Link to article on northjersey.com:
From the article:
In
a letter sent last week to teachers and obtained by The Record, state Treasurer
Ford Scudder said the cost increases could have been avoided by adopting
reforms proposed by the administration and suggested that the union's
leadership has put its own interests ahead of its members'.
And,
"There is no reason you cannot receive the same benefit of little
or no premium increase," Scudder wrote.
He went on, "Teachers, most of whom are also New Jersey taxpayers,
can avoid these unnecessary premium increases through the adoption of
reasonable reforms. Your
other public sector brothers and sisters have already done so.
Otherwise, you will continue to bear the brunt of exorbitant health care
costs — all for no good reason."
And,
Scudder's letter to teachers echoed a familiar argument made by
Christie over the years, that the union's leaders are paid top dollar while
teachers and unions get short shrift.
Scudder cited Internal Revenue Service filings that show its executive
director, Ed Richardson, was paid $1.2 million in 2015, while his assistant
earned $720,000. The union's president at the time, Wendell Steinhauer, was
paid $649,000 the same year, the letter said. The IRS figures combine base
salary with retirement and other deferred compensation.
The average teacher, meanwhile, earns $70,000 a year, Scudder
said.
And,
"While other unions have agreed to minor changes to the
prescription drug plan and reduced reimbursement for out-of-network services,
the NJEA’s unwillingness to even review such cost-saving measures has resulted
in [teachers'] premiums unnecessarily increasing by more than 21 percent
over the last two years," Rijksen said.
