost the state this year is chump change but to the hardwarking taxpayers of New Jersey every little bit helps. But suppose that $1.42 million in budget savings is indeed "de minimus". That's more than half of what Corzine cut from rural state police patrol payments, a cut he defended as necessary because he's watching every dime. It's twice what he cut from State funding for the Battleship New Jersey Foundation, an institution that arguably provides much more than "de minimus" educational benefits to our children.

No, we can see right through Governor Corzine's protestations. He will always do whatever the public employee unions want him to do. Hopefully Ms. Powell, unlike Carla Katz before her, did not have to sleep with the governor in order to get this preferential treatment for her unions' members.

So long as Jon Corzine is Governor of New Jersey, government of the unions, by the unions, and for the unions will not perish from this earth.

Posted at 11:15 by Chris Wysocki   [/rants]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |   |   Tweet