Trenton – New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech today released the following statement on the administration’s mid-year reworking of actuarial assumptions regarding public employee pensions. That reworking is allowing the administration to cancel $94 million from the current budget’s pension payment, and $150 million in the upcoming FY15 budget.
“The governor has abandoned his reforms to the pension system with a mid-year reworking of the actuarial formula to fit his proposed budget. This threatens to prolong and deepen our crisis. This dangerous scheme may allow the administration to skip $244 million in pension payments this and next year, but it will also undo our progress and blow open the unfunded liability in the long run. For pension reform to work, we can’t be changing the rules mid-game.”