State – Page 6 – Hank Kalet

What if there were school districts that had no schools?

The logic of having a school board in a community without schools has always escaped me. Think about it: A district might have 60 or 70 kids, which it ships to another district, paying tuition and transportation. It has little say on how much any of this costs, but it still has to put its budget before the voters. None of this makes any sense, but then, this is New Jersey where the number of taxing entities — state, county, municipal, school, fire, other — numbers more than 1,400.

So, the bill signed by Gov. Jon Corzine the other day eliminating what are called “non-operating school districts” seems like a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you are one of the districts involved.

The legislation clarifies a process that began two years ago, but still has detractors — like Rocky Hill Mayor Ed Zimmerman or Frank Chilson, school board secretary for Rocky Hill and Millstone, two local districts facing extinction:

“It seems it would be very difficult for a Millstone or Rocky Hill resident to be elected to the receiving districts’ schools based on population,” said Frank Chilson, secretary for both school boards.

An injunction was expected to be filed Wednesday on behalf of the Rocky Hill and Millstone school boards in an attempt to stop the shut down, he said. Among its objections, the injunction states that the community was not given the opportunity to vote on the issue, he said.

“It’s really taxation without representation,” Mr. Chilson said.

Borough Mayor Ed Zimmerman said he also is concerned about the disenfranchisement of Rocky Hill voters.

“The biggest issue here is we’ve got nine months of an appointed person over there and then we’ll never have a say in education again, or taxes,” he said.

It is a legitimate concern, though the reality is that the boards in those districts have always had little say. And they have few alternatives.

Rocky Hill is bounded on three sides by Montgomery, with whom it will merge, and Franklin to its north. Milltsone is bounded by Hillsborough, with whom it will merge, and Franklin. The choices would seem to be to merge with one of their neighbors or build a school of their own — which would be absurd.

The reality is that this must be the first step in a longer process of reducing the number of government entities in the state, a process that should slash the number of school districts significantly, as well as the number of municipal governments and eliminate fire districts completely.

There are going to be a lot of angry municipal and school officials as we move forward, but I believe that, in the end, we’ll see tax savings and for some an increase in services.

If two became one

When things become bad enough, towns will consolidate. That, I think, is the lesson that we should be taking from the recent police and courts merger down in Gloucester County.

As the Packet Group paper, the Windsor-Hights Herald, reports, the borough of Swedesboro has disbanded its Police Department and signed a shared-services agreement with Woolwich to take over patrols and court services. The agreement is expected to save Swedesboro taxpayers about $400 annually and Woolwich taxpayers $68 a year.

The consolidation of law-enforcement functions likely wouldn’t have happened, however, were it not for the squeeze put on smaller towns by the Corzine administration, which wants to see local governments streamline, eliminate duplicated services and share services whenever possible,

Consider:

”There had been talk (about sharing a police department with Woolwich) in Swedesboro for as long as I have been mayor, which is about six years,” Swedesboro Mayor Thomas Fromm said Tuesday.

”But when Gov. Corzine announced his municipal aid cuts at budget time last year, that’s when we realized what we had to do. We knew we needed to do something real, and something bold, for our taxpayers, and we began in earnest at that time,” he said.

In 2008, about one-third of Swedesboro’s $2.2 million municipal budget was used for police- related expenditures, according to Mayor Fromm.

Hightstown and East Windsor have been talking for nearly a year, while the two Princetons have gone back and forth for years, slowly merging many smaller services but failing to share police services or go all the way to full consolidation.

As for Jamesburg and Monroe, officials in the two towns treat consolidation like a particularly nasty strain of swine flu.

Consolidation — whether full-bore or incremental — makes fiscal sense for Hightstown and Jamesburg, at least on the surface. Both towns have faced difficult fiscal choices in recent years, with stagnant ratable bases and increasing costs forcing the towns to cut services and increase taxes. Jamesburg even considered closing its public library to give it some budgetary room last year.

East Windsor and Monroe, however, have not felt the same level of pain — but the state’s own fiscal emergency may change that. It is going to get more and more difficult for the state to justify giving cash to towns like Monroe and East Windsor that completely surround their poorer neighbors when it doesn’t have enough money to pay its debts and provide basic services.

Dispatches: Budget gimmicks galore

Politics, as it always does, poisons discussion of state finances. Read Dispatches.

Unhealthy budget options

Health care costs for the public sector are going to keep rising and it likely will mean service cuts, tax increases, layoffs and labor disagreements at both the local and state levels of government. The micro read on this is that the various government entities have been too generous — which is way too simple an analysis. The reality is that we should be discussing this as part of the national health care debate and not focusing so narrowly on public employees and turnining to the rhetoric of resentment (i.e., “I work in the private sector and get shafted on health care, so public employees should get shafted, too). Fix health care and health insurance and this should take care of itself.

Center-right? Right

New Jersey has a center-right electorate? That’s what Alan Steinberg thinks — despite electoral evidence going back almost two decades. Consider: Democrats have won three of the last five gubernatorial races, the last five presidential races in New Jersey by decent margins, the last 10 Senate races, own majorities in both houses of the state Legislature and eight of 13 seats in Congress.

The state is far from conservative, showing a decide tilt to blue candidates as its default position, except when special circumstances present themselves. The Florio backlash is the primary example of this, his tax hike resulting in the Democrats losing the Legislature and Christie Whitman nearly toppling U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley before she won the Statehouse.

The Menendez win in 2006 is instructive. He was losing in the polls throughout much of the year to state Sen. Tom Kean Jr., the son of the state’s most popular governor. The polls, however, showed a decent-size number of undecided voters, most of whom broke for Menendez despite the ethical cloud that had formed above his head. Part of the reason was the ugly campaign waged by Kean, which undercut what made him an attractive candidate in the first place — his likeability. That, combined with the electoral default, resulted in a near double-digit win for Mendendez.

Jon Corzine is in a similar position to Menendez, but also shares some of the huge obstacles that Florio faced in 1993. There is no doubt that taxes are a major concern for New Jersey voters — with most saying they are not prepared to back tax-hikers.

But it is early and it remains to be seen whether Christie can capitalize, whether he can convince voters that he can fix the state’s deep-rooted budgetary mess without asking voters for more money or cutting programs they’ve come to rely on.

But center-right? You’ve got to be kidding.