By Harold Kane, Monroe Township (Written as a Letter to the Editor of The Star Ledger)
The Star Ledger never misses a chance to take cheap shots at politicians.
In the February 27thPERSPECTIVE Mark Magyar insinuated that New Jersey’s property tax issues are the fault of Christie. He fails to mention that Christie has been in office for one year and that New Jersey’s public sector exploded under Governors Jim McGreevy, Dick Codey, and Jon Corzine. During the past ten years, while NJs population grew 4.5%, * property taxes increased by 85%**. This was done to pay the compensation of the army of public employees that were hired by NJs 2,000 municipalities, counties, school boards, fire districts, water and sewer districts and community colleges, with the worst year being 2003 when 17,000 ***new public employees were hired under McGreevy.
The Democrats from 2001 to 2010 bloated up the public workforce for their own purposes-the larger the workforce, the larger the public unions, subsequently the more campaign money given to the Democrats. Christie is trying to do what needs to be done to bring fiscal sanity to NJ, working against a hostile legislature. If the Star Ledger would like to be part of the solution to New Jersey’s fiscal problems then they should endorse Republican candidates in October so that Governor Christie will have the Republican legislature that he needs.
Trenton, NJ – Today, Governor Chris Christie accepted the recommendation of NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein to continue the orderly and expeditious shutdown of the ARC Project. Despite intense negotiations with federal and state participants, no agreement was reached on terms that would assure New Jersey’s taxpayers would not pay more than $2.7 billion for a completed Trans Hudson Express ARC project.
Frank Pallone Jr.Disappointed to hear Governor plans to cancel ARC tunnel at a time when New Jersey needs more mass transit options.
Well, if Pallone had any clout in Washington after 22 years, maybe he could have gotten the Feds to cover the cost over runs on the project. Or maybe he could have gotten his friends in the New York delegation to lean on Albany to contribute their fair share to a project that would have benefited New York more than it would have helped NJ anyway. Think of all those tax dollars New Jersey residents would have been paying to New York after we spent $15 billion dollars to give them a way to leave the state to go to work.
As our friend Harold Kane, the next Middlesex County Clerk, pointed out last week, New Jersey has 40 million square feet of vacant office space. What do we need to spend billions of dollars to send people to work in New York for?
Christie did the right thing and come Tuesday Pallone is going to be despondent.
In the editorial page of October 12 Paul Mulshine, correctly, continued to question the ARC rail tunnel. Inadvertently, the Star Ledger business section supported Mr. Mulshine’s position.The business section (page 7) stated that there is almost 40M square feet of office space available in NJ. 40M square feet of space will support 200,000 employees, at an average of 200 square feet per employee. The ARC supporters refuse to consider that NJ residents would actually prefer to work near their homes in NJ, rather than commute to NYC. Even if they had to take a pay cut to work near home, it would be worth it. As a former commuter I can make this statement.
Governor Christie was correct to cancel the tunnel. It will be New Jersey’s version of Boston’s “Big Dig”. One major difference between the two projects is that Massachusetts was forced to pay the lion’s share of the cost as the cost spiked from $8B to $24B. But, in this case the benefit accrued to Massachusetts and the Mass. construction unions. In the case of the ARC tunnel all of the benefits accrue to NYC, with NJ getting the cost overrun tab. If you do not think that there will be cost overruns, then you know nothing about construction-related activities in NYC.
New Jersey needs to get out of this 1960s mindset that states that anything that the public sector proposes has merit and must be done. A great first step in this direction would be to stand by the decision to cancel the tunnel and to implement tax and economic policies designed to fill up these 4M square feet of empty space.
Harold V. Kane is the GOP candidate for Middlesex County Clerk
