SHORE LOSER GETS A BUDGET DEAL
IT WAS NO day at the beach, but New Jersey politicians finally resolved their differences and ended the state’s shutdown late Monday.
Gov. Chris Christie held an 11 p.m. news conference to say he was about to sign a budget deal brokered by lawmakers — and end New Jersey’s three-day stalemate that shut 40 parks on the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Christie ordered all state parks and beaches to reopen Tuesday.
Government offices that were shut down on Saturday will open their doors after the holiday on Wednesday, Christie said.
The tens of thousands of state workers on furlough due to the budget impasse will get Monday as a paid holiday, he added.
Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, both Democrats, announced the budget deal at a joint press conference held about an hour before Christie confirmed he was giving it the OK.
The deal calls for a $34.7 billion budget that includes more than $300 million in Democratic spending priorities. In exchange, Christie gets his wish to overhaul the state’s largest health insurer.
The Republican governor was hit with blistering criticism after ordering the shutdown and then going to a beach he had closed to the public with his own family and friends. At one point he denied getting any sun.
State residents’ tempers exploded when The Star-Ledger published aerial photos of Christie and company enjoying the sun, sand and solitude at Island Beach State Park Sunday. Christie, whose approval ratings have ebbed to a record low of 15%, was characteristically defiant.
“The governor has two residences in New Jersey. One down at the beach, at Island Beach State Park, and one at Drumthwacket, which also is in Princeton,” he said on Fox 5.
“The governor is allowed to go to his residences, and I’m at my residences,” he added. “I’ll tell you this, I said last Monday — a week ago today — that no matter what happens, we were coming here as a family this weekend.”
But the hits kept coming, including one critic who took to the sky Monday to send his message.
“Tell Gov. Christie: Get the hell off Island Beach State Park,” read a banner a plane flew along the coast.
Joshua Henne, a progressive New Jersey-based political consultant, paid for the plane. Its banner mocked the tough-talking governor telling people to “get the hell off the beach” ahead of Hurricane Irene in 2011.
Even Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, currently jockeying to succeed Christie after his final term ends in January, slammed her boss.
“If I were governor, I sure wouldn’t be sitting on the beach if taxpayers didn’t have access to state beaches,” she wrote Monday in a Facebook post. “It’s beyond words.” Christie derided The Star-Ledger for splashing the unflattering Shore photo across its front page.
“What a great bit of journalism by The Star-Ledger. They actually caught a politician being where he said he was going to be with the people he said he was going to be with, his wife and children and their friends,” he said. “I am sure they will get a Pulitzer for this one.”