Hypocrisy Watch: As Christie Tells State to Tighten its Belt, He Increases His Own Payroll by $2 Million

[Update: As news sources have noted, the salary increase is not as large as recently reported.  Indeed, it is only--ahem--a 4.3% increase over Corzine.  Some of the Christie apologists would have us believe that a governor who is proposing across the board cuts for every other area of state government and a Constitutional Amendment limiting growth in government to 2.5% to increase his own costs and do it above the limit of the Amendment he is proposing somehow makes the whole thing not hypocritical on Christie's behalf.  On top of that, as Christie asks for sacrifices from everyone else in New Jersey, it turns out the average Christie employee is paid nearly $10,000 a year more than the average Corzine employee.  The Christie apologists certainly an interesting argument, but it simply does not hold water and does not make the story any different.]

Despite all of the rhetoric coming from Chris Christie about overspending, the need to cut government, and the need for all New Jerseyans to do more with less, how New Jersey residents should share the sacrifice, reports out yesterday show Governor Christie has increased his own office's payroll by $2 million, a 27% increase over Jon Corzine last year.

Christie, who wants to slash spending everywhere else and lay off 1,300 State Workers, has more employees than his predecessor.  And despite constant ear-wrangling from Christie about state employees making too much money, Christie has nearly doubled the number of employees making $100,000 a year or more.

Unfortunately, this is a pattern of hypocricy for Christie, not an isolated incident.  Christie rails on corruption and then hired a lawyer with taxpayer dollars who was an "unidicted co-conspirator" in a case prosecuted by his very own Lieutenant Governor.  And despite what Chrities says about public officials abusing the pension plan and double-dipping, he hired Wendy Galloway to the Department of State last month, who earns $87,000 a year from her state pension and is now being paid $90,000 on top of that by taxpayers like you and I.

When will the state's editorial boards start to call Christie out on his rampant hypocrisy?