What Happened to Governor’s Promise of 2-Year Budgets?
Senator Anthony Bucco was disappointed, but not surprised by Governor Corzine’s evasive and irresponsible responses to Republican calls for a special session seeking solutions to the unprecedented $7 billion to $10 billion budget deficit expected next year.
“Governor Corzine, who ran for election on the oft repeated vow that he would do two-year budgets, has just shown again that he thinks nothing of breaking a promise,” Senator Bucco said. “Despite his 2005 campaign vow of transparency, the governor now thinks it’s better if the public doesn’t hear about the coming fiscal crisis for a few months.”
Senator Bucco said he was most outraged by the irresponsibility of Governor Corzine’s comment that state lawmakers should sit on their hands and wait to see if the federal economic stimulus plan balances next year’s budget.
“Unlike every other state, we have had multi-billion dollar deficits at the start of every budget debate for the last eight years,” Bucco said. “New Jersey’s problems did not begin with this recession, and a national economic recovery, no matter how strong, is not going to solve them. We need leadership today, not in six months when the election’s over.”
According to 101.5 FM news reports, Governor Corzine said “I’m sure there are all kinds of naysayers out there that will try to make this out as some kind of catastrophe on the horizon….If President Obama’s economic stimulus program works — we very well may see revenues grow substantially – this is not the time, in my view, to be speculating about what those numbers are going to be.”
Senator Bucco noted that no one has asked the governor to speculate. The governor knows how much one shot revenue he used to balance the current budget, including $2.5 billion in federal stimulus aid and a one-time collection of $725 million from the tax amnesty program. He has approved $1 billion in allegedly “temporary” tax increases, and more than $2 billion in “temporary” deferrals of payments to the pension funds. He also knows the big increases in spending he’s locked in such as agreeing to a 7 percent wage increase for members of some unions that represent state employees, and how much property tax rebates would cost if restored next year. He also knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars of debt payments will return to the budget in 2011 after he put off payments on billions of debt this year.
“The governor should live up to his promises of transparency and give his best estimate of what next year’s budget deficit will be,” Senator Bucco said. “Then he should do the right thing and call the Legislature into special session to begin creating a contingency plan based on the worst-case fiscal scenario.
“Once we are prepared for the worst, the Legislature can develop a long-term plan for eliminating structural deficits once and for all. The governor should do what’s right for the long-term health of New Jersey, not what he thinks will benefit him in the short term.”
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May 7, 2009
