Tag: Chris Christie

Placing a cap on sanity

Property tax caps do not work. Ask the people in Colorado Springs who are doing without street lights. Hell, ask the people right here in New Jersey what happens when a cap is imposed, even when it is a rather loose 4 percent.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, sums up the problem pretty straightforwardly: Caps. CBPP says, “may hold down property taxes,” but “they are likely to impair local governments’ ability to provide education, public safety, and other services residents demand and need. They also are likely to make the local revenue system more regressive.”

Property tax caps do nothing to change the main drivers behind higher property taxes. They cannot slow the increase in the cost of health care or fuel, for example, which reflects forces outside of the control of local officials. Nor do they change the demand for local public services, such as quality K-12 education, public safety, and good roads.

There are ways of mitigating these problems — replacing property taxes with state funding, giving citizens a right to override caps at the ballot box, shifting revenue from property taxes to other sources — but they rarely are invoked and when they are tend to exacerbate the impact of the cap. (Richer communities can afford to override, while lower-income communities cannot; sales tax and use fees tend to hit lower-income residents hardest.)

Academic studies have found that in most cases, property tax limits have led not to a shrinkage in the public sector but instead to a shift to other revenue sources, such as state aid and fees. In places where the caps have had an effect, however, the outcome has been negative.

And yet, Gov. Chris Christie is still pushing this dubious notion, telling New Jersey mayors to expect his proposed 2.5 percent tax levy cap to gain passage (it has to be approved by the state Legislature and then by voters in November).

Christie said he will propose legislation next week to put a constitutional amendment instituting the cap on the November ballot. If legislators pass the ballot question and it’s approved by voters, municipalities will have to hold their property tax growth 2.5 percent a year unless voters overrule it by referendum. Under Christie’s proposal, if a town raises property taxes less than the capped level one year, it will be able to bank those savings and exceed the cap in future years if necessary.

New Jersey residents already have dysfunctional government, including too many different government entities and too great a reliance on property taxes. But there remains some flexibility in the system, unlike the travesty that California and Colorado governments have become. Do we really want to fix our problems by making them worse?

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The dangers of governing with a mandate you haven’t earned

Gov. Chris Christie won 49 percent of the vote in November to defeat an unpopular incumbent governor by 5 percentage points.

To many — primarily his Republican supporters — that was a landslide and gave him a mandate. But the math is pretty simple: More than half of the state’s voters backed someone other than Christie and — a key point that has been lost in the discussion — only one Assembly seat changed parties. Christie’s win, it would seem, had more to do with him not being the other guy.

And yet, he has been governing aggressively from the right, using a hatchet to chop the state budget into bits, apparently ready to make Grover Norquist’s goal of a government small enough to drown in a bath tub a reality.

So, what has been the response? The state’s papers (aside from conservative Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine and me) have given him a fairly wide berth. The public, however, appears to have a far less generous view.

Monmouth University released its latest poll today, showing that the governor’s approval rating has been on the decline and that many are dissatisfied with his budget:

When Governor Chris Christie unveiled his first state budget last month, he claimed the cuts were tough but fair. The latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll finds that Garden State residents agree with only half of that assessment. The cuts may be tough, but New Jerseyans see some groups, including teachers, as being disproportionately hurt. The poll also finds the governor coming up with the short end of the stick in his battle with the state teachers’ union.

Governor Christie’s job rating currently stands at 41% approve to 44% disapprove among all state residents, and 42% to 44% among registered voters. As a comparison, 34% of New Jerseyans gave thumbs up to the prior governor, Jon Corzine, at the same point in his term, while 37% gave a negative rating.

The driving force behind public opinion on the governor is his budget plan, something that an overwhelming 9-in-10 New Jerseyans have been paying some attention to. Governor Christie’s proposal gets mixed reviews. Among those aware of Christie’s budget plan, 46% say that his proposal is the product of tough and thoughtful choices, while an identical 46% see it as more of the same old political dealings. This may not represent an overwhelming endorsement of the incumbent’s plan, but it is decidedly more positive than opinion of Jon Corzine’s first budget, which only 32% saw as tough and thoughtful, compared to fully 60% who felt it was the product of backroom deals.

Furthermore, 22% of the public say they are satisfied with Chris Christie’s budget plan and another 32% say they can live with it even if they are not necessarily satisfied. However, a sizable 44% report being dissatisfied with the governor’s proposal. Again, these numbers are not great, but slightly better than his predecessor’s – only 10% of New Jerseyans were satisfied with Corzine’s initial budget, while 41% were dissatisfied.

To be fair, the governor had a disastrous fiscal situation to deal with. The state has been spending more than it has been taking in for years, and it has been clear since the day Jon Corzine took office in 2006 that something had to be done. To his credit, Gov. Christie is attempting to put the state on sounder fiscal footing; his approach, however, ignores public priorities and has little to do with fairness.

I’ve written about this before — including yesterday — but this budget leaves tax revenue on the table in the form of the expired income tax surcharge on those making more than $400,000. It slashes spending on public education (while leaving the charter school law in place, meaning that charters can form and ultimately siphon money from traditional public schools); asks poor seniors to pay fees for services and so on. There is a lot of pain being spread here, but the folks at the upper end of the income bracket, the ones most able to afford cuts, are the ones being spared.

We will have three more years of this — unless this petition to recall the governor catches fire (not likely). The best hope is a concerted and focused campaign by New Jersey voters to push back against the governor’s budget, to make it clear that the priorities he has outlined in his spending plan are not priorities supported by  a majority of New Jerseyans and to give support to legislators of either party who are willing to stand up and make it clear that they will not support the budget.

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Ideology, shortsightedness and the Christie administration

A story in today’s Star-Ledger gets at the crux of the ideological manner in which Chris Christie has approached the state budget.

I should make it clear that all governors approach budgeting with an ideological bias — it is at the center of what it means to creat policy and budgets, by assigning dollar values to programs, are policy documents.

But Gov. Christie has rhetorically approached the budget as if his only goal was weening the state off unnecessary spending. He has talked repeatedly about how we have lived beyond our means for too long and how we need to stop, pretending that his cuts have had little to do with his political philosophy.

That, of course, is horse hockey (as Col. Potter might say on “M*A*S*H”). Christie has targeted the teachers union as the boogeyman of his administration, while slashing programs designed to ameliorate the effects of economic hardship (changes in unemployment benefits, for instance).

Today’s Ledger, cites another program cut (as part of a larger story on the potential loss of federal aid) that stands out for its callousness toward women and its consistency with the anti-abortion right’s antipathy toward women’s health issues:

The state is giving up a chance to get federal money for family-planning services after Christie proposed cutting all funding for doctor visits that include gynecological visits, birth control, breast exams and disease testing and treatment. Because the Christie administration doesn’t want to put up any money for the services, the state had to withdraw an application asking the federal government to fund 90 percent of the bill, a decision Democratic lawmakers have criticized.

Christie, as he made clear during the campaign, is a pro-lifer. That does not automatically place him in what I’ll call the antiwomen camp; but the antiabortion movement has a history of attacking women’s health programs. Christie’s budget cut must be seen in this vein, especially when paired with his unwillingness to reinstate the higher marginal rate on those who earn more than $400,000 a year.

The state’s press has been a bit soft on the governor since he came to office, allowing him to write his own narrative and create his own political story. In doing so, Christie gets to portray himself as being above politics, acting without the kinds of motivations that drive other politicians. That, of course, could not be further from the truth.

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Bully for Christie or, more accurately, Christie’s a bully

Has anyone noticed a particular rhetorical trope being used by our governor, one designed to belittle, demean and demonize his opponents by attributing unsavory motivation to anyone who disagrees? It isn’t just that he and the teachers union are on other sides of the school aid issue, but that they are using students, making them “pawns” in a game of political chess. Opponents are special interests. Opponents are the old guard, defenders of the status quo, etc.

It is a tactic used by most politicians, but there is something particularly aggressive and divisive about the way Chris Christie is using it. Prepare for a particularly ugly four years.

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