in trouble yes, but you can bet in NJ when

Nassau OTB tells you to get lost and take your cash elsewhere.


NJ is also working to bail itself out via sports betting. 

New Jersey’s Pension Plan Is Said to Be in Trouble Despite Overhaul by Christie

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: December 13, 2012

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New Jersey’s financial problems are so severe that even Gov. Chris Christie’s signature pension overhaul, in which he cut back benefits as union members marched and booed, might not be enough to pull the state out of its hole, a panel of fiscal experts said on Thursday.

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Mel Evans/Associated Press

Gov. Chris Christie battled union members in 2011 for changes that shrank the pension system’s shortfall by 30 percent.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, a bipartisan panel, wrote in its latest report that Mr. Christie’s pension effort had slowed but not stopped the runaway growth in the cost of New Jersey’s promises to retired public workers. Officials of both parties had shortchanged the pension coffers for so many years before Mr. Christie’s initiative that it will prove extremely difficult to catch up now without diverting money away from other essential state programs, like education and infrastructure, the panel said.

This year, the state contributed $1 billion toward pension costs, but by 2018, it will have to come up with about $5.5 billion a year — roughly 40 percent of what it now spends on public education. There is no apparent source of that much money in the state’s $31 billion annual budget.

“The growth in pension requirements, plus the ever-increasing cost for current and retiree health benefits will crowd out other budgetary needs,” said the task force, a project led by the former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A. Volcker, and the former New York lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch.

They led a discussion of their findings in Trenton, along with Richard F. Keevey of the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration, the primary author of the report.

Mr. Volcker and Mr. Ravitch formed the task force out of a concern that the fiscal debate in Washington was overlooking parallel fiscal problems at the state level, and that the coming measures to shore up the federal government’s finances were likely to make the states’ troubles worse. Federal proposals to raise the Medicare age to 67 would blow back onto the states, for example, because many have promised to cover retiree health care in the years before Medicare kicks in.

The task force has been analyzing the finances of a sample of six states, one by one. Besides pension and health care, the report said, New Jersey’s budget was dominated by the costs of public education and Medicaid, which were growing faster than the state’s revenue.

A spokesman for Mr. Christie, Michael Drewniak, said that after a decade of leaders compounding the state’s pension problems “by failing to make tough choices, it’s no surprise that challenges remain to get New Jersey firmly onto the path of fiscal sustainability. Had the governor not led and accomplished these reforms, the challenges before us would be insurmountable.”

The state’s pension overhaul, carried out in 2011, propelled Mr. Christie into the national spotlight, giving him the image of a no-holds-barred champion of his state’s beleaguered taxpayers.

“I was not sent here to pose and preen, ladies and gentlemen, I was sent here to govern,” Mr. Christie said in a town-hall meeting in June 2011, where protesters were removed by the police. He said the pension cuts, and their bipartisan support in the State House, should serve as a lesson for Congress.

Public employee unions sued, saying the pension cuts were illegal. A district court dismissed their case, but they have appealed to the state’s Superior Court.

A state judge also sued, citing constitutional language protecting judges’ compensation. The state’s Supreme Court ruled in the judge’s favor, but lawmakers then amended the State Constitution, making the pension changes applicable to judges, too. The amendment was overwhelmingly approved by voters in the November election.

The overhaul included raising to 65 the retirement age for public workers hired since July 2011, making all public workers pay a larger contribution toward their retirement benefits, and suspending the promise to give retirees automatic cost-of-living adjustments.

The changes immediately shrank the system’s reported shortfall by 30 percent, to a gap of $26 billion from about $37 billion. But the system remains in precarious condition.

The overhaul was designed with something called a “ramp,” which gave New Jersey lawmakers seven years to go from their previous neglect of the system to adequate appropriations every year. The ramp made it easy for the state to comply with the new pension law in the beginning, but as the annual cash outlays rise in the next few years, it will become more and more difficult, the task force warned. 

HI-

Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.

Claude Solnik

(631) 913-4244

Long Island Business News

2150 Smithtown Ave.

Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348 

Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays

Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.