Failure to Fund Infrastructure Exacerbates Long-Term Fiscal Crisis

How bad is New Jersey’s fiscal prognosis?

Gov. Chris Christie just pushed off $396 million in property tax rebates. The Legislature’s budget expert says revenues might come up $637 million short. The pension gap is growing, even with Christie scrounging to add $600 million extra for pension payments. The treasurer had to resort to a $250 million bond premium one-shot to pay for transportation.

No money is set aside to cover $59 billion in future retiree health benefits; the state put in $1.445 billion this year when it should have put in $4.917 billion to prevent the future cost from ramping up exponentially. Furthermore, it’s an election year with Christie and all 120 members of the Democratic-controlled Legislature up for reelection.

And Christie has Democrats on the fiscal ropes with his call for passage of a an income tax cut modeled on a plan originally proposed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) that will cost $1.4 billion by 2016 and that most budget experts agree the state cannot afford.

So when Facing Our Future’s blue-ribbon task force of former Cabinet officers and budget experts issued a report last week saying that New Jersey needed to spend an additional $70 billion on transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure over the next 15 to 20 years, the response from Christie and state legislative leaders was a stony silence. It’s not that the Christie administration and legislative leaders don’t know that their predecessors are right about the long-term consequences of infrastructure neglect: They know it.

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