Christie: State budget “requires sacrifice”

By MICHAEL SYMONS • GANNETT STATE BUREAU • March 16, 2010

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TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie unveiled a $28.3 billion state budget plan Tuesday that includes deep cuts in spending on property tax rebates and aid to municipalities, schools and colleges, as well as the layoffs of thousands of state workers.

“This plan requires sacrifice by all New Jerseyans. But it is a shared sacrifice. And while holding the line is difficult today, it is necessary for a better tomorrow,” Christie said.

“The watchwords of this budget are shared sacrifice and fairness. Individuals contribute, businesses sacrifice, local governments tighten their belts, and we end our
addiction to spending,” Christie said. “Everyone comes to the center of the room — we
jump off the cliff together to stave off certain fiscal death for the hope of economic salvation tomorrow.”

Related

• Budget cuts may affect property taxes locally
• Towns, schools ready to assess impact of Christie budget
• Lawmakers assess impact of governor’s cuts on Central Jersey
• Central Jersey residents express worry, praise for Governor Christie’s budget
• Text of Gov. Christie’s budget address speech
• Budget cuts could hit low-income NJ residents
• Governor’s transition team member to speak tonight
• Breakdown of Christie’s Budget

After campaigning last year on a pledge to restore recent cuts to the homestead
rebate program, Christie instead is proposing to suspend them for 2010 and replace them with direct quarterly property tax credits starting in May 2011. That saves the state’s proposed budget some $2 billion. Tenant rebates would be permanently eliminated.

The rebate suspension and cuts in aid to local governments are sure to aggravate
local pressures on property taxes. To address that, Christie wants lawmakers to put a
proposed constitutional amendment before voters imposing a 2.5 percent cap on increases in local property tax levies, adjusted for increases in ratables. Local governments that raise taxes less than 2.5 percent could “bank” the increase for use later. Local voters could choose to exceed the cap, but the state couldn’t provide a waiver.

Christie wants lawmakers, who have been advancing pension reforms that affect future hires, to repeal a 9 percent pension increase for current workers that was approved in 2001. The change would affect future service credit; the enhanced pension presumably would continue to apply for service between 2001 and 2010. And he wants school district employees to pay more toward their health care costs.

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School aid reductions would equal as much as 5 percent of a local district’s current
spending — though that means for more than 50 districts where state aid amounts to 5
percent or less of local spending, all state aid will disappear. Municipal aid would be
cut by the equivalent of a $250 impact on the bill of an average residential taxpayer.

Beginning in January, Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled
beneficiaries would be required to cover an annual deductible of $310. Also, the
co-payment for brand-name drugs rises from $7 now to $15 and the co-payment for generic drugs would drop from $6 now to $5. Senior Gold enrollees will also have to pay the $310 deductible and additional coinsurance.

Related

• Budget cuts may affect property taxes locally
• Towns, schools ready to assess impact of Christie budget
• Lawmakers assess impact of governor’s cuts on Central Jersey
• Central Jersey residents express worry, praise for Governor Christie’s budget
• Text of Gov. Christie’s budget address speech
• Budget cuts could hit low-income NJ residents
• Governor’s transition team member to speak tonight
• Breakdown of Christie’s Budget

Other cuts would be widespread. To save $7 million, no funds would be provided for
anti-smoking programs. No new students would be added to the NJ STARS community college scholarship program. There would be no new State Police trooper recruit class. New Jersey Network would become an independent, not-for-profit station by January.

The state would pay none of the $3 billion it is supposed to put into public employees’ pension funds.

The budget projects the elimination of 1,300 positions, including layoffs. Cuts of
non-union employees will be made this year, but cuts of union members will be delayed until January, when a moratorium on job cuts expires that then-Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration made in 2009 in exchange for unions agreeing to delay pay increases.

Christie said the remedy for the state’s fiscal problem is difficult but needed
because taxes are too high to raise and the economy suffering as a result.

“You changed doctors in November for this very reason. Now it is time to change
medicine, too,” Christie said. “Off the temporary high that comes from higher taxes
and greater spending. Back to the hard, difficult medicine of fiscal discipline, lower
spending and less — which in your heart you know will lead to the greater long-term
health of our state.”

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Christie reiterated that he won’t sign a tax increase — though the proposed budget
does include smaller, targeted revenue-raisers, and payroll taxes and New Jersey Transit fares are going to rise.

“I was not sent here to approve tax increases. I was sent here to veto them,”
Christie said. “Mark my words today, if a tax increase is sent to my desk, I will veto
it. Simply put, it is time for the tax madness to end.”

Related

• Budget cuts may affect property taxes locally
• Towns, schools ready to assess impact of Christie budget
• Lawmakers assess impact of governor’s cuts on Central Jersey
• Central Jersey residents express worry, praise for Governor Christie’s budget
• Text of Gov. Christie’s budget address speech
• Budget cuts could hit low-income NJ residents
• Governor’s transition team member to speak tonight
• Breakdown of Christie’s Budget

Christie is proposing to cut the earned income tax credit available to low-income
taxpayers by $45 million, eliminate business tax credits for film production and
high-tech industries worth $45 million, raise assessments on hospitals and ambulatory
care facilities by $45 million, put a special purpose assessment on insurance companies to raise $20 million and increase business filing fees by 25 percent.

The budget also counts on $80 million in additional revenue by speeding up the time
frames before which unclaimed personal property, such as unused gift cards, default to
the state.

Christie’s budget also counts on $65 million in increased sales-tax revenue by
repealing Bergen County “blue laws” that prevent the malls in Paramus, for instance,
from opening on Sundays.

More than $335 million in one-shot transfers would be made, cumulatively, from 16
funds, including nearly $92 million from Urban Enterprise Zones (which would receive no funding for the year), $65 million from a global-warming fund and $40 million from the Motor Vehicle Commission.

The budget also relies on $1 billion in federal stimulus aid that offsets what
typically would have been a state appropriation, bringing the budget to $29.3 billion.
In the current year, nearly $2.3 billion in stimulus aid supplements state spending.

Christie’s administration says the shortfall in the projected budget for next year
was $10.7 billion out of what would have been $38.4 billion in spending in a “hands off
the wheel” budget that fully funded things that are rarely, if ever, fully funded –
pensions, school aid and property tax rebates, for instance.

Chief of staff Richard Bagger said the gap the largest, per capita, in the United
States. Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff went a step further, though officials later
backed off the claim: “We believe that it’s not only the largest gap in terms of
absolute dollars, but also percentage gap, that any state has ever faced, at least in
the modern era.”

“No fiscal crisis we have had in New Jersey’s history compares to this one,”
Christie said.

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Obama Visits Kindergarten To Read Class 200-Page Memorandum On Health Care MARCH 16, 2010 | ISSUE 46•11 02.18.09 MIAMI—As part of a new program designed to encourage reading, President Barack Obama visited a kindergarten class Monday to read the schoolchildren a 200-page memorandum on health care reform. “All right, part one, subsection A,” the president began as the assembled students fidgeted on their carpet squares. “Can everyone see this diagram here on page two showing projected excise taxes on high-cost insurance over a 10-year period?” Sources said several of the children, while supporting the plan in principle, remained unsure how the tax base would be able to support the full scope of Obama’s proposed measure.

Opinion

Give the funny old man some pie

Magician-comedian Penn Jillette has no qualms about aging, and he’s gonna stick to what he likes until he reaches his deathbed.

By Penn Jillette

March 12, 2010

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<!– sphereit start –> Ijust turned 55 years old. This year my age and the last two digits of my birth year are the same. That happens only once in a lifetime.

I turned 55 on stage in Jersey and more than 1,000 audience members sang “Happy Birthday.” I blew out some candles, cut a couple pieces of cake, and Teller and I pretended to eat the cake as we walked off stage. My wife and children called up to sing a smaller and more in-tune version of “Happy Birthday,” ending with “We love you, Daddy.” You can’t do better than that. Unless someone gives you pie.

I’m not bothered by the idea of getting old, or I guess you could say by having arrived at old. I was 10 when my mom turned 55. For 1955, she was a very old mom. I’m 55 and my daughter is 4 and my son is 3. My mom lived to be 90. I was alive for half her life. I need to live to be 100 years old for my daughter, Moxie, to have been alive half my life.

Some people retire at 55. It’s time to get an RV and go fishing. I’m doing 250 shows a year in Vegas and working on my cable show with Teller. I work all the time, but try telling that to AARP, which has been trying to sign me up for the last five years.

I was at the blood bank recently and they had a copy of AARP the Magazine with Bruce Springsteen on the cover. He’s way older than me. The Boss was rocking out on the cover of the old people’s magazine. Not long after that, I myself was featured in the magazine. Tramps like us, baby, we were born to look at ads for denture cream.

Bruce looked good at 60, but not as good as he looked at 30. That gives me an advantage over the Boss. I look about as bad at 55 as I did at 30. That’s the advantage of never having been a hunk. “Penn’s that big, loud guy with the stupid haircut” is a fine description of me now, and it was a fine description of me 25 years ago. Until a younger, bigger, louder guy with a stupider haircut comes along, I don’t have to become the “big, old, loud guy with the stupid haircut.”

I used to be young. I was the youngest in my class at Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth Clown College. When Teller and I started working, I was too young to get into some of the clubs where we did shows.

I can’t really go for the youngest anything anymore — the president of the United States is younger than I am! Now, I have to go for being the oldest at things, and I’m starting to do that. I had a really bad ear infection recently, and the doctor had to put in a tube so my ear could drain. When I went to the hospital for the procedure, the other patients were all under 4 years old. So, I was the oldest brave little fellow getting a tube in his ear that morning. The nurse offered us all lollipops afterward. I took a purple one. They didn’t have pie.

Johnny Carson left “The Tonight Show” because he wanted to retire at the top of his game. Some people think that Frank Sinatra should have retired a little earlier, when his voice was still the best that this world has ever heard. I saw Ol’ Fading Blue Eyes on his last tour, and I thought he was great. I was just glad to have had a chance to see him again.

Maybe you’re one of the people who thought Sinatra was embarrassing on his last tour, but I bet you didn’t have the guts to tell him to his face. Even on his deathbed he would have kicked your butt.

If I worried about embarrassing myself, I certainly wouldn’t have gone into showbiz. If I were trying to avoid embarrassment, I wouldn’t have stumbled my way through “Dancing with the Stars.” I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.

I’d still like some pie.

Penn Jillette is the louder, bigger half of the magic/comedy team of Penn & Teller.

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Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

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COMMENTS (1) | Add Comment

Since turning the same age last month, I like to say that I’m as old as the last century was when I was born.

amyleetee (03/12/2010, 4:54 AM )