Jersey Unions’ Death Grip

New Jersey’s broke, thanks to pols who’ve long let public-employee unions squeeze taxpayers. So how are the unions reacting? By tightening their grip even more — and maybe breaking the law in the process.

That’s what Democratic state Senate President Steve Sweeney, a union man himself, is now charging. He’s asked the state attorney general and the US attorney to investigate.

“A crime was committed,” Sweeney said Wednesday, citing union vows to hold up campaign donations unless the Senate passes a particular pension bill.

Union bosses made “specific threats regarding specific legislative actions that benefit the pocketbooks of [their] members,” he charged. That, he said, “is illegal.”

The bill would ask voters to amend the state Constitution to make Trenton send billions to union pension funds, which are $40 billion short of long-term liabilities after decades of underpayments.

But don’t blame too-low taxes: The Tax Foundation says Jersey’s income tax is second-highest in the nation, its sales tax thirdhighest, its corporate tax seventh and property taxes smack at the top of the list.

The Garden State doesn’t need higher taxes; it needs fewer giveaways. Pension liabilities are sky-high because pols have long OK’d unaffordable benefits.

Sweeney — a top ironworkers-union exec — is stalling the pension bill for fear it will siphon funds from road and transit projects, which mean jobs for the construction trades. Gov. Chris Christie recently froze such work because the state’s transportation fund is, you guessed it, also broke.

Blame excessive union power there, too: Prevailing-wage laws, for example, mean paying road workers twice or more what they’d get in the private sector.

Trenton needs to stop digging the hole deeper. Rather than make more commitments — to pension funds or anything else — it needs to roll back some old ones.