Local governments reduced to begging

ok we are billions in Dept. Lets stop the crying and the moaning. Start cutting mandated State items now. Steve has made a good start trying to deputise his cops. The taxpayers wallets are empty and we cannot and will not pay for illegals and out of towners in our schools. Period.

Could someone get this guy a tissue? Cry me a river Mayor, although I do love his insightful "bureaucrats and political hacks" comment. While who the hacks are I'm not sure considering that Corzine's Office staff has reduced in size from McGreevy-Codey and as for bureaucrats, those that hammer out the budget are very qualified people. While Lonegan's "insightful" and "enlightening" revelation of "Government is slow" is one of his least irritating reads, it is still more of the same blah blah blah.

As the saying goes, you can't get one from the other. When the collective middle class taxpayer pocketbook calcifies, all that will remain will be the working poor and those whose wealth insulates them from the prohibitive cost of doing business in Jersey. I had hoped that Corzine would run state government the way he ran Goldman Sachs. Sadly,due to decades of mismanagement by both parties, the Trenton bureaucracy will end up with all the gold and we'll all be wearing sacks.

"KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD" - Emil Faber

New Jersey has too many towns and school districts. If Bergen County had 20 towns instead of 70 (with twenty superintendents, twenty town managers, twenty engineers, etc) the money we spent on hundreds of redundant, unnecessary salaries would be spent on essential services, and towns would not have to "go begging." But, if we solved the problem, there would be no mayor of Bogata - because there would be no Bogota at all. Nothing changes in NJ unless we do something about the number of towns and school districts. And we have seen just this year that Corzine chickened out and and appointed a meaningless study panel - which is now vacant!

I am happy to say that my little town of less than 2,000 people did not raise taxes this year. Do you think for a minute that I want to consolidate with the larger towns around me? That would mean taxes in this little town would go up because it would be part of the whole. However, I do believe in towns working more together to consolidate services, including school services and school employees. But consolidate towns at the whim of how the state would mandate it, NO.

Unless your town is huge - like Bass River or Woodland - the neighboring town can take over police functions, fire services, certainly tax assessment, for less money than you are paying now. You would get a tax cut. Using your argument, if having fewer towns means a tax increase, then having more towns would mean a tax cut - right? We could cut taxes in half by having 1,300 towns, like Northeast Windsor, and Brand New Brunswick. We could divide Pine Valley Country Club (and its five full time police officers) into Front Nine City and Back Nine Borough!

I don't doubt that your services are as good as any. The fact that your town does not have paid fire, emt, and police is the reason why your taxes are low. Most small towns have all of these departments, when a shared county-wide service would do just as well and cut out much of the administrative costs. I dont exactly know why you have hostle tone, I was just asking questions. Pardon me for being skeptical of your town's relativly low taxes-all I know is my County/Municipal Govt has touted "reduced tax rate" every election year, but somehow my tax bill never gets lower. Regardless of whether or not your particular town has low taxes or not-you are the exception not the rule in this state-as I said you're lucky. Sorry but we need to consolidate many of our services and municipalities.

I suppose you missed the part where I advocated for county-wide school districts. Furthermore, while the state does have to control its spending local and county governments have far more to do with your property taxes than Trenton does (of course what Trenton does has an impact-I understand fully how the system works). There is simply no need for the amount of towns that we have. NJ would save tons of money by exanding the jurisdiction of existing County Sherrifs Departments and ridding the burdens of small police departments-many states do this and there is no problem with law enforcement, school boards could be abolished. In terms of response time I'm not sure where you get your numbers (5 Minutes to 20? why? How come?) Next point-While the Abbot program has not been successfull, I fully support the idea that every student in the state of NJ should have a quality education regardless of their parents economic status-a child growing up in Newark should be afforded every opportunity that a child in Brick or Cherry Hill has, they simply need to find a better way to do it (and should mandate it). The cost of quality education can never outweight the return.

New Jersey has certain structural issues that make it very difficult to cut costs, however much we would like trimmed-down government. For one, we just love home rule so much that any sound suggestion of consolidating services among municipalities/counties meets with disfavor. For another, we have redundant layers of government that need phasing out, such as county governing bodies. Still another is the ludicrous attempt by the legislature to force county or municipal solutions to statewide issues rather than regional ones, as happened with solid waste handling/incineration years ago, flatly rejecting any wise consideration of a can/bottle bill as other states have. Finally, we are at the mercy of our activist state supreme court with their decisions of the past two decades that have burdened the middle class taxpayer beyond reason, to wit, Abbott v. Burke, and Mount Laurel.

Ononuk-I should have stated Long Beach Island, not Long Branch.