Governor Christie’s budget address yesterday was a breath of fresh air. Never before have I heard a politician speak so frankly and honestly, although I do note that Governor Corzine was honest in his budget address I attended at Rowan in 2006. It is my hope that Christie is able to follow through with his plan; Corzine did not and the problem became worse.
Christie took on NJEA. Why does the NJEA president have an invitation to the budget address? She is not a government employee. Hallelujah!
Next year’s budget will be 9% less than this year. Hallelujah!
One area I have an issue with in pension reform. While a lot was said and some items addressed, yes I will be paying, Governor Christie is not making the state obligated payment to the fund. The state skips this regularly. This is a large part of the pension problem. While payouts are too numerous, they wouldn’t hurt nearly as much if the fund had the missing billions of dollars the state owes.
Another issue is the apparent $159 million grant program Christie has in the budget. This is an easy cut to the budget, which will reduce spending even further. Christmas tree slush funds have no business in a state budget. Get rid of it, sir!
Christie took the first step. Of course, none of this means a thing if local governments increase taxes. Christie said there will be tools for municipalities to reduce spending. Millville City Commission take note: you cannot raise taxes to bridge the gap of lost “revenue” from the state. You must reduce the size of government. Spending needs to decrease, not remain flat. Don’t manipulate things to keep from laying off employees. There are only so many block parties that can be reduced before real jobs are affected. And Mayor Shannon, the governor spoke about the importance of having recreational opportunities this summer; don’t close Union Lake (even though the goose poop will) stating you are cutting spending while the Recreation Department remains fully staffed.
Likewise, state agencies need to heed the same advice. Cuts to public transportation does not mandate a 25% fare increase. Where are the cuts within the department? The state is not going to give you the money; don’t just find a new funding source (riders). Cut the overhead. No state employee should have a salary larger than the governor. No one.
The budget address was refreshing. Thank you Governor Christie. There is still a lot of work left to do. This is just the opening chapter to resolving New Jersey’s woes.
P.S.
NJN is a taxpayer-funded enterprise. It posted video of the budget address. Thankfully. I missed the broadcast and the re-broadcast. The address is public business and the video is public property. Why does NJN not permit one to embed the video? This is not proprietary content. And fwiw, I support the governor’s desire to privatize NJN.
I would ask that someone correct The Daily Journal’s misprint (twice) that my salary is $86K. It’s $68K. And at 20-25 hours per week (with another 25 hours a week to operate my firm), I’d hardly call it a “plum” position.
If we are to understand Mr. Kavanagh, a 25-hour a week part-time job that pays $68,000 plus benefits is not a plum job. That is far more money than the median family income of Cumberland County . . . and it is just a part-time job. Most folks work at McDonald’s, mow lawns, or bartend for part-time work. Kavanagh rakes in a big-time salary and has the chutzpah to claim it is not plum. It would be wonderful to read The Daily’s Journal follow-up question of What do you consider a plum job then, Mr. Kavanagh?
Call me plum crazy, but methinks Kavanagh is acting like a prune.
Surely you have heard of toxic assets. Those are the mortgages and other risky loans that banks have made to folks who had no business receiving those funds. Not unexpectedly, those loans are bad/toxic. They “caused” the meltdown of our financial system.
Back in September when all this hit the fan, Henry Paulson proposed taking $850 billion of taxpayer money and buying these “assets”. The money was commandeered, but the toxic stuff wasn’t purchased. Rather, the money was dispersed so AIG, Merrill Lynch, and other financial institutions could pay their bonuses, among other things.
More recently, Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner pitched to spend another $1 trillion to purchase those same toxic assets. It appears that is actually going to happen.
New Jersey’s beleaguered pension fund would buy troubled loans and securities – so-called “toxic assets” – as part of a Wall Street recovery plan discussed Friday with the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund.
The pension fund is beleagured because of poor investments ($187 million in Lehman Brothers last summer) and being severely underfunded. Once again Governor Corzine has signed off on not making contributions to the public employee pension fund. Doing so would have admitted that the budget hole was much deeper than it already is.
So, how will New Jersey prop up this fund? By purchasing bad debt.
The intent is to reduce the bad assets on the balance sheets of banks, and free them to lend more.
Note, that’s the intent of the federal government. New Jersey state government is just the dupe that will be complicit in this scheme.
My tax dollars will be spent to purchase bad debt to invest in my retirement.
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
It is clear that government has run amok. Only corrupt, insincere, incompetent folks could devise a system like this.
I will state once again the solution to the financial mess: bankruptcy. Let the companies fail. Lord knows it would be far less costly than propping up these businesses every two months.
Does no one else see the stupidity in this plan?
Let it be known who is to blame for New Jersey’s participation:
“At the governor’s suggestion, New Jersey organized the participation of other public funds,” Kramer said. “The fact that a number of major public funds across the country are getting together to explore this, is because of the governor’s initiative.”
The financial wizard is seeking re-election. Hold him accountable for his incompetency.
The Daily Journal’s editorial today is right on the money!
In Codey’s dual positions as governor and Senate president, he has the legislative power and bully pulpit to totally eliminate dual-office holding with no exemptions or grandfather clauses.
Legislators need to do more to bring sanity to the state pension system.
They need to bar state employees from tacking government jobs together to increase their pensions, and eliminate boosting of pensions by adding high-paying jobs near the end of their government careers. They need to eliminate the practice of people using part-time jobs to accrue time in the pension system, such as former Gov. James McGreevey is doing with his job teaching ethics and leadership at Kean University.
Requiring pension system participants to be full-time workers and recalculating retirement benefits so they’re based on one job only and the highest salaries over a five-year period would go a long way toward eliminating these abuses.
But we can already hear the mountain of excuses lawmakers will have on why these pension reform steps can’t be taken now. There are no legitimate excuses, however, on delaying a bill that would eliminate dual-office holding once and for all.
It’s way past time such a reform measure became law. If lawmakers delay it any further, voters will remember in November.
This is the governor that lied to two wives about his sexual orientation, lied to the people of New Jersey, had arguably the most corrupt administration ever, and ended up leaving office when he was called on all this. He wanted his gay-lover to be head of homeland security in New Jersey! That he didn’t leave until too late for the people of the state to elect someone to take his place shows that contrition is still a long way away.
And yes, with McGreevey being back on the public payroll, he is building up his publicly-funded pension.
What qualifications does McGreevey have to teach an ethics class? Mr. Christie, here’s something else for you to investigate.
