Three-plus months after Gov. Jon Corzine unveiled his $33 billion budget, the Republican legislative contingent is offering its response.
Too bad the response is as politically motivated as it is flawed.
According to a story in today’s Star-Ledger, the GOP wants to “to restore rebates and pay for big road jobs without toll and gas tax increases” by shifting more than $1 billion in spending from the cities to the suburbs.
The GOP plan would be financed largely by cutting aid to urban school districts and municipalities, as well as targeting state patronage and management jobs, legislative grants and public worker fringe benefits and salaries.
The paper describes the GOP plan this way:
The largest cuts to finance the GOP plan include $157 million from “special municipal aid” and $105 million allotted for the 31 poorest school districts.
They would save another $100 million by eliminating “anticipated pork” for legislative districts, $90 million through more efficient purchasing practices, $85 million by mandating new pension and health insurance givebacks, $69 million in less state subsidies for urban enterprise zones and $68 million by axing patronage and management jobs. The long list includes another $900 million in cuts.
According to a Republican press release, the
plan that identifies $1.32 billion in unnecessary spending in Governor Corzine’s
Fiscal Year 2009 budget proposal and uses it to restore property tax relief and aid to state municipalities, while eliminating the need for gas tax increases to finance transportation needs.
The GOP describes the proposal as both a short-term fix and long-term solution to the state’s annual budget crisis.
“Our primary concern in crafting a state budget should not be the priorities of
Trenton politicians, but those of the taxpayers who are demanding a more affordable New Jersey and a government that is more accountable,” said (Assembly Minority Leader Alex) DeCroce, R-Morris and Passaic. “This proposal is a reprioritization of state spending that provides more tax relief, a strategy to increase the share of pay-as-you-go funding for our state’s transportation program, and more money to reduce the debt burden now facing our children and grandchildren.”
But the key thing to understand about this budget proposal is that the winners would be the suburban constituents of the GOP and the losers would be urban Democrats. This is not to say that the Democrats have not fashioned their budget with this urban suburban split in mind, but it is disingenuous for the Republican leadership to pretend that this is any less political than that of their Democratic colleagues or that it will address the state’s needs in any real way.
One of the most interesting things about the budget plan is that it restores the rebates — something that contradicts the party’s criticisms when the new rebate plan was put into place.
The GOP does offer some structural proposals, but they are the kind that do little more than hamstring government: budget caps and supermajority votes on tax increases.
Some proposals do make sense: placing some borrowing plans on the ballot for voter approval, creating Initiative & Referendum (notice how the GOP always proposes this when it is out of power but then fails to deliver?) and some pension reforms.
But the key to understanding this is the politics. Everything in this state grows from a political agenda and until we can move away from partisanship for the sake of partisanship — which only creates pandering and a one-upping approach to government — and start focusing on the philosphical underpinning of the state’s government, we will not be able to climb out of this morass.
The questions we need to be asking have to do with what the proper level of government services should be and how we pay for it and not which political party will benefit the most.
Hank Kalet 