Remember all the headlines when Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer accused Gov. Christie of holding back Sandy relief for her hard-hit town until she agreed to a political favor? An AP review found Hoboken’s share of the aid was “similar to what other towns got.”
Meanwhile, there’s a real scandal in Jersey for anyone who cares to see. And this scandal implicates every politician in Trenton: The Bruce Springsteen state ranks dead last in terms of financial stability.
The ranking comes courtesy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which used 2012 data to evaluate each state on its ability to meet its financial obligations using four indicators: cash, budget, long-run and service-level solvency.
One huge reason for Jersey’s fix is, as the report recognizes, “15 years of underfunding its state and local pensions.” The report puts this at $25.6 billion, with another $59.3 billion in underfunding for health-care for retired government workers.
Gov. Christie has addressed some of the problem with a 2011 pension overhaul that required more contributions from government workers — but he rightly says the state has much, much more to do to turn things around. Yet when it comes to fixing these problems, mostly what we hear from Trenton is . . . crickets.
We take two broad lessons from the report’s findings.
First, Jersey is on an unsustainable path.
Second, its lawmakers don’t seem to care.
So if the legislature is looking for Jersey outrages to investigate, this would be great place to start. Except that they’d all have to implicate themselves.