Christie scoops out pension fund as pal double dipper Joe D looks on
By Brian Donohue/The Star-Ledger
on May 21, 2014
You won’t believe what I saw at the press conference where Gov. Chris Christie announced he was skipping $2.43 billion in payments to the state’s teetering pension system yesterday: an elephant.
No, this isn’t another dopey joke about the governor’s weight (which you’ll never catch me making, by the way). But there was, to revert to a cliche, an elephant in the room, standing in a dark suit behind a row of television cameras: Democratic Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo.
Joe D is perhaps the highest profile face for the one of the most infuriating problems plaguing New Jersey’s pension system - double dipping politicians and their cronies - it is Joe D. Under a loophole in the state pension laws, DiVincenzo was able to retire from his job in 2010 and begin collecting his $5,700 a month pension - while still working in the same job. Incredible.
DiVincenzo, largely because of his considerable political power and cross-party bro hug alliance with Christie, has become the poster boy for double dipping. Only at the statehouse, where hypocrisy is served up like Pork Roll at the local diner, could he walk into a press conference highlighting the state’s pension crisis and not even raise an eyebrow. (Watch the video of my post press conference chat with Joe D above).
To be fair, Joe D is far from alone.
The state legislature is full of double dippers. Sheriffs do it. Retired state troopers do it.
The stellar reporting by the blog New Jersey Watchdog found Christie himself has hired 19 double dippers, including the guy who’s job it is to sort out the state’s deepening financial mess: Louis Goetting, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, who makes $140,000 in salary plus $88,860 in pension as a retired state employee.
In reality, it’s hard to say whether closing the loopholes would have a huge effect on the financial stability of the pension system.
But ending double dipping would certainly eliminate a chief talking point of the unions who have opposed pension reform, giving lawmakers more leverage when they ask for concessions.
And, frankly, it would make them look less like scoundrels with zero credibility - if that’s something they even care about.
See, in all the debate over pension reform, the state has ignored the central precept: pensions are for people who are no longer working.
Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth) has introduced a bill that would codify that bit of common sense. But it’s been stuck since 2011 in the Senate’s State Government Committee - a panel chaired by a double dipper himself, Sen. Jim Whelan, D-Northfield, who annually collects a $35,160 state pension, $71,564 as a full-time Atlantic City school teacher and $49,000 as a legislator, according to NJ Watchdog.
And so Joe D and the others continues to rake it in. I don’t blame him or any of the other double dippers personally. The practice is legal and I’d probably do the same thing in their shoes.
But the politicians who have let this happen should be embarrassed. Or at least sensitive enough not to show up at a press conference at which teachers and lower paid public employees are learning their pension fund is being plundered yet again.
When I turned and saw Joe D standing behind the row of video cameras a brief hysterical fantasy came over me.
Yes, for a moment I thought Joe D was there as a prop for an announcement by Christie that he was declaring war on double dipping and other pension abuses. Perhaps, I thought for a millisecond, he’s going to get up and say he’s going to stop taking pension payments and wait until he’s actually retired and call for others to join him in making a sacrifice for the greater good.
No luck. It seems DiVincenzo had only showed up early for a meeting with the governor and Newark mayor-elect Ras Baraka and had decided to peek into the presser to see if the county was facing any funding cuts due to the state budget gap.
But there was Christie at the podium, announcing the pension money will be used instead to fill an unexpected budget gap. He hinted at an upcoming push for further pension reforms. We'll have to wait and see whether that includes going after the elephants in suits and ties.
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