Chris Christie’s Budget Message

After listening to the Governor’s budget message and then re-reading it, several thoughts come to mind. It fails to incorporate:

• Understanding of the legislative process.
• A real grasp of the level of opposition he will encounter
• How local governments will react
• The union backlash

Stating that he wants to reduce taxes but is going to cut school aid by the amount of board of education surpluses is only going to increase taxes no matter what he says. The cries will be “oh the children are going to suffer.” And he will learn that cutting aid relative to board “surplus, surplus” will increase property taxes.

The sad part is that what he is proposing is logical and needs to be done at the state level. But local governments, in general, don’t have the fortitude or tools to take hard steps to deal with the fiscal messes that they have created. I guarantee you that the local governments will absolutely increase taxes and throw the gauntlet back to the state, accusing the governor’s cuts for the local tax increases no matter what the governor says.

In many instances, local governing bodies and the town CEOs only look to keep their positions; they have no backbone to stand up to the local special interests. We have seen multiple year police contracts that exceed 20%.

Similar increases exist with municipal and county workers. And you can be sure that the unions, CWA, SEIU, AFSME and the like, will be screaming bloody murder if anyone tries to renegotiate contracts that simply cannot be afforded in this economy. The problem with the unions is not their members. It is the greed of their leaders.

I was talking to a retiree the other day who told me that the CPI has been flat for the last year and that the COLA for his pension was not going to happen this year. He also wondered how that could be when the local municipal property tax burden increased by over 15%. Calculations using the national CPI do not take into effect the local tax burden imposed on New Jersey residents.

So, while the governor is clearly correct in attempting to get the state’s fiscal house in order, he has woefully neglected the impact of what lack-of-a-spine is going to do to taxpayers across the state. In fact, I can guarantee you that a number of democrat-run towns will deliberately increase taxes in order to create a bad fiscal story to blame on the governor.

While I applaud the tough stance he took, he clearly did not go far enough in challenging local government bodies to hold the line and make the same kind of tough cuts. As the governor, he has the ability to push for tools to be given to local governments to deal with their fiscal nightmares as well. However, without such tools, local property taxes will continue to rise because the tactics he outlined in his speech only affect the state’s fiscal house. He has to go farther.

If Christopher Christie is to be the governor we all want and hope that he can be, he needs to think beyond the state budget and get local government officials to grow some testicular fortitude as well.

Lee Iacocca once said “lead, follow or get out of the way.” Clearly the governor is trying to lead. But right now it is one dimensional leadership, and he needs to do a lot of missionary work to get local officials to follow. If they won’t follow his lead, then he needs to find a method to get them out of the way.

While the state can’t afford the status quo, neither can New Jersey’s residents and taxpayers afford the costs associated with: 611 boards of education, 567 municipalities and about 2000 boards, commissions and authorities. If he is to truly succeed as governor, he has to get all the other government entities on board as well.

If he can’t get a vast majority to buy in, the next 4 years could turn out to be even worse than the last four. And that is something no one in New Jersey can afford.

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