Fat Man...

Christie adds government shutdown to his legacy

The move comes after New Jersey lawmakers failed to pass a budget by the annual deadline.

By MATT FRIEDMAN

Chris Christie is heading into his final six months as governor presiding over New Jersey’s biggest government crisis in more than a decade: A shutdown that will literally turn the lights out in Trenton.

New Jersey lawmakers failed to pass a budget by the annual deadline at midnight last night, and Christie promptly issued an order sparking the closure of government offices and services deemed non-essential. State parks and beaches will likely be closed this morning, just in time for the holiday, as will motor vehicle offices. Courts could be closed come Monday. Tens of thousands of state government employees will be furloughed.

And while the origins of the shutdown are complex, only one person is likely to bear the blame in the public eye: Christie.

“It’s all going to come down to when folks get up tomorrow for the July 4th weekend and drive down to Island Beach State Park to spend the day and a sign says it’s closed,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “They’re going to blame Gov. Christie and nobody else.”

After two terms that saw his rise to GOP superstardom derailed by Bridgegate and then a fallout with the Trump team, Christie — the least popular governor in New Jersey recorded history, with an approval rating at 15 percent — is already so politically toxic that his own lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, is running away from him while campaigning to succeed him.

But he still has the extraordinary power of the New Jersey governership — one of the strongest in the country - on his side, and he’s intent on exerting it before he truly becomes a lame duck.

Christie has staked his legacy – the national ambitions some think he still harbors - on battling the opioid epidemic. So in February he sought control over the reserve fund of the non-profit Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the state’s largest health insurer that was created by the state, to pay for drug addiction programs, and in recent weeks he’s insisted that his plan be tied to a final budget, a demand bolstered by his line item veto powers.

The Senate has moved in his direction, on Thursday passing a bill acceptable to Christie that would give the state government more control over the insurer. Christie has also demanded the Legislature send him a bill to transfer the state lottery into the woefully underfunded public worker pension system to lessen its unfunded liability. The Legislature has reluctantly agreed to send him that bill.

But Democratic Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto is holding fast against the Horizon bill, refusing to put it up for a vote. Christie has vowed that if he’s not sent the bill, he’ll line-item veto from the budget $325 million in Democratic spending priorities, including school funding and social welfare programs.

“I'm not happy about this,” Christie said in a press conference just eight hours before the shutdown deadline. "This is completely avoidable."

Such a fiscal debacle had been avoided since 2006, when New Jersey Democrats shut down the government in an argument over raising the state sales tax despite controlling the governorship and both chambers of the Legislature.

But that streak was broken at midnight.

Half of Prieto’s own members, as well as Senate Democrats, refused to pass a budget without Christie’s commitment that he will sign it with their spending priorities intact, leaving Christie and the Legislature in a stalemate.

Christie on Friday afternoon showed reporters a list of 73 Democratic items in the budget and playfully talked about which ones he would likely cut, including a project in the Meadowlands region — which Prieto’s hometown Secaucus is a part of.

“They send me a budget with Horizon and with the Lottery then these 73 spending items will stay,” Christie said. “If they send me a budget without lottery and without Horizon, I will still sign a budget. But then many of these 73 spending items will go.”

To make matters worse, Prieto is facing a challenge for his speakership by an Assemblyman who’s allied with most of the lawmakers who are refusing to vote on the budget.

The Horizon bill (S4) would give Christie no power over Horizon’s reserves, leaving it to the next governor, and make changes to its governance structure. But it would be a political win for Christie.

“It really seems that it’s his last gasp attempt at political relevance in a way that may help bolster his political ambitions nationally,” said Monmouth University's Murray.

Christie’s move on Horizon led to a furious lobbying effort by the insurer and prompted a counter-effort by an unusual coalition of labor unions, environmental and business lobbying organizations.

The labor and liberal groups just want a budget passed, and they warned Democrats withholding their votes that they were betting on the wrong politician by effectively siding with Christie.

“You are willing to side with an unpopular governor to hurt your own constituents,’ said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, a lobbyist for the NJEA — New Jersey’s largest teachers union. “It is unfair, it is unjust, it is unreasonable. And you will pay.”

The business groups were opposed to the government meddling in a private company.

“The NJ Chamber realizes that by not passing this legislation there is the potential of a government shutdown,” New Jersey Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken said in a statement Tuesday. “The shutdown will be temporary. The negative impact of this legislation will be permanent.”

Christie, for his part, took pains to blame the shutdown on Prieto’s recalcitrance.

“This is a fit of complete hypocrisy and arrogance from the speaker,” he said.

But Murray noted most New Jerseyans don’t know who Prieto is.

And at least one family will be at Island Beach State Park this weekend: Christie’s, at a state-owned beach house reserved for the governor. The governor said he might join them if the Legislature gavels out of session.

Asked if that was fair, Christie said “I don’t know if it’s fair, but they’re not asking for any services.”