Starve The Beast: Roll Back The Port Authority Toll Hikes

Given the results of the audit of Port Authority released earlier this week, it is fair to conclude that PA has been overcharging New Jersey commuters and truckers for decades.

Too much money has been the addictive substance that made PA “dysfunctional.” 

Lack of money is what has enabled Governor Christie, and many other governors across the country to implement necessary reforms.  Christie is extraordinarily talented, but would he have been able to get the Democrats to compromise with him if tax revenue was rolling in with abundance?  No way.

Yet, with the September toll hikes, Governors Christie and Cuomo have helped the the dysfunctional, wasteful, corrupt Pork Authority to more of their destructive substance.

New Jersey Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Bergen County) and New York State Senator Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island) have called for the latest toll hikes to be rolled back, according to The Star Ledger.

At the very least, tolls should be rolled back to their pre-September levels until the ongoing audit of PA is complete and reforms implemented.  A rollback to the 2001 toll levels should be seriously considered.

Phase two of the toll increases announced last August take effect in 2014.  Christie and Cuomo should immediately revoked that authorization and roll back the current tolls to the September 2011 levels, at the very least.

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Anti-Bullying Law Overturned

New Jersey’s recently enacted “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” has been struck down by the Council on Local Mandates.

The state has until the end of March to amend the law or to provide funding for its implementation, according to Gannett’s Statehouse Bureau.

The Council on Local Mandates was created in 1995 by a constitutional amendment approved by the voters.  Its members are appointed by the governor and both parties leaders in the legislature and the chief justice of the supreme court.  The council is empowered to “expire” laws, rules and regulations that compel boards of educations, municipalities and counties to take action without providing resources to pay for the mandate.

Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-Bergen), the anti bullying bill’s lead sponsor, called the council a “rarely used, shadowy fourth branch of government.”

Why is it rarely used?  MMM often hears local municipal officials and school board members complaining about money the state is making them spend.

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