TRENTON — The late Rodney Dangerfield used to tell a joke about going to a fight and a hockey game breaking out.

On Wednesday, Gov. Chris Christie went to a transportation conference and a fight with the Democratic Legislature broke out.

But before he made headlines by calling the Democrats "jokers" and the Office of Legislative Services budget officer "the Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers" for revenue shortfall predictions, the governor managed to talk to the transportation group about transportation.

The governor urged members of the New Jersey Alliance for Action to support his $1.6 billion annual transportation capital plan that pays for road and bridge repairs and transit projects.

"I need your help," Christie said during the packed conference with a who’s who of New Jersey transportation officials at the Trenton Marriott. "This is the craziest 40 days in Trenton every year. The Legislature is like the kids who get their homework assignment in January. They know every week that the work’s gotta get done by July 1, but of course .. almost nothing’s done. We can’t let this be one of the things that falls through the cracks."

The governor said if the bill is not passed within 40 days, transportation projects will grind to a halt.

"It should not be a partisan issue, because the men and women we put to work with this capital plan don’t care whether this is a Republican-sponsored bill or a Democrat-sponsored bill," he said. "They don’t care. What they care about is that they get the opportunity to improve the infrastructure of our state and to support their families."

Just hours later, the state treasurer said that instead of using it for transportation capital projects, the state will use $260 million it gets from various revenue sources, including New Jersey Turnpike Authority, to close its budget gap. The state will then borrow $260 million to help make $1.6 billion in capital transportation investments. Christie has pledged to rely less on borrowing and more on general funds to pay for transportation capital projects, but this delays the initiative.

"This is a one-year initiative, and we do not make this recommendation casually," Treasurer Andrew P. Sidamon-Eristoff told the Assembly Budget Committee.

New Jersey transportation expert Martin E. Robins, director emeritus of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University, said the action "shows how rickety the capital plan was that (Christie) put forward — with brave words about decreasing reliance on debt."

"We’re really falling right back into the capital financing that the governor criticized Jon Corzine for," Robins said.

Tom Hester Jr., communications director for the Assembly Democratic Majority Office, said that despite concerns about the governor’s borrowing and toll hikes, Democrats have been cooperative with transportation funding since he took office.

“Gov. Christie’s plan relies on borrowing billions without voter consent and hiking tolls, and now he wants to borrow even more transportation money without voter approval to pay for his income tax scheme that mostly benefits the mega-rich," Hester said. "The only joke on display here is the governor’s promise to make the Transportation Trust Fund operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

When Christie appeared at the last Alliance for Action annual transportation conference nearly 15 months ago, he had just terminated a commuter rail tunnel from Secaucus to Midtown Manhattan and the state’s Transportation Trust Fund was nearly bankrupt.

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This year, he said, "it’s good to be back under different circumstances than when I came the first time. If you think about where we were when I came here the first time, things were pretty tough and desperate, and things are getting better now. They’re not great yet, but they’re better — significantly better."

Star-Ledger staff writer Jarrett Renshaw contributed to this report.

Related coverage:

• Christie slams N.J. budget officer over shortfall projections, claims partisan influence