Christie signs 100 bills into law and 'pocket vetoes' 50 more on last full day in office

Gov. Chris Christie, whose second and final term expires Tuesday at noon, has followed through on his promise to work up until his final moments in office.

Christie signed more than 100 bills into law Monday morning, including measures to ban bump stocks and give a few elected officials better pensions, while taking no action on 50 more, including controversial legislation that would have let public school districts merge their varsity sports teams.

Anything Christie doesn’t sign before heading for the exit — known as a "pocket veto" — has to begin the legislative process anew under Gov.-elect Phil Murphy in order to become law.

The bill action comes on the heels of announcements last week that Christie had granted 26 people clemency for a variety of criminal convictions and appointed dozens of his close advisers and allies to some of New Jersey’s hundreds of boards and commissions. Those appointments were viewed by many as a parting shot at Murphy, who will want to bring in his own people to help run the sprawling state bureaucracy.

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Pensions, drones, bump stocks: Highlights of bills Christie signs into law

New Jersey now becomes the second state after Massachusetts to ban bump stocks since the devices were used by Stephen Paddock in the Las Vegas shooting that killed at least 58 people and wounded hundreds more. It was already illegal in New Jersey to use the devices, which attach to a semi-automatic weapon and allows for a quicker trigger pull, but the new law also bans their sale or possession.

Christie, a Republican who has rejected multiple efforts by Democratic lawmakers to strengthen New Jersey's gun laws, said earlier this year he did not consider banning the “accessory” to be a gun law.

The lame-duck governor also signed a measure that helps elected officials receive larger pensions. The law appears to have been specifically designed to benefit former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, an ally of both Christie and the influential block of South Jersey Democrats, but it could also help an unknown number of other officials, including Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, D-Essex, and Sen. James Beach, D-Camden.

Redd was negatively affected by a 2007 law that said newly elected officials or current office holders who switched offices would be bumped from the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) to a less generous “defined contribution” system, similar to a 401(k). That’s what happened to Redd when she moved up from the City Council to the mayor’s office in 2010.

The new law, however, will let Redd enroll retroactively in PERS. Combined with her hiring last week to the Rowan University/Rutgers-Camden Board of Governors at a salary of $275,000, as first reported by Politico, Redd will now be able to triple her pension.

Other bills Christie signed strip the New Jersey Society of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of its power to enforce animal-cruelty laws, impose regulations on the use of drones and prohibit chewing tobacco and snuff in public schools.

Among the bills Christie did not act on was a measure that would have let high schools from the same district merge sports teams, an arrangement known as a “co-op.”

The legislation was inspired by a request from the West Windsor-Plainsboro regional school district last year to merge its varsity football programs, citing declining participation rates and safety concerns.

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, the state governing body for high school sports, has long allowed schools to share sports programs under certain circumstances, but the bill would have removed many restrictions and limited the association’s oversight over new mergers.

The NJSIAA opposed the measure on those grounds, claiming it had the potential to create “super teams” that would have negatively affected competition in New Jersey.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com