Tag: consolidation

Let debate on mergers happen

Republicans have done a good job of painting the consolidation question into a political one in this state, with conservative writers like Paul Mulshine and Republicans in the state Legislature accusing supporters of trying to eliminate Republican strongholds.

And that is unfortunate, because the question of whether small communities like Jamesburg, Pennington, Hightstown and many up in Bergen County should exist as independent municipalties needs to be explored.

Dennis McNerney, Bergen County executive, is a staunch advocate for exploring consolidation — his state of the county last year focused on his plan to use Bergen as a model county to see if savings could be had from consolidations and shared-services arrangements.

That speech prompted Gov. Jon Corzine to appoint McNerney to the the Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission.

But McNerney, thanks to an archaic and undemocratic state Senate tradition, is unlikely to join the panel anytime soon — if ever.

As Charles Stile reported last week, Gerald Cardinale — a Bergen County Republican — “can use ‘senatorial courtesy’ powers to blackball a gubernatorial nomination from Bergen County,” a tactic he plans to use agaisnt McNerney because he believes the Democrats “will simply rubber stamp ‘preconceived’ recommendations to merge smaller towns with larger ones.”

“I don’t want to take one little chance on somebody with a preconceived notion shoving down taxpayers’ throats that they have to join together and take the risk of paying more than they are paying,” Cardinale said. “That person [McNerney] has a preconceived notion that I consider to be ill-conceived.”

Of course, Cardinale is doing exactly what he fears McNerney will do — acting on a preconceived notion to prevent the open discussion of reforms with which he disagrees. I doubt Cardinale would be opposing McNerney if he was a staunch opponent of consolidation. Nor do I believe the Bergen County senator is calling for a panel made up of people who have given little thought to the issues they will be asked to address.

McNerney deserves a place on the consolidation panel sitting across from some equally staunch opponent of consolidations. That will create the friction needed to light a fire under the issue and get some real answers.

Then again, I really don’t hold out much hope for the merger panel, given that it was defanged during the legislative process, transformed from a commission with real power into an advisory panel that can be ignored — which is, I fear, the preferred approach in both houses of the state Legislature.

In any case, there is something wrong when one member of a 40-member legislative body can scuttle a gubernatorial appointment. There is nothing courteous about that kind of tradition at all.

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Paying for police– and government in general

I’m not sure how I feel about this decision, which nullified a state plan to required the 89 rural communities without police departments to pay the state for State Police coverage.

The plan, which would have cost the towns $12.6 million (a sliver of the $87 million the state says it costs to police those towns), was part of a larger effort by the state to make smaller communities understand the actual costs of continuing to function as independent municipalities. The state’s argument has been that state law enforcement has allowed these towns to receive police protection without having to pay for it — unlike towns with their own forces or those that may have contracts with neighboring communities.

The cost to the state is relatively minor, but the new cost in small towns would have meant higher property tax bills.

The problem, as I see it, is not the governor’s plan — which seems fair when you consider that residents of Rocky Hill, for instance, pay for State Police services out of their state income tax, the same as I do, but they get to use state cops as their primary law enforcement option. I have to pay additional money for local police.

At the same time, we all rely on the State Police for a lot of things, and these small towns have been operating in this way for years and years — so this is not the easiest of issues to resolve.

The issue raises some basic questions about the vast number of towns in this state and whether we should be pushing them or forcing them to band together as larger communities so that services can be provided and provided using an economy of scale.

The questions of police protection, of library spending (i.e., Jamesburg), recreation programs, school funding, etc., have to be addressed within a broader context. We can’t keep dealing with each of them in a vacuum.

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Reversing course again

The Corzine administration is looking increasingly like a rudderless boat lost at sea. The administration has spent the better part of its three years in control of the state offering controversial proposals and then backing away from them, allowing the state Legislature and the special interests that surround it to fill the vaccuum.

The latest reversal is his decision to restore some of the cuts he proposed in aid to smaller municipalities. While I’ve never viewed the aid cuts as a good idea — using aid as a hammer is unfair; if the governor wants large-scale consolidation he should push the state Legislature to mandate a broad study and then have the Legislature vote on the results — the governor’s willingness to abandon nearly everything he has proposed when faced with political opposition has left him weak and ineffectual.

It is no way to run a state and a waste of the executive’s office — the most powerful executive’s office in the country.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Dispatches: Removing redundancies(i.e., the merger moment)

This week’s Dispatches focuses on the need to reduce the number of municipalities in the state, pegged to a proposal from Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts that he says will streamline the new process.

And, as we speak, the Morris County towns of Chester Borough and Chester Township are floating the idea of becoming one municipality.

Bill Cogger and Dennis Verbaro, the mayors of the two municipalities, are meeting today with state officials to explore what it would take to formally become one community, given Gov. Jon Corzine’s effort to drive down the cost of state government by encouraging the mergers of small towns such as the Chesters.

“Merging is a desire both communities wish to explore,” said Cogger, who is mayor of Chester Township. “We’re hoping the (state) government will pass legislation to make the process easier and will make good on its offer to not penalize taxpayers.”

The issues faced in the Chesters appear similar to those that would face other communities — the two Princetons, for instance, or the two Hopewells. Or Monroe and Jamesburg. The difference with Monroe and Jamesburg, of course, is that they do not share a name, though their history is intertwined. Before the late 1800s, Jamesburg was part of Monroe, serving as the town’s business center. And Monroe and Jamesburg kids have always attended high school together — first at Jamesburg High School and then at Monroe Township High School.

All of these towns could achieve some savings — a point that those who refuse to acknowledge. Some, like former Chester Township Mayor Ken Caro, points the finger at larger cities to essentially throw the dogs of the scent.

“(Town mergers) is a myth perpetrated by the state to get the monkey off their back,” Caro said.

“Trenton is afraid to address the real problem — that spending in big cities is what’s out of control. (Former Newark Mayor) Sharpe James stole more in a year than we could save in a hundred in Chester.”

This, of course, perpetuates another myth — that corruption accounts for the lion’s share of excess spending in the state. Corruption is a problem, both in terms of wasted money and confidence in government, but it is foolish to assume that ending corruption will fix our fiscal problems all by itself.

There are 13 elected officials representing Monroe and Jamesburg, two clerks, two administrators, two police chiefs, etc. Merging the two towns would cut all of this in half. Merging also would expand other opportunities — residents would get the benefit of an economy of scale that doesn’t exist now.

Other towns — the Princetons, for instance — would see less direct economic benefit because they share most of the major spending items, but they likely would still see some savings.

Should all of these towns be merged? No. But we should be looking at potential mergers and asking serious questions that, in the end, could result in a reduction in the number of towns and school districts, a reconfiguration of the state’s counties, etc.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.