Gov. Chris Christie said today he will try this fall to scale back pensions and health benefits for current employees, which would go a step further than changes put in place earlier this year.

Christie, in a radio interview, said “real pension reform” is needed to put the state “back on track” and improve the economy.

“I have nothing against people who work in the public sector,” he said this morning on WABC-AM. “They work hard, they’re fine folks, and they’re doing a good job, in the main, for the people of our state. But there should be no sector of our society that is shielded from this recession at the expense of all the rest of our society.”

Over the spring, Christie and New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled legislature agreed to offer less generous pensions to future hires and require current employees to pay 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care plans. Christie today repeated his view that the state needed to go further, and touched on his belief that New Jersey is a split society where public employees are shielded from the effects of the recession while private sector employees suffer.

Christie also gave an initial nod to privatizing toll collectors, preschool construction and motor vehicle inspections, three recommendations of a report released last week that picked apart state government to find areas where money could be saved through the private sector. Christie suggested the state could avoid toll increases by letting a private company hire toll collectors, which the report said would be 40 percent to 50 percent less expensive.

“These are things that just make common sense,” he said. “I don’t think we necessarily need a public employee to collect your toll on the Turnpike and Parkway, or the Atlantic City Expressway. There are things that to me seem like, you know, low-hanging fruit.”

One of the more controversial parts of the report is likely to be a suggestion to completely privatize motor vehicle inspections, an area the state has had trouble with in the past. With much of the same reasoning he provided during his campaign, Christie said he would be more successful than former Gov. Christie Whitman at privatizing motor vehicle inspections simply because he would do it right.

“You just have to do it better and you have to be more competent than they were at it,” he said.

The Republican governor said he would sign a bill Tuesday to limit property tax increases to 2 percent, with several exceptions, if the bill is passed by the Assembly today. The Senate on Thursday passed the bill 36-3.

The Assembly is voting today on the measure, a compromise between competing views on the best way to cap the state’s property tax gusher.

(Source: NJ Star Ledger)