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CHRISTIE TO ANNOUNCE 33-BILL "TOOL KIT" OF GOVERNMENT REFORMS

MY CENTRAL JERSEY.COM - May 9, 2010 - Gov. Chris Christie plans to unveil a 33-bill package making up his long-anticipated "tool kit' of systemic government reforms that are intended to reduce government spending and, in theory, tame property taxes.

According to administration briefing details obtained Saturday by Gannett New Jersey, the legislative package contains a mix of ideas that Christie rolled out in his March budget proposal and a host of new wrinkles. Christie's overall plan is also expected to include changes that can be achieved through executive orders or other adjustments within administrative agencies.

The memo also hints at other changes that may be examined further by state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff and other Cabinet members, such as cutting cost-of-living adjustments to pensions, having public employees pay more toward their pensions and health care, raising the retirement age to 65, making current employees contribute toward their health care when they're retired, eliminating all state-run health plans and closing the traditional pension plan for new hires.

The package is anchored by a proposed constitutional amendment that lowers the allowable increase in the property tax levy by counties, municipalities and schools to no more than 2.5 percent a year, as Christie first proposed in March.

The current cap is 4 percent but has more than a dozen exceptions, while Christie will propose an exclusion only for debt service payments. Caps would also be adjusted to allow for increases in local ratables. The proposal -- dubbed "Cap
2.5" -- would also cap spending growth for state government operations at 2.5 percent, excluding direct property tax relief and state aid to schools and towns.

Civil service protections would be abolished for local employees laid off due to shared service agreements, and municipalities would get more power to furlough workers without triggering civil service protections such as bumping rights and seniority. Classified employees at higher-education institutions would be shifted out of civil service into colleges' personnel systems. Counties and towns would be able to opt out of the civil-service system by an ordinance of the governing body or through a petition by 15 percent of voters.

Christie will also propose:

• Capping pay to current public employees upon their retirement for unused sick leave at $15,000. This would affect future accrual only, as state law prevents changes affecting compensation for their past service.

• Permitting local government and school district employees to carry forward vacation leave for one year only. This, too, would affect future accrual only.

• Requiring executive county superintendents of schools to implement the sharing of school business functions across districts and municipal governments.

• Making officers and employees of groups and associations ineligible to be enrolled in state pension systems. This would include the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, the New Jersey Association of Counties, the New Jersey School
Boards Association, insurance groups or joint insurance funds serving counties, county colleges, municipalities and school districts, as well as corporations that manage local special improvement districts.

* Barring union officers or employees on an approved leave of absence from their regular duties from enrolling in or remaining in any state pension systems. This would affect at least nine groups representing public employees, from the
American Association of University Professors and other education unions, Communications Workers of America locals, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and others.

* Allowing more groups to bring challenges to the Council on Local Mandates, as recommended by the Red Tape Review Commission chaired by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. Organizations representing local governments or local government officials, such as New Jersey State League of Municipalities, would be eligible.

• Enabling public colleges and universities to create a probationary period for faculty members.

• Putting individual state colleges and universities in charge of negotiating collective bargaining contracts, rather the the state Office of Employee Relations in the Governor's Office.

• Having a computer randomly assign fact-finders prequalified by the Public Employment Relations Commission, rather than have the parties mutually select one.

• Requiring those fact-finders to take into account local taxpayers' ability to afford a compensation package when making their decisions. In the case of higher-education employees, they would have to consider cuts in state aid, the impact on tuition and benefits available to other state employees.

The package also includes other changes Christie disclosed in his March address to the Legislaure, such as moving school and fire elections to November and allowing school districts to impose their "last best offer" when contract talks with the local union reach an impasse that can't be resolved. The latter was eliminated under a 2003 state law.

Under Cap 2.5, local governments would need voters' permission in a June or November public question to raise taxes by more than 2.5 percent. Government units that raise property taxes less than 2.5 percent -- or in the case of the state, increase spending by less than 2.5 percent -- could bank the remainder, carry it forward and use it in a future year.

As he said in March, Christie will also propose banning contract awards struck through collective bargaining by municipalities and school boards from increasing compensation for salary and benefits by more than 2.5 percent. This would also apply to school superintendents, whose contracts could be vetoed by executive county superintendents — as could those of local unions if they don't require a minimum five hours of pupil contact for teachers per day and a minimum number of work days.

Beyond those proposals, aides to Christie are also urging the governor to solicit recommendations from Cabinet officers on sweeping changes to pensions and health care that would affect current public workers.

Reducing or eliminating cost-of-living adjustments for future and current retirees would save the state's pension system nearly $12 billion and increasing employee contributions to the pension system by 1 percent would generate $7 billion over 15 years, according to the briefing details.

The briefing details suggest the state should consider making current employees pay toward their post-retirement health benefits, which are currently fully paid for by the state. It also suggests that existing services be scaled back or state-run health plans eliminated.

One idea being considered is to shift to a system like the federal one, in which employees pay 25 percent of the cost of their premium. Christie — familiar with that program after nearly seven years as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey — talked about the concept as a candidate. Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said in a February interview that the idea had been discussed with him.

The administration is also considering whether to raise the 4 percent interest currently set by law for all loans taken by public employees against their pensions, which are then generally repaid through payroll deductions. Hundreds of thousands of loans are taken every year — and because the pension system assumes an annual rate of return on its investments of 8.25 percent, the lost earnings potential has been estimated at more than $45 million a year.

A special committee established in the 2006 legislative session on property taxes recommended changing the interest rate on pension loans to the prime rate minus 1 percent, with the state also allowed to levy an administrative fee for such loans. The proposal has not been enacted.

GOV. CHRISTIE TO PROPOSE PERMANENT CAPS ON SALARY RAISES FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES

NJ.COM - May 8, 2010 - Gov. Chris Christie will propose a permanent 2.5 percent limit on annual raises for public workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, and will allow towns to discard civil service rules governing employee hiring and firing.

The 33-bill package of legislation marks the Republican governor’s most audacious move yet against the state’s public employee unions since it strikes at the heart of time-honored-practices — the power to bargain for substantial raises for workers and the assurance they are covered by civil service protections. At the same time, the administration argues, those curbs on union power would give towns, school boards and public colleges new leverage to control costs.

And the changes, described in administration briefing details and draft legislation obtained by The Star-Ledger, could pave the way for more radical steps. Christie will also direct top administration officials to study reforms including raising the retirement age to 65 from 62, increasing employee contributions to their health benefits and pensions, keeping new hires out of the state pension system, and cutting back cost-of-living increases for the pensions of current and future retirees.

"People in New Jersey now feel as if there have become two classes of people in New Jersey: Public employees who receive rich benefits, and those who pay for them," Christie said in a recent speech to mayors. "We collectively have to do something about it."

Union leaders today criticized the proposals as a power grab by a governor who disrespects organized labor, and doubted the changes would save the state much money.

"It looks like an illegal attack on the constitutional rights of public employees disguised as reform," said Carla Katz, a former labor leader who is now an attorney representing the state Firemen’s Mutual Benevolent Association and several other public worker unions.

The legislation to be introduced includes:

• A constitutional 2.5 percent cap on the annual increases in municipal, school and county property tax levies. The only exceptions would be for debt service payments, or if local residents vote to override the cap.

• A 2.5 percent limit on the annual increases of employee contracts — including wages, health benefits, vacation time and other perks — for all local workers including police, firefighters and teachers. That would include contract awards made through the binding arbitration process for police and firefighters. School boards also could invoke a "last, best offer" if negotiations with a local teachers union reached an impasse.

• Allowing towns to opt-out of the civil service system through an ordinance or a petition by 15 percent of the voters. Civil service protections — including "bumping," when newer employees lose their jobs before their more senior colleagues — also would not apply to furloughed employees or those laid off because of shared services agreements.

• Limiting the amount of unused sick leave that current employees can cash out at $15,000, and only allowing them to carry over unused vacation time for one year. That mirrors changes Christie signed in March for future hires, although current workers who have already accumulated more than $15,000 could still keep it.

• Making union leaders on an extended leave of absence from their normal job duties, as well as employees of advocacy groups like the state League of Municipalities and New Jersey School Boards Association, ineligible to enroll in the state pension system.

• Moving school board elections from April to November.

Christie says the changes will give local governments the "tools" to hold down New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes even as they cope with his proposed cuts in state aid. Christie’s $29.3 billion budget would slice aid to school districts by $820 million and to towns by $446 million.

The salary, benefit and collective bargaining changes, long sought by towns and school boards, represent "a big piece of the puzzle" of providing property tax relief, said William Dressel, executive director of the League of Municipalities.

"That is unprecedented, and that is huge, given the fiscal realities of the day," Dressel said.

The suggested changes will have to be approved by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Democrats have said recently they support the concept of a "tool kit" for local governments but disagree with some of Christie’s ideas.

"We’re going to work with him. We’re going to provide him a tool kit, as he says, for these communities," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said last week. "It’s not necessarily going to be exactly what he says."

Sweeney said he favors civil service reform and arbitration reform, but believes the constitutional 2.5 percent property tax cap goes too far. He said closing some loopholes in the current 4 percent cap would continue a trajectory that brought average annual increases to 3.3 percent in 2009, from the 7 percent range several years ago. And wealthier towns would be more likely to vote to exceed the limit when they demand more services, he said. "Communities that have money override the cap. The middle class and the poor don’t. So the divide between the two becomes greater," Sweeney said.

Union leaders said allowing towns to opt-out of civil service would open the system to more hiring decisions based on patronage.

"Layoffs will be entirely based upon an effort to throw out your political opponent and put in your political friend," said Hetty Rosenstein, area director for the Communications Workers of America, the largest state workers union. "In municipal government, or county government, every single layoff will be subject to political patronage and corruption."

CARBON MONOXIDE DEATHS INCREASING NATIONWIDE

EMS RESPONDER.COM - January 1, 2010 - Carbon monoxide poisonings are on the rise nationwide, and portable generators and faulty home heating systems are the main culprits, according to a new government report.

Carbon monoxide deaths have increased in the past decade, according to a report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

About 180 deaths were reported in 2006, the most recent data available. Only about 120 deaths were reported in 1999.

The Oklahoma City Fire Department was dispatched to more calls of carbon monoxide poisoning in 2009 than in the previous year, said Battalion Chief Brian Stanaland.

Firefighters responded to 34 reports of carbon monoxide poisoning in 2008 and 40 in 2009, he said.

Carbon monoxide blocks oxygen from the bloodstream, Stanaland said. The poisonous gas can be deadly.

About 40 percent of all carbon monoxide deaths can be attributed to portable generators, according to the safety commission report. About 35 percent were from heating systems.

Stanaland said other sources include fireplaces, ovens, stoves, water heaters and vehicles.

"Any time anything burns, it's going to release carbon monoxide," he said.

Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and tasteless, Stanaland said. He recommends residents consider buying a carbon monoxide detector. They operate like a smoke detector.

Generators should only be used outside, he said. Home heating systems need regular, professional checkups. Pull a vehicle out of the garage before letting it sit to warm up in the cold winter months.

NIOSH RESPIRATOR APPROVALS TO BE REVOKED

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is issuing this notice to inform respirator users that Global Secure Safety Products., Inc. is no longer producing NIOSH- approved respirators or replacement parts and is not planning to resume production in the future. Global Secure Safety Products, Inc. stopped production of respirators in April 2008 and has ceased doing business.

Global Secure Safety Products, Inc. (formerly CairnsAir Inc. or Neoterik) Respirators will be listed on CEL as Obsolete and Certificates of Approval will be Revoked

NIOSH will revoke the approvals of these respirators on December 31, 2009. Revoked status means that the respirators in question will no longer be listed as NIOSH-approved respirators. Once revoked, respirators bearing these approval numbers may no longer be manufactured, assembled, sold, or distributed as NIOSH-approved respirators. Furthermore, they may not be used where NIOSH-approved respirators are required regardless of the current state of maintenance.

PFANJ - NJFOP FILE PENSION PROTECTION ACTION IN STATE SUPERIOR COURT

President Canzanella with NJ Fraternal Order of Police President Edward R. Brannigan announcing the filing of legal action in State Superior Court seeking the full funding of employer pension obligations.

PFANJ - On Tuesday, October 4, 2005, the Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey partnered with the New Jersey State Fraternal Order of Police in the implementation of a lawsuit filed in Superior Court of the State of New Jersey calling into the question the legality of continued underfunding of the Police and Firemen's Retirement System. PFANJ President Tom Canzanella joined NJFOP President Ed Brannigan at a midday news conference conducted at the State House in Trenton for the formal announcement. Below is an excerpt from the press briefing.

The Police and Firemen's Retirement System of New Jersey (PFRS) held a surplus of approximately $938,000,000 in FY2000 drawing down to a deficit of approximately $3,574,000,000 for FY2004. This $4.5 billion dollar deterioration is largely the result of legislation (S-2586 of 2003) that permitted municipal employers of law enforcement officers and firefighters to defer and discount employer required contributions to the PFRS, in association with the State of New Jersey's own failure to make required contributions.

During this same time frame, police officers and firefighters continued to make their own statutorily required contributions totaling 8.5% of their base annual salaries, one, if not the highest public safety employee pension contribution rate in the Nation.

The State of New Jersey and its municipalities were first relieved of their obligations to make employer required contributions in 1997, when legislation was enacted that revised the method of accounting and valuing plan assets. Under this new and more creative method of accounting, the value of PFRS assets was purposely and substantially increased, resulting in intended excess or more accurately, inflated assets.

Accordingly, the State and its municipalities used those enhanced assets as a manner in which to relieve themselves of their obligation to match employee contributions for the purpose of tax relief. Despite the "free ride" afforded to both the State and municipalities, police officers and firefighters remained obligated, and so did they continue, to contribute 8.5% of their base annual salaries for which they have neither sought nor been granted any similar relief.

In 2003, with those self-created inflated assets running dry, despite facing a growing PFRS deficit, and in order to provide continued budgetary relief to municipalities who had by their own admission made no provisions whatsoever to resume employer contributions, the State Treasurer proposed, and the Legislature adopted, an initiative (S-2586) permitting municipalities to pay only a discounted fraction of their required pension contributions.

Adding insult to injury, despite the fact that the foregoing legislation in no way extended the State a like ability to skip or discount badly needed pension contributions, they did so nonetheless, paying only a fraction of their required obligation. Again, and to this day as we go forward, police officers and their firefighter counterparts remain obligated to contribute 8.5% of their base annual salaries serving as the sole and sustaining guaranteed plan income.

As a result of the aforementioned legislation, and in association with the States non-legislated failure to required contributions, the PFRS funding ratio, which indicates the financial soundness of the plan, has fallen from 105.65 % for FY2000, to 100.85% for FY2001, to 95.82% for FY2002, to 88.45% for FY2003 and to 83.95% for FY2004.

Enactment of the 2003 legislation, in association with the State's failure to make their own proper contributions absent legal legislative authority, deprives the PFRS of the funds necessary to maintain it on a sound actuarial reserve basis. An undeniable consequence of this failed scheme is the alarmingly significant reduction in plan earnings from investments and interest that would have been derived from skipped and substandard contributions. The foregoing serving to jeopardize the financial soundness of the plan and its ability to make good on earned benefits as they come due in the future. In that regard, the complete and total lack of prudent fiscal judgment demonstrated by the strategy articulated in S-2586, relying upon the exclusive use of employee contributions to either sustain or accordingly grow the plan, that resulted in the type of significant funding losses sustained over the last several years represents an abdication of fiduciary responsibilities in its purest form.

The complaint seeks to declare the 2003 legislation (S-2586) unconstitutional, to end any conflict of interest that would allow the State Treasurer to determine type and variety of contributions aside from statutory law, and to direct defendants to make regular full payments to the PFRS for FY2004, FY2005, and beyond, in accordance with fiscally responsible actuarial calculations.

The plaintiffs, Professional Firefighters Association of New Jersey, I.A.F.F.-AFL-CIO, and the New Jersey State Fraternal Order of Police, along with representative active and retired members and widows of members of these two unions who have been affected by this failure to adequately fund the plan, are represented by the law firm of Greenberg, Dauber, Epstein & Tucker of Newark.

The PFANJ/IAFF and NJFOP represent the majority of career professional firefighters and law enforcement officers throughout the State of New Jersey and this Nation.

Named as defendants in this action are the State of New Jersey, John McCormac-Treasurer, the New Jersey State Senate and General Assembly.