This makes too much sense. Schools should serve as educational role models and banning unhealthy food like candy, cakes, chips and soda and replacing them with healthy alternatives might serve as a lesson for kids at a time when childhood obesity is rampant.
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.
Yes, we have a budget.But is it a good one.
This is a first draft of next week’s Dispatches (for this week’s, on Tom Kean and Social Security, click here). Expect some changes as the week goes on.
Even with a budget, there is more hard work ahead
At least for the moment.
The governor and leaders of both houses of the state Legislature pulled the state back from the precipice after a six-day shutdown.
But there are serious questions as to whether the budget will have the kind of impact necessary to fix the state’s long-term fiscal woes.
The deal announced July 6 by Gov. Jon S. Corzine would increase the sales tax by the proposed penny on the dollar. However, rather than using all of the revenue the hike was expected to generate to help plug an estimated $4.5 billion budget shortfall, half of it will be used for what the governor is calling property tax relief.
In addition, the deal calls for the sales tax hike to stay in place for at
least 10 years with half a cent going into a property tax relief fund, which would be created by a constitutional amendment. And in the unlikely event that the state’s finances are ever put back in order, more of the sales tax can be diverted into the fund.While the deal ended the government shutdown, it leaves the state facing serious financial issues. The governor initially included $1.1 million in revenue from the sales tax hike in his original $30.9 billion budget, but the deal now will include about a half a billion dollars in other new “revenue enhancements” and cuts to plug the hole.
That leaves us with the distinct possibility that, when budget time rolls around next year, the governor will be facing the same kind of difficult math that he faced in structuring this year’s spending plan when he started with a structural deficit of $4.5 billion.
The reality is that the state has been spending like a college student with his first credit card for years, running up the balance without giving a thought to where the money is coming from. That left the state with a $4.5 billion budget gap before the governor put pen to ledger in drafting this year’s budget.
And this is by no means the worst of it. Press reports over the last few months have placed next year’s gap at $5.5 bilLion and there is the not-so-small matter of coming up with enough cash to cover the state pension plan, now in a more than $18 billion hole.
That’s why the governor was so adamant about the sales tax increase.
Assembly Democrats — especially those down in the southwestern corner of the state — had a different take on the matter. They viewed the tax hike as political suicide, likely to cause voters to chase enough Democrats from office to hand the Legislature back to the Republicans.
Their frame of reference was the tax revolt of 1990 and 1991, when voters changed the Democrats from office following a $2.8 billion tax hike pushed through the Legislature buy then-Gov. Jim Florio. The tax hike was designed to prevent a budget shortfall and to raise money to pay for an anticipated school funding decision that would force the state to pump more money into poor urban school districts.
The chief component of the tax hike was a penny increase in the sales tax to 7 cents and its expansion to other products and services, including toilet paper, which became a symbol for anti-tax activists.
While Gov. Corzine’s budget was far less aggressive in its remedies than it could have been, it was seen by Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts (D-Camden) and the lower house as politically unpalatable and was dead on arrival.
That set up the showdown that ultimately resulted in a shutdown of state government — including the Atlantic City casinos — and the compromise budget we now have in place.
Politically, this is probably the best budget we could have hoped for. It does begin the difficult work of increasing revenue and makes significant cuts in general spending, while also contributing more money to the state pension plan than anyone has contributed in almost a decade.
And there will be some money for property tax relief (about a half a billion), though not nearly enough to call it a true reform. (We’ll have to hope that the special legislative session anticipated for later this summer can accomplish this.)
In the end, the deal does that it was supposed to do: end the government shutdown and put a budget in place.
No one, however, should have any illusions that next year’s budget discussions are going to be easier.
Dispatches: In a fog on Social Security
Exactly where does state Sen. Tom Kean, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, stand on Social Security? Read about it in this week’s Dispatches.
The Pelfrey watch
Can I bit be a bit selfish?
Can I make a pitch for keeping super prospect Mike Pelfrey in AA, at least for another week?
I know the arguments in favor of bringing him up: He’s young and the Mets need a starter; they have a big lead and room for error; and now seems as good a time as any.
But I am selfish. If Pelfrey stays in AA through Friday or Saturday, then there is a chance that he’ll pitch Friday night when the Binghampton Mets visit the Trenton Thunder, and he might even pitch against the Yankees’ top pitching prosepct Phil Hughes.
And if that happens, my trip to Waterfront Park has the potential to be rather special — adding a little luster to what promises to be a special night anyway when we take my 5-year-old nephew Joey to his first ball game.
Time for a compromise in Trenton
Still no budget, though the Star-Ledger is reporting that the governor has placed a new compromise on the table in the hopes of ending the impasse and getting the state back to work. According to the Ledger,
Aides to the governor said Corzine has offered a new plan that would provide 50 percent of the sales tax increase to property tax relief each year if voters approve it in a constitutional amendment. Using a constitutional amendment would mean lawmakers would be forced to use half the sales tax for property tax relief even if there is a big budget crunch. The new plan modifies a deal offered by Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex).
It seems like a logical plan, one that might address all of the concerns out there. And it is similar to one proposed by the Ledger in an editorial called “A budget impasse answer“:
Instead of placing the $550 million in a fund that wouldn’t be tapped for year, why not add that to the property tax rebates this year? The current proposed budget allocates slightly more to property tax rebates than last year but considerably less than Corzine promised in his campaign.
If some of the sales tax increase went to property tax re bates — instead of the fund for future relief — Democrats could campaign next year on the strength of the enhanced re bates. And if the Legislature ever gets around to addressing property tax relief, the funds at hand would amount to about $1.6 billion. This should appeal to Roberts because last year he successfully fought to retain the re bates after Codey, then the governor, proposed eliminating them to help balance the budget. At the time, Roberts was concerned that if the rebate program went away, so too would the money. That would make finding a way to lower property taxes that much more difficult. That’s a justified concern.
The key, utimately, is ending what The Record calls the “Trenton’s train wreck” — one it blames — rightly, I’d say — on Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts.
Mr. Roberts has had 3½ months to offer a fiscally responsible alternative to Governor Corzine’s $30.9 billion budget plan, but as of late yesterday afternoon, most of the Assembly speaker’s proposals were still sketchy. Indeed, for all the talk about open government in Trenton, the most recent budget talks have been held behind closed doors, as Mr. Roberts and his Democratic allies in the Assembly try to find a way to avoid Mr. Corzine’s proposed penny sales tax increase.
While the governor solicited all sorts of public input on his budget plan, Mr. Roberts has played it far too close to the vest. Although Mr. Roberts and the Assembly have had months to respond to Mr. Corzine’s proposals, all that anybody has gotten is trial balloons that may or may not get off the ground.
The governor has made major concessions on the budget already, without compromising the basic goal of imposing fiscal responsibility on a state that has begged and borrowed over the years so it could avoid making tough decisions. The ball is in the Assembly’s court. Let’s see if Speaker Roberts and his allies are willing to keep it in play.
Hank Kalet 