by Gabe Donio

You’ve read a lot lately about Governor Jon Corzine’s toll plan.
This column won’t be about that plan.
This week, the topic is the ultimate problem that has created the need for the toll plan’s existence.
Shortly before the governor’s February 7 “town hall meeting” at Atlantic Cape Community College, reporters were gathered around a small table in a dance classroom area just to the side of the large auditorium. Outside our little room, people filed in, uniformed officers screened them as they passed through metal detectors and protesters beat drums and chanted.
Inside, the governor answered questions. The last one from the reporters came from me, and the rest of this column will put you at the table with us.
Donio: How do you balance the needs of the public employees against the needs of the general public, the majority of the public who live in New Jersey? They are two seemingly conflicting constituencies at this point, as we are going to see somewhat I’m sure tonight. How in your mind do you balance the needs of the one group, and the pensions and benefits, and balance the needs of the residents? There is some overlap as well, I’m sure.
Corzine: One thing that we don’t appreciate is our pension liabilities and our health care liabilities are not just about public employees. They’re about teachers and public employees. Two-thirds of our responsibility – we’re about one of 10 states that have the highest share –we pay the pensions, have the pension responsibility and most of the retirement and medical responsibility of the teachers, which is two-thirds of our burden. So, everyone wants to pick on public employees, when the fact is – and I’m not picking on teachers, I’m just saying that somebody decided in the 1980s that would be a great way to provide property tax relief. We don’t negotiate their salaries. We don’t know what their pensions will be, because their salaries are negotiated at the local level. We don’t tell them when they have to retire. We have virtually no clue.
So what’s the tradeoff? I would bet if you went back 10 years, public employees were paid less than private employees were today. They negotiated lower salaries then for better benefits today. Now, today is today. Salaries improved, but the contracts were written at a different time. And a lot of those people who retired didn’t get the benefit of the higher salaries. They got the benefit of the tradeoff between benefits in 1975, in 1985. The obligations were generated then.
You know, I always say my mother’s a 92-year-old retired schoolteacher. And she’s going to do fine. I’ll make sure she does. But you know, going back and carving out her paying more for her health care or diminishing her pension, you know, would be a pretty crude tool. I don’t think it’s moral. They were not getting paid what doctors, lawyers other people were getting paid at those times. Or auto workers. A lot of people. So, it’s a different deal.
We have changed the rules. I’m the first governor in 25 years that took away from future employees – they have to pay one-and-a-half percent of their salaries for health care costs. We increased the retirement age from 55 to 60, after the legislature – it was a Republican governor and a Republican legislature – lowered it from 60 to 55, a nine percent increase in 2000 and 2001.
Donio: But is it a struggle to balance one against the other, is what I’m saying. The needs of the many and the needs of the few?
Corzine: It isn’t a struggle, but you can’t create too great a revolution. We’ve made a lot of progress. But it’s not – we’re not done. There’ll be a new contract. We went from an indemnity program for fee for service insurance product for public employees and teachers to a PPO. You know, an HMO. We finally got them where everybody else is. Not that it’s . . . all I can say is that we are trying to do changes on the micro level as well as the macro level.

That was the final answer, to the final question.
The reporters’ roundtable with the governor ended, Corzine rose, shook hands with all of us, and went outside to face the crowd.
The hope here is that Governor Corzine continues to think about the word “balance” as it’s applied to the dynamic between the state employees and the rest of the people who live in this state.
New Jersey needs that balance now – and the secret to the survival of the state and the political future of Jon Corzine may lie in his ability to fairly balance the needs of his public employees against the needs of rest of the state’s residents.
 

Gabe Donio is the publisher of The Gazette.