The Record is right here. The budget standoff needs to come to an end and everyone concerned — the governor, Senate and Assembly Democrats, state Republicans and all the varied interests, taxpayers included — need to understand that the solution to years of bad budget votes will be painful. It will involve even more painful cuts than included in the proposed tab, and possibly even more tax hikes down the road.
Politicians of both parties have been balancing the budget with borrowing and gimmicks for so long that this state faces an enduring financial crisis — a crisis that would only be exacerbated in the long run by the plan floated by Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, D-Camden.
For example, the Assembly plan would carve $300 million out of a proposed $1.4 billion contribution to the state pension fund. That doesn’t sound like a bad cut — until you realize that the state hasn’t made a significant pension fund contribution in a decade and that it now faces pension obligations that total an estimated $23 billion and growing.
What’s more, there’s talk of using the penny sales tax hike to help relieve property taxes instead — although that would merely take money out of one pocket instead of another.
The sales tax is only one part of the bitter medicine and tough measures ahead if this state is to get its financial house in order. The state pension system is in desperate need of reform. State employee pay and benefits are out of control, and a new contract must be negotiated next year.
And it will require real tax reform — perhaps a shift from property taxes to income and corporate taxes, maybe a state property tax, significant government consolidation, etc. But that will have to wait until this budget is adopted.
Get on with it.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
Hank Kalet 