The Ciattarelli Plan?

Doubling Down on Past Republican Economic Failure

TRENTON, NJ — In an interview yesterday with the New Jersey Globe, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli bizarrely called for the State of New Jersey to skip its 2020 payment into the state pension system. Ciattarelli is doubling down on the disastrous financial management of the Christie era that led to eleven credit rating downgrades when the state habitually failed to meet its pension obligations.

“New Jersey is still digging out of the hole created by the failed economic policies of the Christie era, and instead of learning from those past mistakes Jack Ciattarelli wants to embrace them again and dig the hole even deeper,” said NJDSC Vice Chair Peg Schaffer. “Failing to make the state’s pension payment hurts every New Jersey taxpayer — it destabilizes our entire financial picture, risks more credit rating downgrades and higher debt service costs and grows the unfunded pension liability that the state has worked so hard in recent years to shrink. Threatening the benefits of people who work hard and pay into the system shows Ciattarelli learned a lot from Christie’s playbook but nothing about protecting the middle class. Ciattarelli’s profoundly wrongheaded approach to managing New Jersey’s finances, both as a candidate and a member of the legislature, makes it clear to everyone that he has no new answers — just the failed Christie policies he so eagerly supported as a state legislator.”

Two of New Jersey’s most prominent labor leaders are also speaking out against Ciattarelli’s plan:

“In the private sector, if you don’t make the required pension payment, they put you in jail,” Communications Workers of America NJ President Hetty Rosenstein said. “I hear Jack Ciattarelli says the State should forgo low-interest borrowing and instead not pay for the public pension plan yet again. It is the height of dishonesty to act as if this isn’t borrowing. Of course, it is — and in this case it is borrowing from previously borrowed money. That money, when not paid, costs over 7% interest a year and grows exponentially. The borrowing that the Governor is doing is much, much less costly — and its fairly paid for by the entire state, not by a small group of retirees and future retirees who have always paid their own way, and have done nothing wrong other than devote their careers to public service.”

“Governor Murphy understands that in order to get out of our pension hole, you need to stop digging,” said New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech.  “Governor Murphy is the first governor since Jim Florio to pay what is owed to the pension system each and every year according to the law. He is doing the hard work that other governors avoided by kicking the can down the road, which created the pension mess Murphy is now working so diligently to clean up. Leave it to Jack Ciattarelli to kick the can down the road by urging New Jersey to return to the failed budgetary maneuvers of the past. That is not leadership, it’s the easy way out typical of irresponsible political candidates saying anything to get elected.”

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