Governor Christie has announced his top five priorities for the rest of this year - getting a tax cut for state residents, abolishing sick leave payouts, expanding shared services, banning municipal user fees and passing ethics reform.

Governor Chris Christie
Governor's Office/Tim Larsen
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He told an overflow crowd at his latest town hall in West Milford that when it comes to ethics reform, "How about this - first - shouldn't one public paycheck be enough for anybody?"

He then said his proposal calls for federal disclosure for all Legislators.

"You need it from them more than you need it from us. See, cause all of us in the executive branch- we're not allowed to have another job. The law says one job, that's it - they have as many jobs as they want to have. You need to be concerned about where that money's coming from -who's paying them? And why? And what are they doing for the money?"

On the subject of user fees, he said the State Senate has already voted to have all user fees fit under the 2 percent property tax cap.

"The Assembly needs to vote for it too, by definition it's a bipartisan thing. If you're going to continue to add fees to all this stuff, then we're never going to get this under control, so I need the Assembly to get their job done- the Senate did it…We need to get that done- and that will make sure you're not getting nickeled and dimed on the side."

When the Governor insisted lawmakers should immediately approve a tax cut, he said, "The average family under the tax cut plan that I agreed to with the democrats - that they are now reneging on - would give you back an average of 775 dollars more in your pocket… The fiscal year 2013 budget is less than 2008 and 2009. We've made government significantly smaller, but we're spending more on education and hospitals, more to help families with autism - more on federal health clinics…That means we've made choices, and I believe educating our children and protecting our most vulnerable are the priorities we should have as a government. But I refuse to spend money in a wasteful way on every dopey program that they come up with down there."


Courtesy Governor's Office

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