For months, Gov. Chris Christie has told audiences that his historic pension overhaul helped save taxpayers millions and turned around a system in financial free-fall. But a far more sober assessment of the future of the pension system is emerging in bond documents and administration estimates released last week, signaling that New Jersey taxpayers have not escaped the ballooning pension costs that the reform measures promised to control.
While an overhaul that suspends retirees’ cost-of-living increases and requires public workers to pay more for pensions brought an immediate financial boost, the pension system will again lose ground because the state still isn’t chipping in enough money — and won’t until at least 2018 — the administration recently told Wall Street.
The result: By 2018, state taxpayers will begin paying more than $5 billion a year for pensions, roughly 10 times higher than the partial payment being made in this year’s budget. The tab for local taxpayers will rise by about $600 million by 2020, estimates show.
Experts say taxpayers could be hit with much higher pension bills if the state doesn’t pay what it promises — or if it doesn’t make as much as the 8.25 percent it expects to earn each year on investments. More in Star Ledger.
Thank the unions for all of this.
So the cops and firemen are paying more into their pensions and the state still isnt going to be able to make their contributions. Guess the state will still find a reason to blame it on them again.
No.1
First of all stop blaming people that do work in this state. for starters you may want to blame Christine Todd Whitman for stealing from the pension system. second this pension system is not any different then a retirement 401k that other company’s offer their employees.
private sector babies commence crying…now
Hey #3 You started out so good with your comment, but their pension is nothing like a 401k plan. In a 401k plan if you invest bad you could loose all your money, with the pension it is a guaranteed amount of income no matter what the economy does.
Yes bu that’s what the incentive to work for the state. The base salary is nothing compared to private sector jobs. So when you choose a job you have to look at the pros and cons.
This situation goes all the way bAck to Christie WHitman and the governors that followed her, now the state took the pension monies, and WHAT HAPPENED TPO THOSE MONIES, SOME OF IT WAS USED OR BORROWED TO USE FOR OTHER THINGS AND not paid back, THE STATE OF NJ, IS A SHAM,
HE STATE ASKS FOR TEACHERS, FIREFIGHTERS, POLICEMEN ETC, TO PAY MORE OF THE SHARED EXPENSE, AND now they still cannot mett thier obligations