Gov. Chris Christie says the state Legislature shouldn't try to play Santa Claus with the $29.7 billion state budget. Democrats retort that doesn't mean the governor has to play Scrooge.
Christie's series of line-item vetoes hit social programs and aid for low- and middle-income communities the hardest. They even included orphans-and-widows items, such as a treatment center for abused kids.
The Democratic legislative leaders, just days after being effusively praised by Christie, a Republican, for their bipartisan cooperation in passing pension and benefit reform, were outraged.
"We're not talking about political hacks here. We're not talking about pork spending. We're not talking about special interests. We're talking about abused children," Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver of Essex County said in a statement about the treatment center cut.
State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said it would be much harder to work with Christie in the future. He pointed particularly at the $46.5 million taken from Tuition Aid Grants, a college-aid program for students from low-income families. The cut was more than double the $21.3 million Democrats had added to the program.
"This is the most disappointing day I've had as a legislator," Sweeney said in a news conference. "To prove a point, (Christie) had decided to hurt people. When you see the TAG cut, that shows where he's headed."
Partisan budget dustups are de rigueur in Trenton, but this year's line-item vetoes by Christie were interpreted as a reaction to Democrats or others, such as the state Supreme Court, with whom Christie has battled.
Cuts included:
$537,000 from the Wynona M. Lipman Child Advocacy Center in Newark for abused children. A cut of some $10 million from Legal Services, which provides attorneys for low-income people after Democrats had added $5 million to the program. He also cut $200,000 from a Seton Hall law program for the poor.
$139 million from transitional aid to municipalities such as Asbury Park, Harrison, Jersey City and Chesilhurst. The action leaves only $10 million for such aid, even though some $13 million has been awarded, including $10.4 million to Asbury Park. Some of the cities will receive some $450 million more in school aid because of a state Supreme Court order in May.
A Christie spokesman early last week complained that Democrats had removed funding for a watchdog to keep tabs on the program. "Could it be to allow waste, fraud and abuse to return, allowing Democratically controlled cities to hire political hacks?" asked spokesman Michael Drewniak.
Christie had taken umbrage at many of the Democratic maneuvers, such as Democrats' estimating a $300 million savings from employee benefit reform, even though the savings from the reforms eventually approved were far less than Christie had proposed.
"It was to pay back their base and embarrass me," Christie said in a press conference Thursday where he explained his vetoes. "Now they'll play the old politics of this building. They still don't get me. I don't care. This is the right thing."
Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said that Christie's line-item vetoes smacked of tit-for-tat politics.
"This was Chris Christie saying, "if you want to play games, game on,' " Murray said in an interview. "There were things cut from this budget that did not even affect the bottom line. He did exact some revenge."
Murray said he thought that, overall, Christie was unhappy that Democrats passed an income tax surcharge on millionaires that would have raised some $600 million and corresponding legislation that would have sent $500 million to suburban school districts.
Put in the position of having to veto a tax that would have sent money back to Republican areas, Christie likely reacted, Murray said.
"It will make it difficult to work with (Democrats) again going forward. This will snowball."
Not that Christie got all he wanted. The governor's moves to limit the senior citizen property tax relief program and the Family Care health insurance program were eliminated by the Democrats. Christie's proposed changes to Medicaid resulted in a line-by-line tussle as Christie edited language in the budget over how those changes can be implemented.
