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...
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