Corzine’s Systemic Problem

In reading today’s Washington Post account, “Governor Focuses on Fiscal Health of N.J.,” a person may be tempted to feel some empathy for Governor Corzine, as he attempts to close the deal on a $32.8 billion budget for New Jersey

The governor is in a bind. He’s trying to balance a budget while all major, entrenched interests in this state are looking out merely for their own good and, frankly, not caring for anyone else’s.

But Corzine is not helping his credibility by proposing to push through the legislature $3.9 billion in borrowing for more school construction without voter approval.

He is inarguably correct in stating that the “state’s fiscal mess is ‘a systemic issue’ that grew over time.” State spending in New Jersey slowly ballooned out-of-control, beginning way back in 1976. The culprits include all three branches of N.J. Government.

But he was dead wrong when he simplistically stated in today’s AP report in MyCentralJersey.com that, “We have a legal . . . moral . . . economic obligation” to do what he proposes.

Moral obligations for school funding encompass the needs of the entire state of New Jersey and, when the result is the spending of billions of dollars, they come tied with another moral imperative: the obligation to spend those funds without the fraud and waste that has been part and parcel of the billions disbursed to-date.

If Governor Corzine pushes through the legislature $3.9 billion for school construction without voter approval, he will have become part of the systemic problem which he claims is the source of New Jersey’s fiscal woes.