Sweeney, Democrats abandoning N.J. public employees

BY CARL GOLDEN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

Perhaps the most revealing response to the recent public employee march on Trenton to protest Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts came from Senate President Steven Sweeney when he said the unions were hurting themselves by their actions and by failing to understand that Democrats in the Legislature were working with the Governor to resolve the state's fiscal dilemma.

It was a stunning rebuke of the Democratic Party's core constituency and most reliable voting bloc — organized labor — as well as an unmistakable signal from the party's legislative leadership that taxpayer wrath directed at public employees had grown so heated that ignoring it would imperil the party's prospects in the 2011 legislative elections.

Sweeney's comments made it clear that the party with a long history of scrupulously following organized labor's agenda could do so no longer.

Particularly galling to the protest leaders was Sweeney's assertion that he and the Democrats were working with Christie who union leaders detest. Sweeney, it was suggested, was sleeping with the enemy.

While Sweeney's heart probably was with the protestors, his political instincts steered him in a more practical direction, one which understood the risks involved in meeting union demands that he lead the fight against the budget cuts as well as the Administration's proposals to, among other steps, revise the public pension system, cap salaries and benefits, require employee contributions to health insurance coverage and permit local governments to opt out of the civil service system.

As a veteran labor leader, Sweeney is sensitive to the role of organized labor in securing wage increases, enhanced fringe benefits, and job security for its members.

He also recognizes the dramatically altered environment government is in as a result of the punishing national economic downturn and the agonizingly slow pace of recovery.

Taxpayers are deeply apprehensive over their personal economic security and feel they are being called upon to pay increasing amounts in taxes to support public employee wages and benefits which are superior to their own.

Gov. Christie's election in 2009 owed a great deal to that belief and, in the five months since his inauguration, he has waged a relentless campaign to cut spending and enact an historic restructuring of the public employee compensation system.

He dismissed the impact of the 35,000 or so persons who rallied outside his office, describing it as an exercise in "me first," a common theme running through his public comments on the motives of government and school district employees.

While his Administration's statement that the protestors were "on the wrong side of history" was typical of the hyperbole routinely used in political debate, there is an element of truth in the assertion.

In New Jersey politics, history's shelf life is about 48 hours, but public sympathy for the working conditions of government employees has fallen dramatically and the momentum has shifted to a belief that, without drastic and lasting changes in the system, taxpayers will soon be unable to support it.

Like a force of nature, Christie is riding the wave of that momentum, leading the charge to defeat local school district budgets, colorfully assailing by name those individuals who he contends are guilty of abusing public positions to gain inflated salaries or pensions, and hacking his way through the state budget in a way never before seen.

Critics warn that Christie's actions eventually will become a "be careful what you wish for" lesson to voters and point to his sometimes cringe-inducing scapegoating of public school teachers to support their view.

His supporters respond that because government has become so large, costly and cumbersome and lost sight of its mission to serve the people, Christie was left with no alternative but to undertake the kind of top to bottom shake-up necessary to put things right.

The public employee protest was a large scale effort to buck this tide, but more to the point was intended to remind the Democratic Party that organized labor had stood with it, supported it with votes and campaign cash, and now were furious that the party appeared to be abandoning them.

Sweeney may have intended his comments as conciliatory, an attempt to inject the political realities of public sentiment into the debate and convince union leaders that compromise rather than confrontation was the only path to a fair resolution.

It is a difficult balancing act for him. He displayed courage and commitment with his sponsorship of a package of legislation to reform the public pension system in the face of near-unanimous opposition from the unions.

He appears sincere in his view that clogging the streets around the Statehouse, waving signs and chanting anti-Christie slogans is counter productive in the long run and is potentially harmful politically.

His task is similar to those performers on the old television variety shows who spun dinner plates atop wooden poles and dashed madly from one to another to keep them twirling.

Paying greater attention to one can have shattering consequences for the rest.

Carl Golden is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton College. He served as press secretary to Govs. Kean and Whitman.