Tag: State

Ending warehousing and building community

This seems a sensible approach to the problem, and builds on a model used by the Citizens for Independent Living in South Brunswick. Community services are cheaper, more effective and more compassionate that institutionalization.

Assemblyman Louis D. Greenwald (D-Camden) today issued a multimedia package on his legislation to overhaul the way the state cares for individuals with developmental disabilities by refocusing money from costly institutional care toward community-based services.

Greenwald’s measure (A-3625) aims to reduce the population of New Jersey’s seven
developmental centers by 80 percent within five years.

As Greenwald said during a recent press conference,

“The time has come for us to end this warehousing of human life and to give the consumers and the patients what they require, what they have asked for, what their families have dreamed of, which is the opportunity to live independently and in a way and in a means with the dignity and respect that they deserve.”

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All pain, no gain

Gov. Jon Corzine has announced what is being described as unprecedented — but that is not necessarily a good thing.

The governor said Tuesday that he will need to cut $812 million from the current-year budget — on top of the $600 million cut included in the original spending plan when it was approved in June. The cuts — which would include antipoverty programs, agriculutural spending, aid to towns and schools and a wage freeze — are designed to close a $2.1 billion shortfall in the $32.9 billion budget. The shortfall is a result of the flagging economy, which has resulted in a massive dropoff in tax revenue. The governor also is expecting money from the federal government and a diversion of debt payments — he had planned to pay more against the debt than required in an effort to retire some of it early — to close the gap, according to the Ledger.

“These are deep cuts that touch every corner of state government,” the governor
said. “We scraped the bottom of the barrel,” added state Treasurer David Rousseau. “There were accounts that we found that had 99 cents left in them.”

There also could be tax increases included in the budget that will be proposed in March.

There is nothing good about this kind of news, which is likely to slow the state’s recovery from the recession, as Paul Krugman has pointed out. But the balanced-budget requirement and the state’s political culture — tax hikes tend to trigger ugly reactions — have tied the governor’s hands.

Of course, legislative Republicans are using the budget as a political club, purposely ignoring the difficult decisions he already has made — and forgetting (conveniently) that Republican Gov. Christie Whitman used fiscal sleight-of-hand to pass her tax cuts, only cutting spending that was popular among Democrats and leaving much of the state’s bloated government intact.

That said, the Republicans — and tentative Democrats — are only responding to political realities. We — meaning New Jersey’s taxpayers — have never been good at making sacrifices. Because of that, the budgetary pain we are feeling is only going to get worse.

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Waiting for help

Gov. Jon S. Corzine is right to delay introduction of the state’s budget, given that the incoming Obama administration is promising a massive stimulus package that is expected to include money for cash-strapped states.

Consider the mess New Jersey is in and what a lack of federal aid might mean:

Corzine has said declining tax revenues amid the national recession could push next year’s budget as low as $29 billion, down from $32.9 billion this year.

That’s nearly $4 billion — which would only add a lot of formerly employed state, county and local workers to the growing list of out-of-work New Jerseyans at a time when state (and local) services will be in great demand. Cutting state spending, which Paul Krugman rightly raised concerns about in his column yesterday, will do little more than slow efforts at the federal level to staunch the economic decline.

Krugman called the governors “50 Herbert Hoovers,” a group being forced to “(slash) spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.”

These state-level cutbacks range from small acts of cruelty to giant acts of panic — from cuts in South Carolina’s juvenile justice program, which will force young offenders out of group homes and into prison, to the decision by a committee that manages California state spending to halt all construction outlays for six months.

He’s not laying blame at their feet. On the contrary, he reminds us that many — not all, as New Jerseyans know too well — of the states’ problems stem from the larger economic mess, long-term federal negligence of state issues and the Bush administration’s clueless response to the meltdown.

It’s true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that’s the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too.

In fact, the true cost of government programs, especially public investment, is much lower now than in more prosperous times. When the economy is booming, public investment competes with the private sector for scarce resources — for skilled construction workers, for capital. But right now many of the workers employed on infrastructure projects would otherwise be unemployed, and the money borrowed to pay for these projects would otherwise sit idle.

And shredding the social safety net at a moment when many more Americans need help isn’t just cruel. It adds to the sense of insecurity that is one important factor driving the economy down.

That leaves them stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have been very vocal in my criticism of the state — governors and legislators of both parties, including the current crowd — and its willingness across nearly two decades to defer painful budget decisions. The list of bad decisions made with politics and not fiscal health in mind is long and does not need another recounting. Suffice to say that we went over the cliff a long time ago.

That said, “even the best-run states are in deep trouble,” Krugman writes, and “we shouldn’t punish our fellow citizens and our economy to spite a few local politicians.”

So President-elect Barack Obama should listen to Corzine and David Paterson of New York and Ted Strickland of Ohio, who is

pushing for federal aid to the states on three fronts: help for the neediest, in the form of funding for food stamps and Medicaid; federal funding of state- and local-level infrastructure projects; and federal aid to education.

This kind of aid can go a long way to easing the economic pain while building a new foundation for future growth.

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State of economic decline

The projections are not exactly good for the next year — with the economy is likely to continue its downward spiral. As Rutgers professors James W. Hughes and Joseph J. Seneca point out, “2009 will be a difficult and dangerous year for New Jersey, reflecting the old adage that economic wild parties are often followed by prolonged economic hangovers.”

“The driving forces now affecting New Jersey,” Hughes and Seneca say, “are very powerful negative global and national economic tides.”

It will be very difficult for state government policies to substantially deflect them. Only massive federal intervention can stabilize the situation.

The chances of turning things around, however, appear out of the state’s hands, which could mean that this year’s gubernatorial election may turn on issues that neither Gov. Jon Corzine or state legislators of both parties have much control over.

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