Fixing government in New Jersey

The problem with government in New Jersey is manifold. On the one hand, there is too much of it; but on the other, there are too many areas that are undermanned and have not been able to keep up with growth.

The plight of the state Department of Environmental Protection is an example of how state government has failed New Jersey’s citizens. As The Record of Bergen County points out:

Staff cuts during the Whitman administration weakened the DEP’s enforcement power, critics say. Despite hopes that the McGreevey administration would change course, environmental activists complain that staffing levels remained consistent.

The agency has just 175 caseworkers to oversee 16,000 contaminated sites.

Bradley M. Campbell, the DEP commissioner from 2002 to 2005, said he tried to make the agency run effectively without using understaffing as an excuse. But he said the staff was so overwhelmed that it was impossible to even pinpoint the number of contaminated sites and accurately chart the agency’s progress in dealing with them.

“The fact is that there was a hodgepodge of hazardous site lists, a jumble of information that made it impossible to get hold of what was out there,” Campbell said.

“Many of the problems have existed for decades,” he said. “Overhauling is not going to take overnight.”

In a recent embarrassment, it was discovered that the DEP had removed more than 1,800 sites — including 300 in North Jersey — from their list of contaminated sites last year because the properties had no case managers. The sites left out included the old Kingsland Landfill in Lyndhurst, which harbors a stew of industrial and household waste, a toxic goop that accumulated during a half-century of unregulated dumping.

At the same time, there is an abundance of unnecessary employees elsewhere. The Star-Ledger, in a telling editorial, offers some numbers:

From 1990 to 2000, government employment nationally grew 13 percent but only 2 percent in New Jersey. From 2000 to 2005, however, government payrolls across the country rose by 4.9 percent but 9 percent in New Jersey, with no corresponding population increase to justify the jump.

From December 2000 until now, New Jersey’s private sector lost about 3,000 jobs, but government added 53,000, each with generous health benefits and pensions.

In the first quarter of this year, 25,000 public-sector jobs were created throughout the nation. Since New Jersey ac counts for 3 percent of the national work force, it should have added 750 government jobs. Instead, it put 4,800 more people on the public payroll.

A review of the data leads to an unavoidable conclusion: Any significant, sustained property tax relief is contingent on shrinking government.

But it is not likely to be as easy as it might sound. Gov. Whitman slashed government spending and in the process gutted the DEP, but that approach has come back to haunt the state as several high-profile contamination cases in North Jersey show. The McGreevey administration, on the other hand, was a bastion of patronage and unnecessary government growth — boosting the state’s payroll without improving its provision of services.

Both approaches were failures and now the state is facing a fiscal implosion that, because of the competing layers of government, inefficiencies and the state’s culture of legal corruption could lead to a property tax revolt.

The real answer is to work smarter, to eliminate patronage and double-dipping while consolidating and reconfiguring local and county governments to ensure that there are enough local police and teachers, but not an overabundance of administrative positions.

Taxpayers want property taxes lowered, but not if it means boosting other taxes. Basically, they want better and more efficient government.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet