New Jersey Policy Perspective is calling the state’s latest budget a “Band-Aid” budget. And he’s right. In an op-ed on Sunday by Jon Shure in The Record and again in an e-mail “alert,” Shure and NJPP pretty much lay out the issues that the governor and Legislature delayed dealing with, in particular the structural deficit, the pension deficit and the dubious fiscal legacies of Govs. Whitman and McGreevey.
Overall, the budget was designed with November’s election in mind:
The kind of budget this would be was established back in February when the governor set a relatively low bar by saying he wasn’t about to ask legislators to make a heavy lift in a year when every seat in the Assembly and state Senate is up for election.
Next year will be different.
By the next budget season, lawmakers should have acted on Corzine’s soon-to-be-announced “asset monetization” plan for filling the deficit hole (or whatever is proposed if that doesn’t fly) and vetted a new school-funding formula, among other things.
We can expect a far more contentious and controversial round of budgeting. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Debating priorities and finding honest ways to pay for them can be messy. But in the long run, that’s better than denial.
Next year, New Jersey’s budgeteers should be judged by how much courage and vision they show — not how fast they can finish.
This year, well, let’s just hope the Band-Aid is enough to staunch teh bleeding.
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Hank Kalet 