New push from Corzine on consolidation

[Princeton Packet]

New push from Corzine on consolidation
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 7:17 PM EDT
By Fred Tuccillo, Managing Editor




PRINCETON — Gov. Jon S. Corzine said Wednesday that his administration will soon take steps to increase pressure for “school districts without schools” to move toward consolidation with neighboring school systems.

Answering questions from community newspaper editors at Drumthwacket, the official residence of New Jersey governors, Gov. Corzine signaled a continuing determination to press for more shared services and consolidation among the state’s 1,900 governmental units, including its more than 600 school districts. The governor acknowledged the difficulty of overcoming grass roots “home rule” resistance to municipal mergers, citing as one example voter rejection of past efforts at merging Princeton Township and Princeton Borough into a single municipality.

However, he said that the recession’s impact on governmental revenue and his administration’s insistence on capping increases in municipal and school district budgets were beginning to create a new atmosphere for such efforts.

”We’re going to keep pushing on it as long as I am governor,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we put the cap on.”

Of municipal consolidation in particular, Gov. Corzine said, “I do believe in ‘small d’ democracy. People ought to vote on it and they ought to vote their own self-interest.”
But he then added: “We have a stronger authority with respect to schools and we will be exercising it ... in a matter of weeks.” He did not elaborate, except to make clear that he was referring to some 16 school districts that have no schools or students of their own and merely arrange to send children to schools in larger neighboring districts.

He was asked to respond to the argument that such districts need their own school boards and administrators to ensure that larger “receiving districts” are spending appropriately on the students they receive from smaller communities.

”You would think that you could put together a system that watches out for the spending and the education of the children without having to have another administration,” Gov. Corzine said.

The governor said that the multiplicity of governments and districts of all kinds in New Jersey is “one of our biggest problems on cost and, I think, on corruption ... so many units and levels without transparency.”

He said that public resistance to consolidation was, in part, due to “a historic failure of political courage. It will only change when people feel and are convinced by their political leadership. ... People have to vote for the people that they think will make this change.”

The governor used much of the 75-minute session to defend his $29.8 billion budget, arguing that he had made unprecedented spending reductions — totaling $4 billion — while protecting funding that “supports the middle class.”

He singled out the retention of property tax rebates for seniors and those making less than $75,000 a year as well as the maintenance of school aid levels. He noted that the state’s median annual income is $65,000, adding, “And the last time I checked, a lot of seniors were in the middle class.”

Citing the connection between state aid to education and local property taxes, Gov. Corzine said, “If you are putting more money into the schools, you are doing more to dampen property taxes than anything else you could do.”

He said that the state’s challenge in maintaining “the safety net” for those most severely impacted by the recession, while coping with a 12 percent drop in its own revenues, had forced “a lot of choices I am not happy with.”

But he challenged critics to come up with specific alternatives, saying, “They don’t generally tell you what they would have cut instead.”

He also defended the budget’s provision allowing municipalities to defer this year’s contribution to the state pension fund, arguing that it differed from much-criticized deferrals by previous state administrations. The difference, he said, is that this provision lays out a payback requirement and schedule.

”This is not my favorite option but it is the only way, I feel, that we can support our municipalities during this economic crisis,” the governor said. “And it’s completely voluntary — if a municipality doesn’t want to do it, it doesn’t have to.”

”The bond and stock markets will have a far greater impact on the pension system than these deferrals,” he said. “The drawdown is very small, compared to the swings that go on in the market ... and all of it could be completely washed away if the stock market comes up.”

http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2009/04/01/topstory/doc49d3f51f5150c759370503.txt

[Guest]