NJ FY2009

Corzine has been getting a lot of flak for his proposed budget cuts. I must admit, it's nice to see a governor tackle the spending problem. The fact is that New Jersey doesn't have enough revenue to cover its costs, so something has to give.

Two years ago, the answer was an increase in sales tax, which was not met with the outright revolt you might have expected. This year, he's trying to avoid raising taxes, and I'm a little shocked by the resistance to this tactic. For a state that's constantly bitching about government waste, you'd think spending decreases would be most welcome. But I think there are more protests against the cuts than there were against the higher sales tax!

Here's the proposed 2009 budget.

A couple things caught my attention:

* The biggest increase is K-12 education aid. Half a billion higher than last year and 35% of the budget! This more than offsets the $190M decrease in municipal aid, so if towns need to raise taxes for services like roads and administration, that's one thing. But they shouldn't be increasing property taxes to cover school costs.

* As always, arts suffer first. I understand the logic, but it's still sad seeing hits against the NJSO, Papermill Playhouse, etc.

* $6M one-time Tamiflu cost!?!

* While K-12 got a nice boost, colleges and universities got slapped. I don't know if that's a comfortable trade-off, since higher education is so important these days.

* I don't understand the obsession with monitoring sexual offenders. The proposal indicates $1.2M more on legislation for this. Why spend extra money on sex criminals? While the prospect of a sexual offender in your neighborhood is scary, is it any worse than a convicted murderer or drug dealer? Yet we're not spending any more on tracking them!

* The new income limits on property tax rebates saves quite a bit of money! $472M total. There must be more people making over 100K than I thought.

And last but not least, looking over this proposal really drives home exactly how difficult it is to run a fiscally responsible state. I do respect Corzine for this attempt at balancing a budget without any revenue increases. At least he's got the right frame of mind.