I didn’t have a lot of time yesterday to blog on Gov. Corzine’s proposed state budget — I was mired in it so that I could draft a column on fiscal reform for tomorrow’s paper.
But now that the Post is nearly put to bed, I can offer some thoughts:
This is a painful budget that should have surprised no one. The governor has been warning that a day of reckoning was coming and he deserves credit for putting out such a painful plan and being willing to take the heat.
After 13 town hall meetings at which he heard little more than anger, he said he understood the “public’s frustration and anger generated by too many years of overspending, borrowing, and false rhetoric.”
The budget he unveiled yesterday, he said, was designed to address this.
The time is long past for the State, its Governor, and its Legislature to end imprudent spending and borrowing that exceeds our means. This budget does just that.
He went on to say that
the public understands the State has a fiscal crisis — but they want us to understand they have one of their own.
It is with this perspective that I present a sobering budget for fiscal 2009 …a budget, I believe, that represents a “turning point” in the fiscal management of our State — a turning point away from the patterns of overspending and tortured borrowing.
A turning point toward spending restraint and spending cuts that genuinely address our financial emergency.
That said, this budget still labors under the weight of years of unfunded commitments, court mandates, bad decisions, and declining federal dollars.
So he stood before the state Legislature and told its members — and the public — that things would have to change. He proposed rather deep cuts — in aid to towns, hospitals, the arts and colleges, in the workforce — that will be felt in a variety of ways around the state.
The Record is right when it says that there is a lot in this budget to anger just about every constituency in the state. The paper also is right — unlike The Asbury Park Press, which called for deeper cuts and ignored that the governor has actually made payments to the pension system over the last two years that had not been made in years — that the budget shows Corzine is “serious and sincere” and that the budget should serve as the opening salvo of negotiations.
Expect the various interests who have benefited over the years from state money to raise their voices (remember Gov. Jim McGreevey’s first budget?). Some of them will have good arguments as to why their funding should be restored. In some cases, those arguments should be heeded — but only if a corresponding budget cut can be found.
Budget growth has to be reined in, but that will not be enough. The state needs to find new revenues to offset its costs and find a way to pay down its debt. The governor’s toll-hike plan was badly flawed, but at least it was an honest attempt and its goal was noble.
That said, we should have started this process much earlier by dropping the charade that is the rebates, hiking the gas tax and income tax to raise revenue, eliminating waste and cracking down on corruption and so on down the list. One of the reasons this did not happen is that the governor was afraid to push the Legislature during the 2007 election year, meaning that the modest steps made toward reform in 2006 (and they were modest) were stopped cold once the calendar changed.
This has been the general problem with Corzine. He has been too willing to let the Legislature dictate the agenda and has been too conscious of the political fallout that might follow (another example is his lukewarm commitment to same-sex marriage). This might be viewed as a positive trait by some, but I am one of those people who are tired of politicians governing in that way.
I am hopeful that this horribly tight budget is evidence that the governor plans to take a tougher stand this year on fiscal matters, that he intends to push the Legislature to change the way it does business. I am hopeful, but not optimistic — this is New Jersey, after all.
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Hank Kalet 