NJ Education Report

It starts here:

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” said pragmatist Herbert Stein, and the New Jersey public employee pension system appears to have hit that wall. Last week the bipartisan Pension and Health Benefits Study Commission declared that “the situation is not only getting worse, but is also fast approaching the point at which it will be beyond remedy.” 

So what’s the cure for a pension system that Mark Magyar describes on this website as a “fiscal basket case?” 

It’s the “Roadmap to Resolution” that was “jointly drafted” by the fiscal experts that make up New Jersey’s Study Commission and, apparently, leaders of New Jersey Education Association, whose members have the most to lose. This mind-meld is memorialized in a document signed by commission members Thomas Healey and Raymond Chambers, and NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer and Executive Director Edward Richardson. Gov. Chris Christie made this “unprecedented accord” the keystone of his budget speech last Tuesday. 

Now the NJEA is in a bind and the front office is popping out retractions like candy through a Pez dispenser. This makes its leadership look weak. But the NJEA can turn this around by taking a page from its own playbook.

Read the rest here.