TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie struggled with Democrats for months during his first term to win the landmark public employee pension overhaul he signed in 2011 — and has reveled in the achievement ever since.

But Tuesday, the governor conceded in his State of the State address that it may not have been enough.

Saying the state’s pension and other debt payment obligations will rise by "nearly $1 billion" this year — under the plan he enacted — the Republican called for more talks about pensions and raised the specter of more concessions from public workers.

"If we continue in an era where we believe we can choose everything, let me suggest to you that we are really choosing nothing," Christie told lawmakers. "We need to have the conversation now about further changes to our pension system and about adding further to our state’s already-burdened debt load. The time to avoid this conversation and avoid these choices is nearly over, everybody."

That did not sit well with Democrats and public employee unions. Leaders in the Legislature wondered if Christie was trying to wiggle out of those pension obligations and even called it a "bait and switch."

"The very payments he promised to make are going out the window," Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) said.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) vowed his house won’t even entertain the idea and said Democrats would work to protect the retirements of workers who have paid into the pension system.

"Honestly, we are not going to break our commitments," Sweeney said. "The employees are paying more. We asked them to do it. It wasn’t easy, it was very painful. But we are not going to go back and say ‘oh guess what, it’s getting tough now, so we don’t want to do it.’"

In November, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service lowered their outlook for New Jersey’s debt from stable to negative, citing in part the state’s huge debt obligations. The analysts warned that pension payments and other costs were climbing faster than revenues — a challenge in light of "the state’s sluggish economic recovery."

The scheduled increase in the state’s pension payment puts Christie in a bind as he starts to develop a spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in July.

For years, governors of both parties didn’t fund the pension and health care plans for public workers to balance their budgets, putting them in about an $86 billion hole. To plug the gap, Christie and lawmakers required public workers to pay more and committed to larger pension payments each year until 2018. The current contribution is $1.7 billion and is set to rise to $2.4 billion in next fiscal year.

Christie suggested Tuesday that money would be better spent on other things: "That’s nearly $1 billion that we can’t spend on education. That we can’t invest in infrastructure improvement. That we can’t use to put more cops on the street. That we won’t have available to us to increase access to health care."

He called those "the consequences of failing to engage in an attitude of choice," and warned lawmakers that the type of tax increases they have proposed — such as a bump for those making more than $1 million — would cover little of the gap.

UNIONS BLAST CHRISTIE

Unions blasted the governor for even suggesting the state should find a way out of making the payments. Hetty Rosenstein, state director at Communications Workers of America, said it speaks to the "whole integrity of government."

"The state of New Jersey must meet its pension obligation, just as it has to meet the obligation for any other debt," she said. "He’s really talking about defaulting. Just like any other debt, you have to make the pension obligation. You have to be able to do that."

The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, said Christie’s remarks implied a return to "irresponsible funding practices" and are "utterly unacceptable." Spokesman Steve Baker said the 2011 overhaul was hard enough for its members.

"They’re paying significantly more out of pocket for their pensions even though they’re the ones who had been always contributing to their pensions in the first place," Baker said.

Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D-Camden) said "it would be a break of the public trust to not make those payments." Sweeney tried to flip Christie’s rosy words about the state’s future around on him.

"You hear about people’s dreams," Sweeney said. "How about people who dream about having a retirement? If we don’t continue, their dreams are broken. We are not backing off of that."

Star-Ledger staff writers Susan K. Livio, Salvador Rizzo and Matt Friedman contributed to this report.

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