N.J. lawmakers trade jabs at budget hearing

TRENTON - Gov. Christie has been boasting about closing an $11 billion budget gap without raising taxes, but what he really has done is avoided making payments for things such as public employee pensions and property-tax rebates, Democratic lawmakers said at a hearing Thursday.

Republicans retorted that the hearing itself was a political show and said lawmakers should focus their energies on solving state problems rather than seeking to score political points.

The arguments came at an Assembly Budget Committee meeting to discuss the structural deficit for fiscal 2012. The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services recently estimated it to be $10.5 billion. OLS defines the structural deficit as the difference between the cost of paying all the state's statutory obligations and continuing all other state programs at the current or normal service level and revenues from existing sources.

Last year, when OLS estimated a structural deficit of $8 billion, Christie, then running against Gov. Jon S. Corzine, called for the incumbent to drop out of the race.

"You know what he should do? He should stand up today . . . and say out of shame, 'I'm not going to seek reelection,' " Christie said at a campaign event, according to an account in the Newark Star-Ledger.

Christie is vacationing with his family, but spokesman Michael Drewniak called the hearing a "midsummer partisan dog-and-pony show" and said that committee Chairman Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden) "again failed to take any responsibility whatsoever for his and Gov. Corzine's failed stewardship over ballooning spending and tax increases, which brought us to where we are today."

"Today's hearing - in which Assemblyman Greenwald professes concern about deficits - comes from the same legislative leader who sponsored a bill last week that would have added $100 million in spending without any funding source or budget cuts," Drewniak said. "New Jersey taxpayers want this budget mess that Gov. Christie inherited fixed. They've had enough, and they've had enough of inaction, failed leadership, and politically motivated show hearings."

Greenwald said the governor had added to the state's fiscal problems, rather than solving the structural deficit.