James Gibbons Jr., Hillsborough
Recently, Gov. Jon Corzine decided to go to every county in the state and have town hall meetings to unveil his to supposedly help New Jersey’s economy.
The state is in so much debt; so many people agree, including the governor, that drastic changes need to be done to get rid of all of this debt. We are the state with the fourth largest amount of debt in the country.
The brilliant plan that the governor is talking about involves many of the New Jersey’s toll roads quadruple their tolls over a 12-year period.
This will hit many commuters hard however, it will hit commercial truckers even harder.
They would have to pay $186 instead of $23 today for an average trip. That could have a ripple effect and cause prices to rise almost everywhere.
People have to look at this situation in two different ways. One way is that our politicians have been so careless in their spending habits. All of this debt did not just accumulate overnight. This took years and years of to build up.
The politicians kept putting this problem off for a long time and now we are seeing the results.
The other way to look at this would be that finally, our leaders are taking some serious action to try and change the situation of the state. Would you rather have tolls slowly rise over several years, or have a huge property tax bill that just gets higher every year?
The toll increases are one of only a few possibly solutions. Welfare and entitlement programs would never be cut because of the Democratically-controlled statehouse. Increased taxes on big businesses, such as casinos, would never work either because the lobbyists would rush to stop it.
So, it falls up to us .. . again, to save New Jersey. Maybe we should talk to him when he comes to Somerset County?
