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Gov. Chris Christie Monday conditionally vetoed legislation related to wages and benefits for public school teachers in an effort to provide bring about changes to, as he described it, encourage shared sacrifice through labor agreement concessions.

The governor’s recommended changes to address what he sees as overly broad, problematic provisions in the law which he believes could actually deter school districts and local unions from engaging in wage and benefit concessions.

Under the conditional veto, the bill (S-1940) would provide what Christie sees as needed clarity to ensure that school districts and unions have a basis that would encourage them to participate in effort to restore New Jersey’s fiscal health.

In an effort to help ameliorate the impact of spending reductions, and to prevent layoffs, the governor called on local teachers’ bargaining units to help cut spending last year by agreeing to a one-year pay freeze and to contribute 1.5 percent of their salary toward the cost of their health insurance.

“While I commend the sponsors for attempting to facilitate the preservation of school employee positions during this difficult economic time, I am concerned that this bill, as currently written, goes well beyond the situation which the sponsors were attempting to address,” Christie said. “Unlike the situation facing the state which prompted this legislation, this bill is not limited to a one-year concession in the middle of a collective bargaining agreement for the sole purpose of preventing layoffs due to a fiscal crisis.

“I am also concerned that this bill will produce several other adverse consequences,” the governor said. “For example, this bill could be interpreted to require school boards to negotiate with collective bargaining units any time the district looks to reduce staff, even when the district has identified a justifiable need to do so for non-economic reasons, such as decreased student enrollment.

“Rather than encouraging shared sacrifice and cooperation, this lack of clarity will likely breed disputes and legal challenges, ultimately discouraging the shared sacrifice needed to address our fiscal challenges,” Christie said. “Despite these concerns, I recognize that in these particularly challenging times there is a need to encourage and support teachers and other school employees to make sacrifices in order to help preserve teaching positions, maintain school programs, and support the overall education of our students. School employees who admirably choose to make a sacrifice should feel assured that any savings achieved through their concessions will only be used for the agreed-upon purpose of maintaining other positions.”

The governor said changes to the legislation would eliminate uncertainty in the bill and ensure that efforts made to meet the call for shared sacrifice through wage and benefit concessions are used to save jobs and overcome budgetary challenges faced by school districts. Among other issues, he said, the bill as written includes overly broad and unclear provisions that would negatively impact a district’s ability to manage its workforce in the future and potentially impact future collective bargaining negotiations beyond the year of the employees’ concession.

In addition, Christie issued conditional vetoes to two other proposals (S-189 and S-1841), legislation addressing the use of “bump keys” in burglaries and the classification of investigators employed by the state Department of Corrections, respectively.

Citing existing law that already provides for punishment of the possession of any “engine, machine, tool or implement adapted, designed or commonly used for committing or facilitating … forcible entry into premises,” the governor said S-189 does nothing new to deter burglaries by merely adding a specific prohibition to the possession of “bump keys” that is already covered by current law.

The conditional veto is designed to better deter the problem of residential burglary by making it a second-degree offense and requiring that at least 85 percent of such burglary sentences be served.

S-1841 sought to “clarify” that investigators employed by the Department of Corrections are, in fact, police officers. The governor said the purported clarification, however, would actually imposes substantial changes to powers and authority of these investigators, amending the civil service title series and collapsing all of the existing ranks in the unit into a single new position, without considering these changes in the context of statewide law enforcement efforts.

The conditional veto of S1841 provides for the creation of a study commission to review and examine law enforcement functions in the executive branch of state government, and to provide recommendations about the feasibility of consolidation, absorption, or elimination of various policing functions, before changes are made to the structure or definition of investigator positions in the Department of Corrections, or other state executive branch policing entities.

Currently, state government’s law enforcement system is a complicated and decentralized patchwork of officers and investigators across a number of state agencies, often without clearly understood lines of authority.

– TOM HESTER SR., NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM