newjerseynewsroom.com

Chris Cristie the other day announced that he found a way to cut the budget by 450 million dollars.  A collected round of applause whizzed through the Garden State.  All those applause came from people who did not read the article.

He did not cut 450 million dollars.  He told school boards they had to spend their surplus.  The same surplus schools had to create to carry them when federal and state didn’t pay on time.  Think about it another way.  Think about it as your department has a budget.  If you don’t spend all of it, corporate, will assume you don’t use it and cut it next year.  That is exactly what happened.

So schools who are fiscally responsible save money, and now they are getting penalized.  This is just like the banks who fail.  They gave all the people who shouldn’t own a house, a house, and then get bailed out.  Well the good schools are bailing out the government by getting robbed of their fiscal responsiveness.

But to say, that 450 million dollars was saved, is an outrageous lie.  It only shifts the responsibility to the school district.  Now all the school districts have to increase their budget, which makes them look fiscally irresponsible.  The average NJ Taxpayer will look at the school budget and say, “They are asking for way more money.  It must be their fault, and not Trenton.”  It makes the government look good rather than tackling the real problems.

The real problems lies in spending.  Cut the people with multiple pensions first.  Don’t cut the firefighters, police, and teachers.  They do nothing wrong.  Cut the Judge who sits on three different traffic courts collecting three different pensions, three different health benefits, and three different sets of perks.

Trenton should laud the school districts that do well, and force responsibility to those who don’t spend wisely.  Not steal from good budgets, and give to the deficit budgets.  Or… cut the same amount from each, rather than stager it.

I’m not getting paid well enough, in fact these budget cuts may cause me my job, so let the people who know deal with it.

My two cents.