Anyone want some waffles?

by: Thurman Hart

Fri May 16, 2008 at 10:22:54 PM EDT

When delivering his budget earlier this year, Gov. Jon Corzine said he would cut $169 million in aid to all cities and towns, including $37 million to towns with populations under 10,000. Local officials said the aid loss would lead to property tax hikes.

Earlier this week, the administration said it wanted to restore part of the aid to the small towns to make sure the cuts don't spark property tax increases of $100 or more. Today, the Department of Community Affairs said it would shift dollars from other aid programs to restore $14.9 million to the small towns.

First of all - wft?  Is Corzine really so deeply engrossed in the Clinton campaign that it just never occurred to him that state aid cuts would be made up by local property tax hikes?  Uh, this guy is a banker, right?

Second, by what logic does it make sense to restore aid to small towns but not to large towns?  Oh, there are more people in the bigger cities, so...what, there are more people to make mad?  

Take a jump.  

But, like almost everything Jon Corzine does, the Governor began hedging his bets pretty clearly - despite the fact that it is more likely than not that even more cuts will be necessary:

The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services projected that state revenue could fall short by $289 million in the next budget year, due to a weakened economy. That shortfall, while a small piece of Corzine's $33 billion budget, could force more spending reductions, and could grow if the economy tanks.

"It is easy to imagine plausible economic scenarios in which the outcome is considerably more dire than the numbers we have provided," said David Rosen, OLS' legislative budget and finance officer.

OLS expects an additional $155 million in revenue for the current budget, which ends June 30. That kind of windfall has typically been used to ease shortfalls, but Corzine has proposed setting the funding aside for other needs. Rousseau said Corzine wants to wean the state off the habit of balancing the budget by using year-end surpluses.

So, if we are expecting less money than we planned to spend, then why are we adding more money back into the budget?  

So far, Mr. Corzine has no answer to that.