Christie engages crowd at Town Hall

SPARTA — Questions ranged from asking New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie his plans for the state public employee pension system, to his potential bid for president during his Town Hall meeting held Thursday in Sparta.

About 400 people filled the Sussex County Technical School gymnasium for the 137th town hall.

State Sen. Steve Oroho, R-24, Assemblyman Parker Space, R-24, and representatives of the county freeholders and Sparta Township Council were in attendance for the event.

Christie said the state cannot afford payments it previously agreed to under a 2011 law and has decided to scale back payments.

He had about a 20-minute back-and-forth dialogue with Mark Worobetz, of Fredon, on the topic.

“I was taken back that he doesn’t think state workers have sacrificed,” Worobetz said.

Anne Augustyn, of Oak Ridge, came with her friend Nancy Bargmann, of Midland Park, to hear Christie speak. Both are retired and receive pensions.

“If you have a real issue with pensions, don’t demonize the people who receive them. There should be a sense of pride about it,” Augustyn said.

The issue over cuts to the pension system is currently in the court system.

Sussex County Technical School senior Lily Passaretti was among a group of students at the event and was lucky enough to be chosen and managed to stump the governor with her question on the difference between certain health plan levels.

“In his opening remarks, he spoke about picking up four prescriptions for his family and it costing $12,” Passaretti said. “I did not expect him to have the answers, but I was curious, because I pay more than that for prescriptions.”

The governor told Passaretti that his office would get back to her with an answer.

Constance Bolzan, of Sparta, attended Christie’s town hall in Vernon in 2013. She hoped to ask the governor a question about an ongoing legal matter she has been dealing with for her son who is in special education.

“I thought it was very good and more informative than the last one,” she said. “Next time, I am going to have a sign that says pick me.”

Bolzan was referencing a woman who came to the town hall equipped with a sign that read ‘pick me,’ to which the governor did for the last question and fielded a query from a woman related to the state’s fight with drugs.

“We need to start looking at it as an illness that we need to try to treat,” Christie said.

Drug addiction is a disease that could destroy the state, Christie said, and it should be talked about publicly as much as possible.

Christie gripped the audience when he told a story of his friend and law school classmate who fell into a downward spiral with drug addiction, ultimately taking his life last year.

Laurie Mundy, of Vernon, said she has been wanting to go to a town hall meeting for a long time since she first saw the governor speak at an event in Paterson, N.J., when he was the state’s attorney general.

Mundy said she was interesting in learning what Christie had to say about the indictments handed down earlier this month to several former staffers for their roles in the Bridgegate scandal for deliberately closing the lanes on the George Washington Bridge in 2013 to induce traffic.

That topic was not brought up during the question and answer session.

Christie closed by thanking the state of New Jersey and its residents for giving him the opportunity to serve as governor for two terms, and did little to quell the rumors of a potential presidential run surrounding him.

“There’s not a day that I don’t walk through that door that I don’t feel incredibly blessed,” Christie said of the statehouse in Trenton.

He said that whether he serves out his term as governor until 2018 or decides to run for president, “the fact is that what you all have done for me is something that’s filled my heart.”