Christie will be gone when pension fund goes broke

The air is fragrant in Hackensack, above and below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Today's front page "ANALYSIS" of the deepening state pension system crisis is good, but Staff Writer John Reitmeyer of The Record could be accused of burying the lead.

Readers who stick with his account -- which begins by saying "Governor Christie is following the well-worn path" of his predecessors by skipping payments -- might be shocked to see what awaits them on the continuation page:

"What all this means is that at some point in the future, according to experts, New Jersey's pension system, currently underfunded by an estimated $52 billion, could become simply too costly to keep afloat" (A-6).

That should have been the first paragraph on A-1 for crying out loud.

Derelict editors

Who was Editor Marty Gottlieb or one of his minions thinking of when they worked on this Page 1 story?

Certainly not public employees or even readers of the Woodland Park daily.

Readers also find out on A-6 the GOP bully basically told another lie: 

"Christie ... recently erroneously lumped [former Governor Jon] Corzine among the list of New Jersey governors who made no pension payments during their tenure."

Taxing readers

Now, Christie is facing a $1 billion budget shortfall, because he has refused, among other things, to impose a tax surcharge on millionaires or raise the low gasoline tax to fund road and mass-transit improvements.

Reitmeyer doesn't cite the conservative's inflexible no-tax policies or his past practice of balancing the budget on the backs of the middle and working classes.

In fact, the reporter doesn't even bother telling readers how many public employees are covered by the state's pension system or who they are.

Are they just bureaucrats in Trenton or are they teachers, police officers and firefighters -- in other words our neighbors?

The story says Christie is cutting his planned $1.58 billion pension contribution back to $696 million and, in the fiscal year that begins July 1, a $2.25 billion pension payment would now be just $681 million.

Christie also says he will "put forward new public worker benefit changes in the next few weeks" (A-6).

If I was a public worker who is already contributing more to my pension thanks to Christie, I'd really be worried.

Breathe deep.

Crash landing

Why was a pea-brained former sports reporter assigned to the story on the untimely demise of New Jersey multimillionaire Lewis Katz, killed in the "fiery crash" of a Gulfstream private jet on Saturday night (A-3)?

Staff Writer John Brennan reports "National Transportation Safety Board officials said it was too soon to discuss the cause of the crash."

They always say that less than two days after a crash, but there are usually only two possible causes: Pilot error or a mechanical problem.

Private-jet travel is one of the privileges of wealth, but Brennan doesn't even say whether it is safer to fly commercial.


The Borgs and Main Street

The Borgs' North Jersey Media Group has never had much affection for Main Street, judging by the abysmal lack of coverage of struggling downtowns in Englewood, Teaneck and other communities.

And Hackensack -- where The Record prospered for more than 110 years -- and its Main Street are still trying to recover from Publisher Stephen A. Borg's decision in 2009 to close the paper's headquarters on River Street, and move to the sticks.

Where money talks

Joan Verdon, the paper's retail reporter, writes almost exclusively about North Jersey's malls and highway retailers -- where the Borgs reap millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

You could think of this as journalism pay to play. Do merchants have to advertise in The Record to get coverage?

But the Business page on Monday carries a feature called "Main Street" that appears to be the editors' attempt to fool readers into thinking otherwise.

Today's piece is about North Jersey's pet-walking and pet-sitting businesses. Another recent "Main Street" feature reported on the maker of custom golf pants.

What a farce.

Teaneck police

The lead story in Local today is an upbeat report on the 100th anniversary of the Teaneck Police Department (L-1).

Staff Writer Jim Norman notes the onetime all-male force "now includes seven women, two of whom are lieutenants and two detectives."

But Norman fails to tell readers about the sordid period when women in the Teaneck department filed sexual-harassment lawsuits against their male superiors, resulting in legal fees and settlements that cost taxpayers many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Are local assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza -- veterans who should be familiar with those suits -- deliberately slanting stories so as not to offend the Teaneck police?

A rare mention of Main Street on Page 1

Main Dish replaced Naturally Good on Hackensack's Main Street.

Even before The Record abandoned Hackensack in 2009, the editors virtually ignored the city's downtown, as well as its counterparts in Teaneck and Englewood.

Today's Page 1 report on the closing of Mitchell Simon Co. on Englewood's South Dean Street is typical of the coverage -- nothing more than noting the failure of individual businesses.

Teaneck's troubled downtown is mentioned in passing today, but I can't recall anything in recent years on what happened to downtown Hackensack or even acknowledgement of new restaurants and other food outlets.

In fact, The Record went out of its way to ignore the impact the newspaper's departure had on Main Street businesses in the city where it had prospered for more than 110 years.

The Borgs took their money and ran, and the 20 acres they own on River Street have become an eyesore.

Good Tenafly coverage

Just on Monday, a story on the tony downtown in Tenafly appeared in Local -- yet another piece about the town where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in a $3.65 million McMansion.  

What a ho-hum front page, thanks to Editor Marty Gottlieb, who again wastes a large part of A-1 on sports. 

No Hackensack news

In head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section, Hackensack municipal news is again missing in action or inaction, though the suicide of a 22-year-old woman is reported in a brief on L-7.

The woman, who jumped to her death from the 10th floor of 170 Prospect Ave., isn't identified.

Working- and middle class readers got some good news on L-2 -- yachts belonging to three millionaires were destroyed by fire at a marina in Weehawken.

Rusty ideas

On the Better Living cover, Jay Levin, the paper's local obituary writer, tells readers why he loves the 1991 Buick Century and 1981 Pontiac Grand LeMans he owns, neither of which are classics (BL-1).

The frugal journalist acknowledges they aren't as safe as modern cars, but ignores all the pollution they produce and all the gasoline they waste, and doesn't let on he cares so little about the environment he never takes mass transit. 

More wasted space 

Talking about pollution and waste, the Road Warrior column on Sunday caught the attention of a reader concerned about all the distortions he's found in the work of Staff Writer John Cichowski:

"The Road Warrior branches out in his Feb. 17 column from BAD, unsafe or incompetent reporting mistakes into incoherent, misleading or incompetent reporting about BAD ideas that shows he lacks expertise about N.J. road statutes, safety, travel products, medical ID tags/technology, and state legislation for emergency medical cards in vehicle glove boxes.

"The Record's management should be appalled by his strange combination of BAD reporting mistakes and incompetent reporting about BAD ideas.

"The Road Warrior continues to publish readers' comments without reporting needed info that would better inform readers.

"Road Warrior's reports on 2 named products were based on incoherent, misleading, false, or unsafe statements and advice.  Shame on The Record for allowing these atrocious reports."

See the full e-mail to management at the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

The hard sell

 

The thinnest of papers

Image by birdphone via Flickr

One thing that jumped out at me after looking over today's thin paper is continued -- even redundant -- coverage of everywhere except Hackensack, Teaneck and Engelwood, the three most diverse towns in The Record of Woodland Park's circulation area.

Do readers really need a second, detailed sob story about wealthy Ridgewood's downtown (photo) on the front of the Local section? What about Cedar Lane merchants and Palisade Avenue merchants and the businesses on Main Street in Hackensack -- the last hit particularly hard by the absence of hundreds of newspaper employees scattered to the wind by the Borg family's North Jersey Media Group?

At least this Ridgewood story tells how greedy officials raised parking meter rates -- a crucial detail left out of the previous story, as we learned from outraged letters to the editor. Was this story intended to correct the earlier story, which I believe ran several months ago, without making the omission more obvious?

On Page 1, I read over a puzzling sentence a couple of times before I realized the news copy editor and the desk supervisor just passed it over on autopilot. In the guilty plea of a hedge fund manager, Staff Writer Andrew Tangel wrote the defendant "didn't face the roughly 40 people in court." Duh. Of course, anyone who has attended a court hearing knows the defendant faces the judge -- not the audience -- but in a sense still comes face-to-face with his accusers. What was the point of saying he didn't "face" the FBI agent, attorneys and investors? It only confuses readers. To add insult to injury, a fact box with a photo of the moron is topped with the words, "Day in court," a phrase usually associated with hard-pressed plaintiffs, not greedy, thieving financiers.

A story promoted on the front page under the headline, "Health care bill could raise costs," reveals that 33 million uninsured Americans would finally be covered. Wouldn't that add to our health-care expenses? The story makes it sound controversial, instead of just common sense.

The Business, Editorial and Better Living pages are throwaways today.


See earlier post: "A modest proposal"