O’TOOLE APPOINTED TO BIPARTISAN BUDGET CUTS COMMITTEEPanel Will Examine And Recommend Budget Cuts To Help Fill Budget Gap

            Senator Kevin O’Toole, (R-40), announced today that he has been appointed to a bi-partisan committee to identify and recommend budget cuts to help close the nearly $3.5 billion budget shortfall.

            “Over the past two years my colleagues and I, in the General Assembly have proposed $3 billion in cuts to the state budget to this governor,” O’Toole stated.

            The bi-partisan committee is composed of four members two Assemblymen and two Senators.  The other members are Senator Barbara Buono, Assemblyman Lou Greenwald and Assemblyman Joe Malone.  A working schedule for the bi-partisan committee has not been announced.

            “If Governor Corzine wants this working group to be successful, he needs to put everything on the table.  That means he needs to disclose the details behind the structural budget

he says he cannot close with spending cuts, and he needs to share all the spending cut ideas that his administration has explored.  Additionally, without the details behind the structural deficit he wants us to close, we don't know what part of the structural deficit is self-inflicted spending increases on things like pay raises, hiked school aid, and additional Abbott school construction funding, ” O’Toole concluded.