We in New Jersey have important elections on Tuesday, November 7. We choose a new Governor, and a State Senator and both State Assembly Members in each of our 40 state legislative districts.
We elect several new freeholders in each of our 21 counties. We choose mayors, council members, township committee members, and school board members in most of our cities, townships, and public school districts.
We also have two important state public questions. However, we read and hear almost nothing about them.
Question #1 asks voters to let state government borrow another $125 million dollars. The second question asks us to amend our NJ State Constitution–AGAIN!
Voting “yes” on ballot questions is usually a bad idea in New Jersey. In other states, ordinary citizens put public questions on the ballot by petition.
In New Jersey, only a majority of both the 40 member State Senate and 80 member State Assembly can do that. This means two powerful politicians, Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney, and Democratic Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto decide what questions go on the ballot.
When they ran for election back in 1993, Republican Governor Christie Todd Whitman and Republican candidates for State Senate and Assembly promised to change that. However, they forgot about “initiative and referendum” (and most of their other promises) right after they won election with large Republican majorities.
Because only the politicians who control state government put public questions on the ballot in New Jersey, I usually vote “no” on them. I am suspicious of giving them even more money and power than they already have.
Ballot Question #1 claims state government needs to borrow $125 million, so it could then give that money to a handful of selected local governments to build or fix up their local libraries.
We all support public libraries, but there are some devils in these details. Under New Jersey’s politicized system of awarding public construction contracts, most money would be spent on union contractors, and no-bid architects, and lawyers who help politicians get elected and re-elected.
Also, thanks to Amazon, digital books, and the internet, brick and mortar physical libraries are less important than ever before. State law already requires that a generous amount of local property taxes to be spent on public libraries. So is the money really needed for the public? Or to pay back campaign donors?
The biggest devil is that borrowed money must be paid back with interest and big Wall Street “transaction fees”. Every “yes” vote to borrow money in November, is a “yes” vote for years of tax hikes to pay back those credit cards. Because of past “yes” votes (and questionable schemes that borrowed money without public votes required by state constitution), New Jersey is already up to its eyeballs in debt.
We just raised the gas 23 cents a gallon just to pay back $16 billion owed by the Transportation Trust Fund Authority. State government shut down last summer because of squabbling over paying back the $225 million loan approved by voters in 2012. That money is building Stockton University classrooms and dorms on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City and questionable projects for other colleges.
Aren’t our property, sales, and state income taxes high enough already?
A “yes” vote on Public Question #2 would AGAIN amend our New Jersey State Constitution. It would require all money collected by the State from environmental lawsuits to be spent for certain environmental purposes. This again sounds like a good idea–until you look at these details.
First, 10% of the money would pay bureaucrats of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection for “administrative expenses”. As a lawyer, I have seen how abusive government agencies and officials get when they get “bounties” from the fines and penalties they collect in the form of bigger budgets and salaries.
Second, we all want polluters to pay for the damage they create. However, very little pollution is taking place these days. Most pollution stopped in the 1960’s, and most environmental lawsuits are brought against unlucky owners of properties who have nothing to do with problems found there today. Most suits against them now are shakedowns.
Third, if you read the fine print, you will see that most money will be spent on expensive projects like sand dunes built by politically connected union construction companies that have nothing to do with cleaning up pollution.
Fourth, even most environment “cleanups” these days are a scam. They simply spend fortunes to move pollutants from one remote place to another.
Fourth, a constitutional amendment would force money desperately needed for other purposes to be spent where it may not be needed at all.
Seth Grossman is a Somers Point attorney and executive director of LibertyAndProsperity.org. The organization maintains a Liberty and Prosperity Facebook page. It meets for breakfast 9:30 am every Saturday at the Shore Diner in Egg Harbor Township by Parkway Exit 36. Seth Grossman can be reached at info@libertyandprosperity.org.