Republican Senate Leader Tom Kean responded to a Star-Ledger report that said Governor Corzine hastily negotiated furlough concessions with public employee unions to avoid having Vice President Joseph Biden cancel an appearance at the official “kickoff” of the governor’s re-election campaign yesterday.
“It’s unbelievable that Governor Corzine weakened a plan he is counting on to help rescue the state from insolvency because a speaker might not come to his campaign rally,” Senator Kean said.
“It’s one thing to make concessions to win long-term benefits for New Jersey. It’s quite another to do so to avoid one day of bad publicity. Taxpayers should be told today how much this purely self-serving political move will cost them.”
Star-Ledger reporters Josh Margolin and Claire Heininger wrote that the White House was “concerned” that Biden would be attending a rally while union members protested outside or tried to disrupt the event. President Barrack Obama’s White House was concerned that such a protest might diminish Biden’s reputation as a pro-labor Democrat, the Star-Ledger said. Among the concessions, the report said, was an agreement to give public employees “bankable” future personal days in exchange for accepting 10 furlough days in 2009 and 2010. The governor needs to explain what bankable days are and how they will be paid for, Senator Kean said.
“It sounds as if the governor is continuing his pattern of pushing costs into the future to balance the budget,” Kean said. “The governor plans to push billions of dollars of debt payments, pension contributions and education expenses on to future generations. Now he apparently wants to push the cost of furloughs on to future taxpayers. No legislator should vote to approve this budget until the governor provides a full accounting of how much today’s bad decisions will ultimately cost the taxpayer.”
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