Governor Christie is reaffirming his commitment to cutting spending, and reducing the size of state government. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Spotswood, he said “there’s no one magic formula to lower costs – you’ve got to do it in a number of ways…you put a cap on interest arbitration awards, you say no more paying out sick pay, you reform the pension and health benefit system so everybody’s paying their fair share – that’s the way to do it -it’s like you do it in your own house- I don’t have any magic wand – if you want to save more money you have to spend less money.”

Christie said for years politicians have been promising to make government smaller- but they never delivered -until now.

“In the last two years just in the state government alone New Jersey now has fewer state employees than it had on the day Christie Whitman left office in 2001″ said the Governor, “there’s no easy way to do that – but I promised you I would – and I feel like I have to keep those promises -I made them and I need to keep them.”

He also said “the decisions are difficult to make them but you have to do it – and we’re now seeing the results from that – a smaller state government that I guarantee you is going to continue to get smaller…we’re going to keep pushing to get where we need to get to while still providing the services to you that you want.”

The Governor said local officials are supporting this effort “because mayors and council people and freeholders are getting smart about the 2 percent cap – they don’t have the money to do it anymore -so they’ve got to make the hard choices…none of this is easy and none of it is painless, but you know what? We got ourselves into this bind…and we can get out of it.”

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