Gov. Chris Christie’s spent five of every nine days this year campaigning out of state. But now he’s back and he’s busy. Roughly 100 pieces of legislation have been stacked on his desk since June. So a simple majority of senators — 21 — pulled a procedural maneuver called a quorum call to compel Christie to take action on Senate bills or let them become law without his John Hancock. NJTV News Chief Political correspondent Michael Aron discusses what action Christie took on some of the bills.
The governor vetoed two bills related to the state’s pension payments. Aron explained that typically, the state makes its pension payment at the end of the fiscal year, but the unions and Democratic legislative leaders want to get some money into the system sooner to earn more interest. One of the bills required quarterly pension payments. The other would put $300 million into the pension system immediately for fiscal year 2016. “The governor vetoed both those bills saying this is accounting gimmickry,” Aron said.
Christie signed a bill to require the Department of Community Affairs to give Hurricane Sandy victims an individualized timeline of when they can get certain grant monies administered by the DCA.
The governor also signed the Ray Rice Bill, named after the football player who received pretrial intervention after a domestic violence incident at an Atlantic City casino. “Domestic violence is generally a third degree offense. With a third degree offense, there’s a presumption of non-incarceration, in other words pretrial intervention. This bill says in cases of domestic violence, even for first time offenders, you’re going to jail. You can’t go to PTI,” Aron explained.
Christie vetoed a bill that would allow transgender people to change the gender on their birth certificates if they’re in transition. The current law says individuals have to have already had reassignment surgery to make that change.