Gov. Jon Corzine’s proposal to cut three departments in the state government, if approved by the Legislature, will be less of an elimination and more of a merger, according to some state officials.
During the governor’s budget address on Feb. 26, Corzine announced that, as a cost-cutting measure, he would seek to eliminate the state departments of Agriculture and Personnel as well as the New Jersey Commerce Commission. It is one aspect of an overall spending plan that he called “cold turkey” budgeting, saying that the state has been living beyond its means and must learn to cut back.
The plan, which proposes some $500 million in cuts, brings the current proposed $33 billion budget lower than last year’s. Included are cuts to things such as municipal aid, higher education and hospital funding, and a pledge to cut 3,000 state jobs by attrition.
At the moment, it is unknown how many of those proposed 3,000 job cuts would come from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Personnel, as the specifics of how exactly these cuts would work must still be worked out by the Legislature. What is known is thatmany of the functions that the departments currently handle would be absorbed into other state agencies.
Department of Personnel spokeswoman Mary Anne Jemison said that many functions of the Personnel Department would be mostly taken over by the Treasury.
Gary Rose, chief of the Office of Economic Growth, said Treasury would also handle much of what the Commerce Commission
currently does. According to the Department of Agriculture
spokeswoman Lynn Richmond, it is currently unknown how, if the proposal passes, that department’s functions will continue, though she said they will still be performed.
Still, despite the fact that this proposal is in its very early stages, it has drawn some fierce discussion, particularly with regard to the proposed elimination of the Department of Agriculture.
The New Jersey Farm Bureau, which represents agricultural producers, has been particularly vocal in its opposition to cutting the department. Ed Wengryn, a spokesman for the organization, said that taking the functions of the Department of Agriculture away from a body that is dedicated solely to agriculture is a mistake because the needs of the farmer will not be prioritized in the other departments.
“The emphasis and focus on agriculture as an industry gets lost. So what you have, [for example] if the animal health division ends up at Health and Senior Services where human health is the primary mission, animal health could get lost in an agency like that,” said Wengryn.
Besides being heavily involved in the promotion of the state’s agricultural industry to other states and countries, the Department ofAgriculture also has significant regulatory functions, such as overseeing food safety standards, certifying produce as organic and handling health inspections for animals coming in and out of the state.
Corzine has publicly stated that critical functions of the Department ofAgriculture will continue.
Another area of concern for Wengryn is the Farmland Preservation Program, where parcels of land are preserved for agricultural use. It is his concern thatmoving responsibility for this program to a state agency, for instance, the Department of Environmental Protection, might interfere with the mission of farmland preservation. He noted that sometimes farms are considered a disturbance to open space and are not always in line with the mission of the Green Acres program, which preserves open spaces.
In a press release issued by the Farm Bureau, officials said the savings from eliminating the Department ofAgriculture would be between $300,000 to $400,000, a sum that is dwarfed when compared to the proposed $33 billion budget. Wengryn said this is the cost of the secretary of agriculture and his support staff.
Tom Vincz, a spokesman with the Department of Treasury, said the three departments’ closures is anticipated to save the state about $2.5 million.
Rose, with the Office of Economic Growth, saidmany of the cuts, at least with regard to the cutting of the Commerce Commission, aren’t so much aimed at savingmoney directly, but rather at increasing efficiency within state government.
“[It’s] a merger, functionally. The governor proposed in his budget that the Commerce Commission, as it is, will be eliminated, but the services we have will not be,” said Rose.
The New Jersey Commerce Commission primarily assists businesses in New Jersey, as well as people looking to do business in New Jersey.
It functions, essentially, as a resource for the business community but also oversees economic development programs within the state. Rose said the commission had already been restructured about a year ago, when the tourism promotion component
was moved to the State Department, allowing the commission to focus almost exclusively on private-sector assistance.
He said, then, that a merger with the Commerce Commission would only be continuing the government’s mission of eliminating redundancies.
“So if, as the governor wishes, Commerce and the [Economic DevelopmentAuthority or EDA], in effect, wind up working in a tighter coordination, it will be nothing but a furtherance of what we’ve been doing,” said Rose.
According toMary Ellen Peppard,manager of government relations for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce,many of the functions of the Commerce Commission can, in fact, be credibly taken over by other parts of the government, so she is not terribly worried about its potential cut.
“To say you’re eliminating the commerce, the business support function for the government, isn’t necessarily true since you already have that Office of Economic Growth, and EDAand [the Department of] Treasury does a lot. Let’s say a business wants to move into the state, the Office of Economic Growth in the Treasury would assist with that, so it may seem they’re eliminating a department, but a lot of the functions will move elsewhere. But there will still be job losses [in the government],” said Peppard.
Aspokesman for the Department of Personnel, meanwhile, said it is too early to tell how the specifics of a potential removal of the department will play out, except that the duties the department carries out will not go away, but will be taken over by other departments.
The Legislature must approve the new budget by July 1.

