Gov. Chris Christie gave his annual state of the state speech to the state Legislature earlier today and the theme of his speech was clear: All Sandy, all the time.
The idea under-girding his speech was that the storm may have knocked the state down, but by working together the state will get back up and get moving in the right direction.
He then offered an outline of his accomplishments — pension reform, the property tax cap, balanced budgets — that was specifically crafted to elide some of the ways in which these accomplishments were achieved. No mention of the cut in the earned income tax credit, for instance, or the fact that he willfully underfunded the pension fund or the state’s school funding law; no mention of his use of inflated or overly optimistic revenue projections to sell an unwise tax cut or to the one-shot revenues — affordable housing trust fund, the foreclosure settlement money — that makes his far less different than his predecessors than he believes.
Democrats were not shy with the criticism and, while a good amount of it was the kind of political posturing typical of opposition-party responses, there were some legitimate criticisms involved that should help structure the kind of questions asked as we move forward.
Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) summed these issues up:
“Rebuilding our storm-ravaged communities is of paramount concern, but we cannot ignore the problems we faced before Sandy and permit them to worsen. Rising property taxes and a continuing unemployment crisis are problems we must address, and I am hopeful the Governor will join with us in bipartisan spirit to do so.
“We need a broad approach that addresses our underlying economic crisis so that we will be better positioned to help all our citizens–whether it’s our shore towns, our struggling middle-class families, or our senior citizens.”
We need to help everyone affected by Sandy — I think everyone agrees on this point — but we also need to remember that many in New Jersey were hurting well before the storm started forming.
It as a good speech, but not a great speech, not one that will alter the political dynamics in the state.
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Hank Kalet 