Time to get over big government

Thanks to Stan for finding this, I thought it should be reprinted here in full:

I have had a depressingly high number of conversations lately about New Jersey being a sinking ship. There are three themes. The most common is that the state is broke and that nobody seems to have the political will to fix it. The second theme, recently voiced to me by a veteran Democratic legislator, is that "nothing we've done is working anymore." In other words, we need new approaches to many of our key public policy challenges.

The third theme is that wasteful spending on big-ticket items is hurting priorities such as the environment, state parks, health care for our neediest residents and the like.

Democrats are supposed to be progressive. But lately, we look too much like defenders of the status quo. In fact, another Democrat with vast experience in Trenton re cently said to me that our system has become "of the government, by the government and for the government."

The Democratic Party here has to decide whether it is the party of the people or the party of the insiders. There is a conflict because a high proportion of those who vote in primaries benefit from the status quo. One out of eight New Jerseyans works in the public sector, and these people vote. They are mostly good and dedicated people. But we have overstaffed units of government and too many layers of it. That is the main reason we have such high property taxes.

Bloated government can be cut without harming essential services. It does almost no good to trim around the edges; closing state parks is primarily symbolic. We have to focus on the key items that drive the cost of government. The big tickets are education, public safety, the cost of retirement benefits, the cost of incarcerating nonvi olent offenders and overlapping units of government.

We are spending more money than ever on the Abbott districts despite evidence that hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted. Huge buyout packages appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. There are rigged contracts, construction cost overruns, administrative fat and expensive state mandates.

We are not allowed even to discuss productivity in education, and it is virtually impossible to get rid of incompetent teachers. Meanwhile, some of our best and brightest college grads can't get in to Teach for America because the education bureaucracy doesn't want too many of them.

The next big ticket is public safety. According to PoliceLink, New Jersey offers the highest law enforcement compensation in the country, with an average median salary of $70,470. Moreover, there are wide gaps within the state. Why does a starting patrolman in Princeton get paid 71 percent more than a new one in Trenton? Why can many cops get paid for four hours of overtime for as little as 15 minutes of work? Can we really call government efficient when our elected officials refuse to confront these expenses?

Another big ticket is retirement obligations. We're paying six-figure pensions even to people in their 50s and promising free lifetime health care to tens of thousands. Not surprisingly, the state pension plan is underfunded by about $28 billion. The state's post-retirement health care plan is about $80 billion under water. Together, those liabilities amount to about $21,000 for each of New Jersey's 4.7 million acres of land.

Labor leaders tell me that they don't want to deliver bad news to their rank and file; they have to run for re-election, too. So we have a lose-lose situation; the state can't afford these benefits, and government employees aren't being warned that they could be shortchanged when they retire.

The next big ticket is the cost of incarcerating so many nonviolent offenders, most of whom are small- time drug users. New Jersey has the highest number of nonviolent drug-law offenders as a proportion of its overall prison population, each costing more than $46,000 an nually. In other words, our drug laws are more draconian than the infamous Rockefeller drug laws. The Corrections Department budget is more than $1.3 billion. We could save tens of millions and rehabilitate some lives at the same time.

We also need to address overlapping units of government, but it is a mistake to think that consolidation is some kind of panacea. If Princeton Boro and Princeton Township combine but keep paying six-figure salaries to the same number of employees, we won't save much money. If firemen can cross borders to help in emergen cies, why can't cops? We don't need to staff every local department for simultaneous bank robberies.

It is not demagogic to say that government spending can be cut. Education spending can be reformed, penal laws can be modified, salaries and benefits can be made rational and units of government can be consolidated. Doing these things would free up money for the truly needy and for economic growth.

This is particularly important to do when private citizens and firms are being forced to tighten their budgets. We are kidding ourselves if we think that we can right the ship of state without addressing these big-ticket items.

The word "progressive" does not always have to be code for more government spending. It can mean thoughtful solutions, including cutting spending where it exists largely to benefit the "of the government" crowd.

The choice for the Democratic Party is going to be whether to risk offending some special-interest groups that are costing the taxpayers too much or to stay closely al lied with them and risk losing it all.

Tom Byrne, who runs an asset management firm, is a former chairman of the state Democratic Party. This essay first ran on NJVoices.com.