Chris Christie – Page 11

Money where your mouth is

I want to go back to something that former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman said early in her first term. Budgets, she said, are where politicians prove their priorities, where they back up their talk with cash.

The history of Trenton, of course, is that politics has been the priority, with legislators of both parties larding on the spending and using an array of gimmicks to both win votes and avoid angering the natives. Cut the income tax, as Whitman did, but pay for it with fancy accounting tricks. Sell state roads to the Turnpike, as Florio did. Borrow, borrow, borrow, as McGreevey did.

Chris Christie, who replaces Gov. Jon Corzine next month, is promising not to play these games. Like Corzine, he is promising to return the state’s finances to a level of sanity that no one can actually remember. Corzine — as I think history will show — did some good, even if his tenure in office ultimately has to be viewed as a failure.

Christie has laid the gauntlet down, ordering severe cuts in state spending targeted toward eliminating programs that do not meet the mission of individual departments and consolidating duplicated services. This comes from a memo obtained by The Star-Ledger and shows that, just maybe, the new governor plans to play hardball.

The question, of course, is what he views as necessary programs. When Whitman was governor, she slashed the budget of the Department of Environmental Protection and eliminated the public advocate — moves that saved some money but made it far too easy for the business community to escape scrutiny.

She balanced the budget and cut the state income tax rate, but left the state in a far worse position than when she took office as future governors were left to rebuild the regulatory apparatus and plug the massive hole she blew in the state’s pension accounts.

Christie may succeed in slashing state spending, but how and who will pay the price? Will it be towns or schools in the form of state aid? Or the state’s healthcare or prescription assistance programs? Or the DEP? Or the arts community? Some of these groups already are hurting, thanks to Corzine’s budget cutting, and can only be further damaged by additional cuts.

It is not just about cutting spending. It is about priorities. Christie didn’t outline those for us during his campaign — even as he sung the zero-based budgeting song. (What is the Ledger talking about, by the way, in this story? How does this memo tie back to the zero-based nonsense all politicians spout?) He has until his first budget address to do so. Let’s hope his priorities are the same as the bulk of the state’s residents.

Poll: Public supports consolidations, sort of

A Quinnipiac Poll issued last week contained what I think is an interesting nugget that indicates that New Jerseyans may not be as selfish as I’ve come to think..

There is no doubt that we have too much government in New Jersey. We have a bloated state government, expensive and often superfluous county governments and more local entities than any other state on a per capita basis. All told, there are more tha 1,400 taxing entities in the state, an absurd figure that creates its own momentum for more and more taxes.

South Brunswick and Monroe, for instance, are each served by five separate and independent taxing authorities — three fire districts, a school district and governing body. Jamesburg is served by three, Cranbury by two, Plainsboro by three and so on.

And yet we keep hearing that consolidation of towns and school districts is off the table.

But what should we make of last week’s poll which showed a huge majority of respondents answer yes to this question:

One recommendation to raise the money needed to fund a cut in property taxes is
to merge neighboring municipal governments and school districts. Would you
support or oppose merging school districts or governments in the county in which
you live if it meant lowering your property taxes?

The numbers: 73 percent favored mergers, with little variation based on political affiliation, gender or race.

And support has increased over the last three years, from 61 percent who said they’d support mergers in 2006 to 73 percent today.

The question, however, is this: Can these poll results be translated into real merger proposals? I’m not so sure. Much of what I know is anecdotal, but my read on the situation based on discussions with people in the area — mayors and council members, school officials, parents, seniors, etc. — is that most people favor mergers when their communities are not affected. Their support, basically, is theoretical.

That said, I think the state could move this question along if it were to force the consolidation question onto the agenda. We have a commission meant to look into the issue — one that has could have had more teeth — but it has been dormant. That was Gov. Jon Corzine’s fault. It’s now in Chris Christie’s hands and I can only hope he will let the committee loose on the question and develop some hard data that can be used to convince voters — forget the mayors — that they may just save some money, get better services and not lose the rather amorphous notion of identity.

Christie to attack the patchworks

Talking to municipal officials as the gubernatorial election wound down, I was struck by how many of them viewed Chris Christie as an ally in their attempts to beat back the tides of change. Forget the affordable housing issue, for a second, on which he does appear ready to make suburban mayors happy. It is on consolidation — or, to be more precise, in opposition to consolidation — that many mayors and others were looking with optimism toward the now-governor-elect.

Talk to officials from many of the region’s towns and you discover rather quickly that they think there is too much government, just not at the home office. So, they look to the state for cash, but refuse to do what is necessary to streamline the state’s confusing web of government entities.

Corzine, in a small way, put the issue on the table; Christie avoided it, but sent signals that he was with the towns.

And now the former U.S. Attorney is the governor-elect, we have a better handle on where he stands on what may be the most important issue he could face. During a speech at the state League of Municipalities today,

Christie delivered a forceful speech in which he said he would use “every tool at my disposal to force change.”

“The people of the state of New Jersey will no longer stand for us asking, ‘What’s in it for me,'” he said at the luncheon at the annual League of Municipalities convention. “I believe the message from this last election, the message to me and to (Lt. Gov-elect) Kim Guadagno, is we have to start asking what’s in it for us. And what is in it for us is a period of continued pain, continued difficulty and continued challenge.”

The state has become a “patchwork of ‘what’s in it for me'” over the years, Christie said. “That attitude is no longer acceptable to the people of this state,” he said in a warning tone.

Though he never said the words “shared services” or “consolidation,” that’s the message the municipal leaders in the room said they heard.

“We’re talking about possible layoffs and consolidations that we’d prefer not to do,” said Ellen Dickson, president of Summit Common Council. “It’s going to be very painful but we have to do it or else the state will be unlivable.”

Are we looking at something analagous to Bill Clinton and welfare reform, or Ronald Reagan and nuclear weapons? A Republican president never could have pushed through the draconian reforms enacted by Clinton. It also is likely that a more dovish president than Reagan would have had difficulty selling anti-nuke efforts that Reagan pushed through.

In this case, Christie is perceived as a friend of the suburbs, unlike Corzine, so he might not stir up the kind of almost paranoid opposition to consolidation we’ve been hearing for a while. Let’s see where this goes.

Dispatches: It was all about Jersey

Dispatches is up — on the election. The column already has generated a comment, disagreement from the right (from someone calling himself MotherRedDog).

And after all of that spin………Obama did campaign for him often and yes the
money was big, and 25 percent of the voters said it WAS a referendum on
Obama…..spinning until you puke won’t change these facts.

I am willing to admit that this is not a good thing for the Obama administration, but to think that 25 percent of voters — not sure where the number comes from, but it’s what he offers — means much is absurd. That is fewer than voted for McCain last time.

In fact, fewer people voted for Chris Christie on Tuesday than voted for John McCain last year. The issue was turnout — a complete lack of faith in the incumbent, mostly deserved, suppressing turnout in urban areas at a time when suburban Democrats bailed on the party.

The evidence just doesn’t support the anti-Obama theory, at least not in New Jersey, where the president continues to poll well.

Define mandate

I’m not a big Mulshine fan, but this column pretty much covers it — at least as far as Christie is concerned.