Will School Budget Vote Be Delayed? Legislators Clash on Touchy Subject

While the state constitution provides an avenue for Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) to force a legislative vote on his bill to extend April 20's Board of Education election to provide districts with more time to handle budget cuts, Bramnick said legislative Democrats have blocked the option.

Bramnick announced at a March 23 Board of Education meeting in Westfield that he had filed a bill to extend the election date, a measure sought by school boards statewide grappling with Gov. Chris Christie's decision on March 16 to cut state aid to local school systems. Decisions on what had to be cut from the budget needed to be completed in a week and finalized a week later. Chatham announced plans to cut eight aide positions and several other teaching slots next year after the state reduced its state aid by $2.6 million.

At the same time, Bramnick said his bill, co-sponsored by Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon (R-Little Silver), was dead on arrival since the legislature recessed hours after he filed the bill on March 22 and would not reconvene until May, after the April 20 vote.

"If I can call the legislature back I would," Bramnick said in his March 23 address to the board. "I don't have that power."

Bramnick does have an avenue to attempt to force a special session of the legislature to hear his bill. Article IV, Section I, paragraph three of the New Jersey constitution allows all state legislators to petition to hold a special session of the legislature.

"Special sessions of the Legislature shall be called by the Governor upon petition of a majority of all the members of each house, and may be called by the Governor whenever in his opinion the public interest shall warrant," the constitution reads.

The measure was added to the current state constitution, first written in 1947, on Dec. 3, 1968, applicable to the legislature starting in 1970. To envoke it, Bramnick would first need to get the signatures of 41 members of the Assembly and 21 senators. This is where he said he is blocked from even considering the petition route.

"The reason it is not happening is that a majority of the house is Democrats," he said. "Unless the speaker approves it, the Democrats are not signing."

Bramnick, the second in command in the Assembly Republican conference, said he has talked with several of his Democratic colleagues and they have said they are following Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver's (D-East Orange) lead on the subject.

Currently Democrats control 47 out of 80 seats in the Assembly. In the Senate, the Democrats control 23 out of 40 seats. All of Westfield's legislators are Republicans.

A spokesman for Oliver said that the blame for not having a vote on the Bramnick BOE budget delay bill should not be placed at her feet. Instead, he said Christie is to blame. Bramnick is a long time Christie ally who was on the short list for lieutenant governor and held fundraisers for the new governor during last year's campaign.

"The speaker appreciates Assemblyman Bramnick's concern about Gov. Christie's school cuts and how they will impact education and property taxes, but Gov. Christie has made it very clear that he doesn't support delaying the school elections," Oliver spokesman Tom Hester said.

A spokesman for Christie confirmed that the governor does not support delaying the school elections this year. Bramnick said he has been trying to work this angle in the absence of using the constitutional avenue available to him. He said he has had conversations with Christie administration officials regarding delaying the budget vote and has communicated what he has learned from attending school board meetings in his district.

"They know how I feel," Bramnick said of the Christie administration.

Bramnick declined to say who he has spoken with in the governor's office or detail the exact nature of the conversations, citing a need to keep his dealings with the governor and members of the administration confidential.

But he said regardless of how he could proceed, he is hoping to be able to announce something based on his dealings with the Christie administration.

"I have not given up on it," he said.