The boards of trustees of New Jersey's three largest public-sector union pension funds are looking for a new way to force the Christie administration and the Democrat-controlled Legislature to pay the billions of dollars owed to the pension funds.

The trustees of the pension funds—the Public Employees' Retirement System, the Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund and the Police and Firemen's Retirement System—filed a motion with Mercer County Assignment Judge Mary Jacobson on July 24 seeking permission to file an amended complaint.

In that complaint, the boards are asking that the approximately $4 billion Republican Gov. Chris Christie has diverted from the pension funds in the past two fiscal years be declared a debt and that the unions be named as creditors.