Vested interests, including some New Jersey public employee unions fought hard to keep Chris Christie out of office, but he was elected governor despite those efforts. This time, the public has had enough. Christie’s campaign promises were very clear, and he’s beginning to make good on them.
One of those promises was to check the out-of-control spending that’s been ravaging governments throughout the Garden State. New Jersey’s fiscal mess is one of the biggest burrs stuck in the side of its residents.
Governor Christie knows that. He also knows that his window of opportunity to effect necessary change could close very quickly. He wants to pull out that burr before his credibility begins to wane.
This governor formally recognized the obvious: He declared an economic state of emergency. Unsurprisingly, cries of anguish are rising to the surface: Implications of impending doom such as reduced services, reductions to the quality of education, and the prospect of higher real estate taxes are already emanating from some governmental entities and school districts.
Christie did not create this crisis. It’s been growing slowly, like a dissonant but foreseeable crescendo of fiscal irresponsibility for far too many years. What this new governor did do is what no one else in New Jersey government has had the guts to cope with: He publicly acknowledged the existence of the problem and decided to tackle it head on.
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