Author: hankkalet

The governor appears ready to turn over every rock in an effort to fix the state’s decrepit tax system. In yesterday’s Star-Ledger, he floated a plan to borrow about $7 billion to create an aid fund designed to encourage towns to consolidate some or all of their services. It’s a bold move fund, certainly, though it raises questions about the state’s debt load.

State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) was quoted in opposition, both on fiscal and constitutional grounds:

“I honestly don’t understand what he means,” Lance said of the governor’s remarks. “I do not favor borrowing to provide a stream of funding for property tax relief. It violates every principle of sound fiscal policy that I know. It’s how we’ve gotten into trouble in the first place. Here we go again.”

But this may not be as fiscally questionable as Sen. Lance says — provided the money is used to pay off local debt (think of it as a refinancing). Local debt is one of the biggest impediments to municipal and school district consolidation — when consolidation of the Monroe and Jamesburg school districts was raised as a possibility by the state about 10 years ago, Monroe balked because it would have seen a tax hike tied to new debt payments. If those debt payments were off the table or somehow neutralized, it would allow the discussion to occur on a different plane. Would consolidation happen? Probably not, though, I can’t be sure. What I do know, however, is that a discussion of this sort probably would benefit both towns, possibly resulting in consolidation of libraries, senior services and/or other functions that could broaden services and save money.

The governor also apparently is prepared to rewrite the state school formula to shift some money to middle class districts, make some painful budget cuts, reform pensions and raise some taxes while toying with the state’s income tax brackets.

The effort, as Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran points out, is likely to make just about everyone angry about something. He has the best quote I’ve seen regarding reform: “anyone who pretends this can be solved without real pain is smoking crack.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

This week’s Dispatches — on home, change and memory — is up on the site.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

A true testament to our political discourse. From WaPo: “The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war.”

If the GOP is turning then….

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

It is truly telling that the refusal by the Knicks front office to overpay for a player is the best news we’ve had about the team in a very long time.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

From Bob Herbert:

The United States had complete command of the moral and ethical high ground in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the world was with us.

For some reason, the Bush administration deliberately abandoned those heights to pursue policies that were not just morally questionable, but reprehensible. Administration officials have fought like tigers to retain the right to torture. They have imprisoned people willy-nilly, without regard to whether they had actually committed offenses against the United States. They set up a system of kangaroo courts at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was such an affront to the idea of justice that it should have sent shudders of shame down the spines of decent Americans.

And the president wants to keep it that way. Even with the recent Supreme Court ruling that the administration is not above the law and must abide by treaties, we are still faced with the prospect that the administration will ignore the ruling and/or the Congress will rubberstamp the Bush approach.

More from Herbert:

That rumbling you hear is the sound of the founding fathers spinning in their graves. Incredibly, under the trials originally authorized by President Bush, prosecutors would have been allowed to introduce evidence obtained through torture and other forms of coercion. The Bush administration didn’t just leave the moral and ethical high ground. It sped away with great enthusiasm.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press