Christie unveils $35.5 billion state budget plan, his last

Gov. Chris Christie unveiled his final budget plan for New Jersey on Tuesday, casting his fiscal stewardship of the state as a net positive despite a historic run of credit-rating downgrades and surprising lawmakers with a blizzard of complex policy plans just as his term begins to draw to a close.

As first reported by The Record, Christie proposed a $35.5 billion budget for fiscal 2018, which would be $1 billion, or 2.9 percent, larger than the spending plan he signed last year.

Funding for schools would rise by more than $523 million, to $13.8 billion, with no district seeing a reduction. New Jersey’s beleaguered pension system for public workers, which has fallen deeper into the red each year in the past two decades, would get its biggest cash infusion in history, $2.51 billion, a $647 million increase over the current fiscal year.

With his term ending in January 2018, Christie’s budget address before the Legislature was his last big chance to draw a fiscal road map for New Jersey. The speech also served as an extended victory lap, with Christie celebrating his accomplishments over seven years, mounting a vigorous defense of his fiscal record and drawing attention to the bright spots in the state’s slow, but steady, recovery from the global recession of 2008 and 2009.

Read more: http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2017/02/28/christie-unveils-355-billion-state-budget-his-last/98531222/