Thursday, May 07, 2009
Emperor's clothes moment
Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, has done a remarkable thing. He has spoken the truth about the expense of state and local government in New Jersey. It is obvious, self-evident truth, but it is rare for politicians, especially big city mayors, actually to breath the words. Excerpt:
New Jersey’s tax-strapped residents can’t afford their government and the state needs to rein in the mounting costs of public worker benefits, said the mayor of Newark, the state’s largest city.
Cory Booker, 40, said rising expenses for health care, pensions and salaries are impinging on government finances. Operations need to be streamlined in a state with 566 towns and cities, 617 school districts and 21 counties, Booker said during a meeting with Bloomberg editors and on Bloomberg Radio today.
“New Jersey will go bankrupt in 10 to 20 years because we cannot afford our employees as a state,” Booker said. “I’m talking about every worker from the cities and counties to the state government. Eventually, we’re going to price ourselves out as a government or tax ourselves to death.”...
“There should be a tax revolt in the state of New Jersey,” Booker said. “We’re the most inefficient state in the country. We have more government per person than we need. You would never manage a business the way we manage our government - - we have overlapping provision of services and in my opinion, it’s insane.”
Yes, Mayor Booker, it is insane, and so indisputable that it is astonishing that it needs to be said at all. Sadly, though, it does. Thank you.
9 Comments:
By 
joe buz, at
Thu May 07, 11:03:00 PM:
this guy and his opinion are nothing more than a distraction..someone hand him a teabag....
By Georg Felis, at
Fri May 08, 12:03:00 AM:
Sadly in Kansas also, conventional wisdom seems to decree that one large school district is both more effective and more efficient than two little school districts. Reality seems to contradict this. Once a school district manages to absorb a second with the promise of lower costs, the longer bus routes and greater number of administration jobs required eat up all the cost savings, and more. Then the district declares that they just have not reached the required size in order to be efficient, and they absorb yet another district. And so on, and so forth, until you get Schoolzilla. Kind of the Peter Principle for Education.
The same fallacy attacks the County/City too, for example the never ending quest for the city of Topeka to absorb the Parks and Rec department of Shawnee County, with promises of gigantic savings and greater efficiency. Or Topeka's attempt to get the county to pony up the cash for a cool helicopter.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's stupid to merge two inefficient organizations, and expect to get an efficient organization out of the deal. The most effective way to drive efficiency in government is for competent executives to sit down, sacrifice the sacred cows, eliminate the pie-in-the-sky plans that always lurk near the edges of the budget (So why do we need a taxpayer funded stadium/mall?), and put forward a realistic publicized budget with public input (and not just the normal crying/begging parade).
Unfortunately this is followed by an election. And the fiscally responsible people get stomped by the people offering bread and circuses.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri May 08, 05:52:00 AM:
Georgfelis, I grew up in Iowa, which I suspect is closer to Kansas in such matters than New Jersey. Local control works in Iowa because people do not review tax dollars as an opportunity to generate no work and no show jobs for "friends of theirs." You ever see the Sopranos? Little units of government in New Jersey, even in honest jurisdictions, quickly become jobs programs for people who are lazy, stupid, or both.
By 
, at
Fri May 08, 08:18:00 AM:
I've seen this guy in person, and I think he's the real deal. He's smart. He's also up for reelection in 2010, so I give him credit for "telling it like it is." I just hope he is able to do something about it. No matter how much he wants to make cuts, he's going to face some powerful opposition.
By , at
Fri May 08, 09:08:00 AM:
Let's hope that by 2010 there is a majority of people who want some responsibility, and find the real deals to plug in there.
Middle America can't really understand places like NJ, where you can do a masters plus 30 hours for a career in teaching and retire making 100K or more with a really huge pension. When you add those folks to the rolls of retired cops at the local, county, state levels, paid firefighters, and all the other public workers, there are mammoth obligations to fund. In a small town, you could have 2+ the number of people on the payroll that actually still work.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be paid well, but the proliferation of high paying jobs that carry these pension obligations, added to the wasteful spending, is beyond sustainable. The only source of revenue to fund them is taxation, and it's getting to the tipping point.
I read on Mish (I think) or the Ticker that California's tax revenues are down 40% this year. The high wage earners that are still employed are leaving ... I suspect the same is happening in NJ.
The path out is for people to learn to save more, not spend on credit. I think it'll take decades, and I think we're too weak a people to do it.
By , at
Fri May 08, 10:00:00 AM:
But, this is the certain result of allowing public employees to join unions and bargain collectively! The politicians sitting on the other side of the table can never say "no" because the are motivated only by short term events.
By , at
Fri May 08, 10:17:00 AM:
Link:
If you parse Obama's spending plans -- including Stimulus -- it looks like a big bailout of the states. Having the federal government pay to fix roads and calling it infrastructure investment -- for example -- enables a state to spend that money elsewhere.
If it weren't for Obama's bailout, many states would be going bankrupt this year. States can't print money, so Obama is doing it for them. Barney Frank is even dabbling in the idea of federal guarantees for municipal bonds, which would bring local governments into this.
Meanwhile, Obama is threatening to rescind billions in stimulus money for California if it doesn't restore wage cuts to its unionized home healthcare workers. There are several things wrong with this. Just to pick one -- it's accelerating the flow of power and control to DC. This has been an alarming trend over the last 20 years ... as DC is an unaccountable two-headed beast.
As a small "L" libertarian, I'm not against local government -- my town is decently managed and is actually trying to be responsible as it faces tax revenue declines. My kids are getting a good education, my trash gets picked up, the cops let town residents get out of driving violations with warnings. My town got a small bit of fame when we had a tie vote for mayor a couple of years ago -- the only time in my life my vote actually mattered. The town had a major screw-up over the purchase of a fire engine and actually fired somebody -- name a government employee in DC who has lost a job over the Fannie and Freddie debacles.
Compare -- My taxes to the federal government almost entirely go to
1) a "retirement fund" from which I'll likely never see a dime,
2) a military-espionage-industrial complex that failed to keep my city safe on 9/11,
3) transfer payments to politically organized groups and politically connected hustlers like Murtha's nephew, and
4) interest on decades of deficit spending for the foregoing.
I get nothing from the federal government and likely never will -- yet Obama wants to bleed me dry.
This is unsustainable. It will blow-up ... Obama is accelerating this. Within five years I suspect we'll have a big day of reckoning, the outcome of which is unwritten.
By , at
Fri May 08, 10:46:00 AM:
This is clearly a ploy to force the consolidation of the smaller districts and towns in the suburbs and down south, under the guise of efficiency, even though government in New Jersey works efficiently only at the local level. Consolidate the seven or eight towns of the Pascack Valley into one, and see how much less efficient the merged entity is compared to its constituent parts.
By , at
Fri May 08, 01:13:00 PM:
There is a reason why The Sopranos was filmed in Jersey ...
