Christie Tells Legislature To Pass Toolkit Now [AUDIO]

With only a few weeks left in the current Legislative session, Governor Christie is again calling on state lawmakers to pass his proposed toolkit legislation, which is designed to give local officials more power to be able to control costs and hold the line on property taxes.

During his latest town hall meeting in West New York, the Governor pointed out only 5 out of 20 toolkit bills have been approved.

Christie - who was surrounded by the democratic Mayors of West New York, Union City and Hoboken, said it's outrageous that Jersey lawmakers still want to allow retiring state workers to collect 75 hundred dollars for unused sick pay - "you should ask your legislators - ask em where they stand - ask em why they think you should have to pay for people not being sick?"

The Governor said if people care about this issue "they should visit nj-dot-gov - that's the state website- and if you click on the little site for the legislature, they give you all the legislator's email addresses and all you have to do is click on it and it will send an email…what this legislation does is it empowers the mayors - the mayors then have the ability to go out and figure out - where can we save money by sharing services - and the state will help to do those studies…end payouts for state workers who don't use their sick days, and give towns the option to opt out of civil service."

He pointed out under current Jersey law "you've got all these civil service positions at very high salaries that you can't get rid of - and if you can't get rid of those salaries then you eliminate the savings completely - so then you're just wasting your time…while these toolkit measures may seem like small, complicated steps, we've tried every different way to keep property taxes under control in this state- including a property tax rebate program - but nothing has worked - so, the only way we're going to solve this problem is not by taxing you more in other ways -to send you more money back - it's to stop spending so much…if we don't spend it we don't have to collect it in the first place - you get to keep it - in the first place- and use it to support your family."

A spokesman for the Assembly democrats issued a statement saying "New Jerseyans know that this Governor's preference is to give tax breaks to millionaires and property tax increases for working families and seniors…the Governor's continued rhetoric is a feeble attempt to deceive the public. Governor Christie cannot ignore the fact that he has cut municipal and school aid, hiking property taxes by their highest level in four years. He's given tax breaks to millionaires while hiking the most painful tax for middle-class families across the state."