Corzine Plans For Shutdown
From the Star Ledger:
Budget standoff in Trenton
BY JEFF WHELAN AND JOSH MARGOLIN
Facing an impasse with Assembly Democrats over his proposed sales tax increase, Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday refused to budge and ordered his Cabinet to prepare for a government shutdown.
It was a day of tough political talk, closed-door meetings and a noisy rally that brought thousands of public employees to the Statehouse complex to cheer the governor's plan. At day's end, legislative leaders stressed that they were working with Corzine to resolve their differences, but there was no immediate sign of compromise.
...
Facing a July 1 deadline to adopt a balanced budget, the Democratic governor sought to cast Assembly Democrats as fiscally irresponsible and said there was no choice but to raise the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent to bring in $1.1 billion.
"We are trying to get recurring revenues, the money coming in, to match the money going out, as opposed to just using the same old song about gimmicks and borrowing," Corzine said in a fiery speech to the labor rally. "Now I don't have a choice this year, in my view. It is a last resort."
...
Maggie Moran, Corzine's deputy chief of staff, yesterday dispatched a memo to the governor's Cabinet ordering them to draft contingency plans for a "government shutdown." By Thursday, departments must detail for the governor what services are essential and what are nonessential and come up with plans for a shutdown of up to four weeks.
"In the event that the state of New Jersey does not have a balanced budget passed by midnight on June 30, it is important we are prepared for closure of state government," she said. "In the event of a shutdown, no obligations could be incurred except in connection with essential services."
11 Comments:
Thursday, departments must detail for the governor what services are essential and what are nonessential....
This is funny oh I needed a laugh this morning. Why do we have emloyees that are nonessential? Why don't we just fire the nonessential ones and reduce everyone elses taxes. And who in the world is cheering for his plan to raise the states sales tax.
Now if the government shuts down we will all see how less government is a better government.
Teachers and police ought to have sweetheart benefits, since they don't have sweetheart salaries, no? How sweet are they, anyway? They would be essential workers in my book. They can't afford decent housing, but they traditional have had security to make up for it. Why not go after other heads to cut costs?
I have to give credit to Corzine. He's forcing the issue. You guys see the sales tax increase, but what is behind this is the holy grail of Jersey politics -he's going to bust the control the party bosses (Democrats & Republicans ) have at the county level.
What he is going after is the famous double/triple dipping (more than one elected position at a time) and pension reform that will hurt the fat cats, and force regionalization of govermental services, which will kill a lot of public jobs the political machines need to survive.
The pension reform is the tricky one, because everybody focus on the career state employee, but what is really killing is all the fat cats double/triple dippers that are able to parlay all of the their jobs pension contributions into a gigantic check when they retire.
Remember the formula is roughly a percentage of your last three years of income. Well if you are are state senator & mayor, or assemmblyman and freeholder and councilman, or my favorite Mayor Sacco of North Bergen -> School Principal ($130k+), Commisioner-Mayor ($25k+), and State Senator (70k+, you can see you are going to get at least $100K a year in pension when you retire.
Raising taxes is one thing dems can do well. I think income tax rate in NJ should be around 75%. Sales tax should be doubled and pension funds should not be touched.
(I've just escaped from NJ:)
This seems like thebest thing that can happen to NJ. Shut down the government forever.
Oops, was posted on wrong thread:
Corzine needs to wake up and smell the coffee on those public employee benefits, and stop dreaming that a sales tax will benefit/fix the state.
I heard a report today, and one state employee said, basically, to stop attacking public employees' pension and health benefits, because it's all they have because they make less than the private sector employees.
If she only knew the net present value differential on those benefits, she would understand the problem.
How I wish an oversight board could limit total compensation (at least until the budget was balanced) to a system of equity with private total packages.
For example, every public employee gets rated into a comparative scale to "like" private employees.
The public employee total package can then not exeed 1.45% the total package of the equivalent private sector employee's total package until the budget is balanced.
The additional .45 is to compensate them for their services to humanity as public employees (I suppose.)
Pat
Grim Ghost you and New Jersey seem perfect together. You didn't even vote so you should keep your comments to yourself. Next election vote and then come back and talk with us. You are actually part of the problem by not voting.
I agree with Grim Ghost. While I generally believe that sales taxes are regressive, it is hard to think that there is going to be a huge difference between 6% and 7%. In fact, when I moved here in 1989, the NJ sales tax was 7%. It was lowered shortly thereafter during the Florio administration or the first Whitman administration along with the creation of "urbanized tax zones" where sales tax is only 3%. Raising the sales tax back to 7% is only going back to 1989 levels.
I'm generally very pro-union since unions generally look out for the rights of lower income citizans. I'm fine with paying police officers 90K, since they risk their lives everyday in the performance of their duties. But at that salary, I can't see paid overtime.
Question: do all police officers in NJ make 90K? I can see paying police officers in towns like Paterson or Newark this much since they are literally risking life and limb everyday. But do the Far Hills or Bernardsville Police depts have the same level of crime to fight? Perhaps 90K is an overkill salary (pun intended!) for these towns.
State employee salaries are hot media these days, but like any issue a more detailed look is needed. what jobs are we talking about? A lot os us work in developmental development centers, mental institutions, prisons, hospitals. We take care of the people you would prefer not to see in our society. so when your paying your tax think about what your world would look like if you didn't pay us. And speaking of pay, published salaries are not "average". I could make more in the private sector. Talk about benefits - the state hasn't paid it's share of our pension since Gov. Whitman decided to stop paying the states contribution.
But I bet more people are worried about A.C. shutting down.
Corzine begins the shutdown...
grim
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