The Princeton Packet
New Jersey’s voters delivered a pretty clear message to lawmakers last week on the subject of state borrowing and spending.
Bonds for open-space preservation? Well, O.K. — but with considerably less enthusiasm than in years past.
Bonds for stem-cell research? No way.
Dedicate the remaining half of the one-cent increase in the sales tax approved last year to property-tax relief? Fuhgeddaboutit.
Gov. Jon Corzine pretty much hit the nail on the head when he observed, “The voters have given us clear instructions to resolve our alarming and pressing financial problems.” Or, as Senate President and former Gov. Richard Codey put it, “Clearly it was a message to us: ‘Get your fiscal house in order.’ “
So attention will now turn to the governor’s “asset monetization” plan and other initiatives aimed at resolving those “alarming and pressing financial problems.” But that probably won’t happen during the lame-duck session of the Legislature, during which action will reportedly be limited to abolishing the death penalty, extending family leave and taking up a handful of other non-fiscal matters.
That means it will be January at the earliest — and quite possibly later in the spring — before any serious action is taken to plug what is already looming as a multibillion-dollar hole in next year’s state budget. Sorry, Sen. Codey, but you and your colleagues appear to be in no hurry to “get your fiscal house in order.”
Ironically, Gov. Corzine signed a bill shortly before last week’s election that could have a profound impact on the state’s financial picture — if it’s enforced. Effective March 1, anyone who uses a hand-held cell phone while driving will be guilty of a primary traffic offense, and subject to a fine of $100.
Since 2004, police officers have been allowed to ticket motorists using hand-held cell phones only if they were stopped for committing another motor-vehicle offense. Under the new law, using any hand-held electronic device while driving will be reason enough for an officer to stop a motorist and issue a ticket.
Talk about a potential money-maker!
We haven’t seen any kind of formal survey or official estimate of how many New Jersey motorists are apt to be using a hand-held device while driving at any given moment. But if our own, anecdotal evidence is at all indicative of what’s going on across the state, police officers are going to be mighty busy writing tickets come March 1.
Just look around. Whether it’s sitting at a traffic light in downtown Princeton or crawling along Route 1 at rush hour or traveling ever-so-slowly through one of those 25-mph zones in the center of every little borough in Central Jersey, you’d be hard-pressed to come upon a single motorist who isn’t on the phone. On a nice fall day when everyone’s driving around with the windows open, you can even pick up little snippets of loud conversation — which, truth be told, is considerably less annoying than sharing the experience of listening to the latest rap CD at decibel levels that can shatter eardrums, if not windshields.
The purpose of this new law, of course, is not to solve the state’s budget woes. It’s to promote highway safety by discouraging people from using their cell phones while driving. And we truly hope it accomplishes this. But if it happens to raise a pile of money in the process — money that would otherwise have to come out of the pockets of taxpayers — we’re not at all averse to the idea of killing two troublesome birds with one well-aimed stone.
