Legislators get one-year pass from Corzine

PACKET EDITORIAL, Feb. 27

   When Jon Corzine was making a name for himself in the world of high finance, climbing the leadership ladder at Goldman Sachs, he developed a knack for reading corporate earnings reports, stock tables and other financial documents and then making informed, intelligent business decisions.
   Today, Mr. Corzine is governor of New Jersey — and he has plainly developed a knack for reading the mood of the electorate, the will of the Legislature and, above all, the calendar, and then making informed, intelligent political decisions.
   Say what you will about the governor’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 — how it perpetuates a fiscally perilous status quo, how it lets the Legislature off the hook after failing to adopt meaningful tax reform, how it fails to fund court-mandated school construction and other pressing capital needs. What the governor clearly recognized, as he was putting his $33.3 billion spending plan together, is that 2007 is a legislative election year — and the last thing any governor wants to do in a year when every member of the Legislature is up for re-election is present a budget that requires lawmakers (particularly those of his own party) to cast an unpopular vote.
   So Mr. Corzine has essentially taken a pass with this budget. Its cornerstone — "no new taxes" — will be trumpeted by Democrats from now until November with little fear that Republican challengers will take them to task for it. And with the proceeds from half of last year’s one-cent increase in the state sales tax earmarked for local property-tax relief this year, the governor and incumbent legislators are in a position to offer at least a one-shot, election-year handout that will be both economically substantial and politically popular.
   So instead of presenting a new formula for funding the public schools, as the governor has promised to do, he has tinkered in this budget with the current formula and managed to find enough money to provide, for the first time in five years, increased state aid to many suburban districts. Instead of identifying a revenue source for school construction, he has hinted at unspecified "asset monetization" initiatives (read: selling or leasing the New Jersey Turnpike, the Lottery and/or other state assets) to be considered, separate and distinct from the budget, at a later time.
   By Mr. Corzine’s own admission, this budget does not resolve the state’s chronic financial condition. It simply delays the day of reckoning when both he and the Legislature will have to deal directly with the structural deficit that has New Jersey digging a deeper and deeper hole in its fiscal foundation with each passing year. As the governor challenged lawmakers in his budget address, "We can continue struggling every year, scraping by with duct tape and baling wire, and pulling together no-frill, investment-free budgets. Or we can change course."
   Regrettably — but understandably — Mr. Corzine is proposing to make it through the next election cycle with duct tape and baling wire. He assumes, probably quite rightly, that legislators of both parties will be more inclined to adopt the no-frill, investment-free budget he is proposing than to change course in this election year.
   But a change of course is not only necessary. It is inevitable if New Jersey is ever going to stop the bleeding of its pension funds, health-care costs, infrastructure investments, secondary and higher education obligations and myriad other expenditures that continue to plunge the state deeper and deeper into debt.
   For the moment, New Jerseyans who care about such things — and whose vision extends beyond the next election — can only shrug their shoulders in resignation, accept their fate and, as a warning to anyone who might take any comfort at all from the budget Mr. Corzine proposed last week, pick up the rallying cry of fans of the old Brooklyn Dodgers:
   "Wait till next year."