So much for the public wanting honesty from their elected officials.
In a new Fairleigh Dickinson University poll, respondents expressed their disapproval of Governor Corzine's new budget, in which the administration raises the sales tax by a penny and cuts various state services, and of the job the Governor himself is doing. Among other things, Corzine's disapproval rating increased from 16% to 36%, and those who had "very unfavorable" or "poor" ratings of the Governor increased as well.
A closer reading of the poll, however, reveals a very NIMBY-ish attitude amongst the 685 registered voters sampled. While decrying the increase in the sales tax, a majority say it's a bad idea to not restore the property tax rebates, and that it is fine with them if taxes are raised on things they might not use, or use infrequently, such as cigarettes and alcohol.
Selling a property worth over a million dollars? Buying a luxury car worth more than $45,000? Me neither. Most of the people who are in the same boat think that taxes on those items should go up.
Since those employed by state government are likely to be average working stiffs, and therefore Democrats, Republicans think cutting state jobs is a fine way to cut spending. Democrats, not surprisingly, think it a lousy one. The list goes on.
A previous discussion alluded to the belief that the public was "misled" by both Corzine and his opponent, Doug Forrester, since both candidates promised to cut taxes and/or increase rebates. Corzine, of course, is taking the heat, since he won the election. But I'll bet the Forrester would be wondering, too, why he wanted this job if he had won instead of Corzine.
Somebody once told me not to complain about something if you couldn't offer a solution to the problem, or at least a better one than what was on the table. I hear a whole lot of complaining, but haven't found anybody who says they have a better way to fix the state budget mess.
3 comments:
Whatever the solution is, and I'll admit I don’t necessarily have one, it need not involve tax increases of any sort. One thing that has gone underreported lately, in my opinion, is the upward trend in state revenue in general across the country over the last few years. For example, here is an article by Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute entitled "State Revenue Boom Paves Way For Tax Cuts"(http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0601-30.pdf). Certainly, economists can and do disagree on the actual size of the “boom” or even its existence, and its cause, but clearly New Jersey residents on the whole are already among the most heavily taxed in the nation. I interpret this to mean that New Jersey taxpayers are already engaged in the “shared sacrifice” that Corzine likes to refer to when he speaks of the “need” to raise taxes. Politicians need to tax first, spend later – not the other way around.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying New Jersey residents should start rioting in the streets over a 1% increase in sales tax or tax increases on wealthy individuals or businesses. People might even get behind such increases if they were convinced that they would actually fix the budget. But they probably won’t, and in light of Corzine’s comments during the campaign, taxpayers have a right to express at least a little dissatisfaction over the proposal.
While I agree with both of you on the essence of your replies, there are a couple of things each of you brought up that I must comment on.
As a person with an extensive background in finance, Corzine would be more likely to reduce any taxes he has raised not because of a knee-jerk reaction to popular demand, but in recognition of the fact that taxes may stifle economic growth. While he has said that he wants to expand funding for this and that, the state's present financial situation doesn't allow it. When state government is back on the plus side of the ledger, I believe he will fund things as fiscal sanity allows. He believes that anything worth having is worth paying for (I mean really worth having - like good roads, good public transportation and infrastructure, and improved state services - not something that serves a narrow constituency).
I laugh when I hear or read people criticizing the "perks" of public employees and the relationship of those perks to the rest of the budget. Firstly, as a public employee, I can tell you that we don't get any more perks that the average worker gets in the private sector, and do without many of those so-called perks - when was the last time you heard a public employee get a bonus?
Second, as far as pensions go, those that are held up as examples of what we allegedly get are really those exceptions that prove the rule, as it were. My retirement is negotiated as part of a larger retirement system. I get the same benefits that anyone else in my job title in the pension system will get. No golden parachutes or anything like that.
Third, read the state budget. Benefits to all public employees, active and retired, make up 7% of the total budget. The deficit alone is equal to 20% of the budget. Do you think that eliminating these "negotiated retirements" for people who make up a fraction of one percent of the total state and municipal workforce will make a dent in the budget problem?
You mention the school administrative costs. I do agree that our education system is waaaay too bloated (I don't know about that number of 600+, since there are only 566 municipalities in the State of New Jersey). The problem with reducing the overhead is the concept of "home rule", which is that every local governing body wants to be able to control their own children's education, and not leave it up to some amorphous entity that may allow a neighboring locality (which may have a completely different demographic - think New Brunswick vs. North Brunswick, or Trenton vs. West Trenton) a part in the decision making. This is not Republican or Democratic, but NIMBY in reverse. And, unfortunately, school costs are what drive property taxes these days. Voters in West Trenton or Princeton are forced to subsidize Trenton, Newark, New Brunswick, et al, because those individual municipalities don't have the tax base to support their own systems. I am not saying it is right, just reality.
I can understand the sentiment of "let Newark voters pay for their own school system." But the reality is that only 25% of all Newark residents own the homes they live in, and the inactive labor force (those without jobs) is something like 77,000, while the active labor force is 87,000. While it is all well and good to only support your own students, are you or anybody else willing to consign those most vulnerable of Newark, the children, to a life without a proper education? And you think the gang problem is bad now? Wait till it gets exported.
This is why it will take years to reform property taxes. Not the four or eight years of a Corzine administration, and probably not the first term of whoever succeeds him, even if every effort is made starting right now to fix the problem.
As far as projected revenues go, it was reported in yesterday's Star-Ledger that the Office of Legislative Services is projecting state revenues to be $186 million lower over the next fifteen months than previously forecasted. And, in the same article, Corzine (at one of those town-hall-style meetings) stated that the budget would be approximately $2 billion higher if funding to school districts wasn't maintained at previous levels, 1,000 state employees weren't laid off, cuts weren't made to higher education (the biggest reduction in the budget), and 235 other programs weren't reduced or eliminated. Does this sound like a tax-and-spend liberal to you? Sounds more like a tax-and-cut businessman to me.
You're right, people shouldn't riot over a one penny increase in the sales tax, and maybe the public could get behind these cuts and taxes if they were presented in the right light. And they probably would have gotten behind Florio's taxes in 1990 if it were presented the right way then, too. (And maybe we wouldn't have this mess, today.)
But, unfortunately, government usually isn't in the habit or practice of promoting itself, while against them are all the yahoos at Hands Across NJ and New Jersey 101.5, who know nothing about finances and everything about stirring trouble.
The result? Successive administrations in which taxes were cut, borrowing was plentiful and the hole was dug deeper.
I know you didn't mean Emergency workers. Neither did I.
I am referring to all workers in the state pension system, which includes both municipal, county and state employees. How many of these, on any level, "gets driven to work and puts in little time with ridiculous vacation perks"? How many "STATE WORKERS" do you know that have "cushion jobs, not doing them well and try to find them after 3 PM each day"?
This is the sentiment that I am talking about, popularized by the idiots of 101.5. The average state worker, municipal worker, county worker, etc., pays into one of several different pension plans, one of the largest being the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS), which is actually a pension system for those that don't qualify for the more restricted ones - like TPAF, the teacher's pension, or PFRS, for police officers and firefighters.
In PERS, you must work a minimum of twenty-five years, you receive upon retirement about half of your base salary, there are no health benefits (unless your individual employer has negotiated that into your pension contribution, in which case you'd be paying for it anyway), and you must be at least 55 years old at the time that you collect to avoid paying a penalty, which amounts to a quarter percentage point off your pension for every month you collect prior to the age of 55.
That means, had I stayed in PERS until retirement, I would have had to work an extra two years until collecting to avoid losing 12% off my pension. Without health benefits because the place I worked had no provision for them. And since you know the work I did, would you think that would have been something plausible, at age 55?
But the larger issue is that the number of people receiving all these allegedly outrageous benefits is infinitesimally small compared with the rest of the government workforce. Do you think the average employee who sits in front of a computer at the Department of Labor gets these benefits, lounging around all day, and disappearing after 3PM? Or the Department of Law and Public Safety? Health and Senior Services? Corrections?
I don't deny that there are upper-management people who have been guilty of less-than-honorable retirement benefits. But I am sure you could say the same thing about the private sector. In fact, you can say the same thing about the private sector, as any number of news items will attest, probably because the private sector makes so much more money than the public sector.
As I said before, even if you cut out all the benefits of all state employees, it still wouldn't make a difference in the budget problem. Saying that the waste, fraud, and abuse of those at the top is the reason for our problems is ridiculous.
As for school taxes, what I was referring to was that local voters would not go for regionalized school systems because voters in North Brunswick wouldn't want voters in New Brunswick having a say in how their children get taught. But all taxpayers statewide are supporting students in underprivileged areas because of the way our property taxes are set up. There is a difference in what gets taught versus where the money comes from.
You won't see people in Lawrenceville voting to regionalize with Trenton anytime soon.
Post a Comment