>Christie: With or without NJEA, education changes coming
December 08, 2009 • 8:00 pm
By Bob Ingle
Chris Christie
Gov.-elect Chris Christie says not only can we reduce spending, we have to. And if the Legislature can’t go along, he will use his veto. He says they won’t have enough votes to override.
Appearing on 101.5 FM’s “Ask the Governor” (Governor-elect edition) Christie says he will speak out and name names and pointed out, he already has. ”Get used to it, you have four years coming” of his tell it like it is style.
He says business taxes will drop in July when some taxes are scheduled to expire. He said he won’t renew them.
In the short term, he said, the property tax link to funding education can’t be changed. He said he wants to try other ways before de-linking because that is just tax-shifting and he wants tax reduction.
Asked what he would do to help unions thrive, Christie said the only way to do it is make business thrive by lowering business taxes.
He said he doesn’t think the time is right to increase the cost of labor via laws to hike prevailing wages.
A state worker said she saw waste and corruption and wanted to know what he would do to clean it up. Christie said he will do all he can to fix it. Christie said he told staff its job is not to replace Democratic hacks with Republican hacks. Their job is to do away with needless jobs.
Christie said he will evaluate political appointees, not wholesale eliminate appointees.
Christie said he has put forward specific ideas for reducing taxes, auditing school boards, for instance. “One we get those results, tying the amount of school aid to reduction of middle management costs.” He also said he wants school board elections moved to November.
Host Eric Johnson reminded Christie the teachers union, NJEA, was no friend of his during the campaign. Christie agreed. He said contrary to published reports, the NJEA had not contacted his office about a meeting after the election.
“Teachers are not the problem. It’s the over-politicized of the leadership of their union.” He said he will work with the union but if they don’t he will make education changes anyway.
https://blogs.app.com/politicspatrol/2009/12/08/christie-with-out-without-njea-education-changes-coming/
