The issues we’re following in Maine — the state budget (especially its education component), taxation issues, and local budgets — with all their accompanying discussions of cuts and program viability, and finger pointing, have their corresponding discussions in nearly every other state. Some of these discussioins are louder and more fractious than the hubub here. The other states too are discussing teacher accountability, teacher pay, pensions, student performance, and education’s future direction.
Today we cast our eye on New Jersey, where, just as in California, the pension system is bankrupt
Here’s the basic shape of things:
Budgets are serious business, but it’s been a long time since anyone in New Jersey has been serious about the budget. This year, gross mismanagement and accumulated fictions have left state taxpayers a $10.7 billion gap on a total state budget of $29.3 billion.
We excerpt from this account ( William McGurn, “Reaganism, New Jersey Style,” Wall Street Journal, 4/12/10) the aspects of this gruesome butchery most relevant to the education racket:
…when you have to cut nearly $11 billion in state spending to get there, you are going to get a lot of yelling and screaming. Most comes from the New Jersey Education Association, hollering that “the children” will be hurt by Mr. Christie’s proposals for teachers to accept a one-year wage freeze and begin contributing something toward their health plans.
… [Arguments Christie is answering are in italics; quotations are his responses to these arguments.]
The children will be the ones to suffer from your education cuts. “The real question is, who’s for the kids, and who’s for their raises? This isn’t about the kids. Let’s dispense with that portion of the argument. Don’t let them tell you that ever again while they are reaching into your pockets.”
…
Budget cuts are unfair. “The special interests have already begun to scream their favorite word—which, coincidentally, is my 9-year-old son’s favorite word when we are making him do something he knows is right but does not want to do—’unfair.’ . . . One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life, and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits—a total of $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?”
State budget cuts only shift the pain to our towns. “[L]et’s remember this, in 2009 the private sector in New Jersey lost 121,000 jobs. In 2009, municipalities and school boards added 11,300 jobs. Now that’s just outrageous. And they’re going to have to start to lay some people off, not continue to hire at the pace they hired in 2009 in the middle of a recession.”
Hmmm. This would be entertaining if the stakes were not so high. McGurn notes that no governor has ever turned around a state so “overtaxed and overspent.”
Christie is playing hardball, in part because he, and many who voted him in, see no alternative. In any case, New Jersey, like California, may be the proverbial canary in the mine. As New Jersey goes, so goes Maine?
The intransigence of the MEA on teacher accountability (so called) may push the public past its limit of tolerance. The public may decide it has had enough, that drastic actions are needed, and it may begin to elect officials who will wield the knife in a way we haven’t seen before. And, regardless of their personal philosophy, circumstances may force reluctant officials to take these measures.
We don’t suggest that Maine is in as much trouble as these other states. We do suggest that we likely have not yet seen the bottom of this recession, that officials and public employees need to be sensitive to public perceptions, and that in any case, we’re in for a bumpy ride.