The only real surprise in last week’s announcement that the state’s anticipated budget deficit has ballooned from $400 million to $1.2 billion is that the situation isn’t even worse.
Then again, with seven months remaining in the current fiscal year, there’s plenty of time for the gap between revenues and expenditures to grow a lot wider.
And it almost certainly will.
That’s the truly grim news coming out of Trenton these days — that whatever efforts Gov. Jon Corzine and the Legislature undertake to keep the state treasury afloat for the next few weeks won’t be nearly enough to stem the tide of red ink that’s coming thereafter. Unless the nation’s economy turns around much faster than even the most optimistic forecasters are predicting, New Jersey must brace itself for a steady wave of severe cost-cutting measures, to be followed by a storm of protest from every corner of the state.
New Jersey isn’t exactly a stranger to budget shortfalls; in fact, we seem to face one just about every year. But there’s no quick fix this time around. There’s no highway to sell or lease, no state asset that can be turned over for cash to an independent authority, no way to skip a year’s payment to the public employees’ pension funds or borrow against casino revenues or spread around the state’s share of the federal settlement with the tobacco companies.
There may yet be a substantial economic stimulus package coming out of Washington to help state and local governments, but most of that money will probably go toward infrastructure investment and other capital projects. It won’t be used to pay state workers’ salaries and health benefits, run the prison system, issue environmental permits, regulate banks and insurance companies, subsidize tuitions at state colleges and universities, send out homestead rebate checks, finance Medicaid reimbursements, provide state aid to municipalities and school districts or fund many of the other ongoing activities of state government.
So there will be cuts in this state budget — and they will be deep. The challenge to the governor and the Legislature is to spread the resultant pain as equitably as possible across all sectors of the economy and all segments of society.
It’s a virtual certainty that public employee costs will have to be trimmed, which will likely require some combination of a hiring freeze, layoffs and postponement of raises. If so, the private sector should also be expected to bear some of the hardships that will follow — in the form, for example, of longer waits for permit reviews and approvals. And taxpayers may be called upon to sacrifice as well, by forgoing part or all of their homestead rebates, in accordance with their relative wealth, during these tough economic times.
Students at public colleges and universities will pay higher tuitions, and their professors and administrators won’t see the kind of annual raises they’re accustomed to. Teachers, police officers, firefighters, prison guards, social workers and other public employees at the state, county and municipal levels of government will all be adversely affected by a lighter paycheck, a heavier workload or both.
There will be a heap of complaining, to be sure. Every special interest will be lined up with reasons why its particular portion of the budget pie should remain untouched. Our elected leaders owe it to themselves — and to us — to turn a deaf ear to this special pleading and call upon all New Jerseyans to bear their fair share of this unprecedented economic burden. If we join together, accept our civic responsibility and make the necessary sacrifices for the public good, we will all share in the bounty of the economic recovery that is certain to follow.
