The Star Ledger says pension costs for municipal workers, police and firefighters will more than double next year, from $175 Million to $383 Million in 2006 local budgets.

Part of the big tax increase in this year's Dover Township was due to the first pension charges in nearly six years.

Former Republican Governor Christie Whitman, with the support of 10th district assemblymen David Wolfe and James Holzapfel, played Santa Claus with the state pension system by selling $2.8 billion in state bonds to subsidize pension obligations so she could forgive the local pension contribution.

Wolfe Supported Benefit Increase He Will "Benefit" From

In the lame duck period at the end of 2001, Holzapfel and Wolfe were among a majority of legislators supporting a 9% increase in pension payments to suck up to public employees they wanted votes from.

One of the immediate beneficiaries was Whitman's lottery director Virginia Haines of Toms River who retired in 2002 after a series of inflated salary increases (to $107,000 a year) drove her pension to more than $56,000.

Chickens Home To Roost On Whitman Santa Claus Scam; Pensions Underfunded by $35 Billion

Now the chickens are coming home to roost: the Whitman bonds have to be paid off; the municipal share has been restored, and local retirement systems, according to the Star Ledger, are underfunded by more than $35 Billion.

The Ledger says the pension costs will go up every year from now on by at least 20%, a factor that guarantees more local tax increases.

Gannett Editorials Say Tacking
Is Legal Form Of Corruption

Problems with the pension system, as the Gannett pension series showed recently, are pension tacking scams that are legal forms of the corruption that has plagued New Jersey government at all levels.

Tacking is the process combining "salaries" from different public jobs to make a three year average total salary sometimes triple or quadruple the average state workers salary.

Wolfe's Compensation From Public Breast Nears $200,000

Ironically, one of the prime beneficiaries of loopholes in the pension law will be Wolfe, who last year was handed a useless pork barrel "job" as “Government Relations and External Affairs Liaison,” at Ocean County College.

Wolfe's new "job" carries annual compensation including a base of $123,203, teaching two sections per semester for another $8400 and a double-dip “health waiver payment” of $3410, in addition to his $49,500 salary and $11,000 health benefit as a legislator.

Legislators who write the laws for the public aren't really supposed to whack the taxpayers like this, but Wolfe’s total annual compensation from the public trough is now close to $200,000, mostly for a “job” many taxpayers would consider useless and a waste of public funds.

Bennett Got Pension "Largest In Senate
History," But Gilmore Will Top Him

This puts Wolfe right up there with Republican County Chairman George Gilmore and Gilmore's Monmouth County pal, former Senator John Bennett, whose pension of $78,540 annually, according to the Star Ledger, is "the richest in State Senate history," and Bennett was only 55 when he "retired" in February of 2004.

Gilmore's pension will be even higher than Bennett's after he persuaded local officials in Ocean County towns to convert part of his compensation as a bill-by-the-hour attorney to nearly $140,000 in bogus "salaries" for the purpose of inflating his three year average upon which pension benefits are calculated.

Gilmore's local "salaries" are augmented by state and county salaries.

Greedy Gilmore's Pension Could Top $85,000;
McGuckin Uses County Chairman As Role Model

Gilmore, now 56, will get a pension of about $85,000 if he retires at 60, five years before the average social security recipients who bear much of the property tax burden in Ocean County were able to retire.

And Dover Council President Gregory McGuckin, 40, a partner in the second most prolific pay-to-play law firm in the county (Gilmore is #1) is now accessing at least two public pension salaries in addition to ample and generous hourly legal fees from grateful local officials, a pattern which may enable him to surpass Gilmore, Wolfe and Bennett, if he is able to hang on and get re-elected to his power base as Dover Township's cleverest council member.

And It's All Funded By Grateful Taxpayers

It's all funded by taxpayers who pay the highest property taxes in the U. S. of A., the very same people who will very likely re-elect McGuckin and Wolfe in this year's election.

Linda Speirs Wants To Know How Gilmore Gets Away With It, And Can Continue To "Rule And Ruin" Ocean County

And, in a letter published in today's Ocean County Observer, Linda Speirs wants to know: "With all of the bad publicity - "Profiting From Public Service," "The Power Brokers," Pension Based On High Three Years Salaries" - how does George Gilmore, Ocean County Republican Chairman, continue to run and ruin Ocean County?"

It's a fair question.