Republican and Democratic calls for tax cuts in New Jersey will have to be funded by cuts to programs, not through revenues, according to projections by the state's non-partisan Office of Legislative Services, as reported by the Newark Star-Ledger. Today's Asbury Park Press has an op-ed piece by Carl Golden that says the same thing. Both parties have accepted Governor Christie's unreasonable expectation of 7% growth, so when that growth turns out to be less, those tax cuts will have to be funded through cuts to schools, roads, and other basic programs.
As you consider NJ political candidates and their stances on these blind tax
cuts, irrespective of party, keep in mind that they'll eventually get around to cutting
programs that will affect our community's quality of life. Theirs are not the only ideas on how to save money and lower taxes.
I encourage local
governments to continue the trend of saving costs by merging services with neighboring communities. They need to do so more aggressively.
And we have too many separate municipalities. We simply don't need hundreds of
school superintendents, hundreds of mayors and councils, and hundreds
of police departments, water departments, public utility departments,
etc, etc. But you have to ask yourself if your politicians and bureaucrats would ever opt for
an organizational design that would risk putting them out of work.
I suspect that we citizens will have to use the power of referendum to call for
muni-mergers before we'll really start to save money.
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