Christie to Cities: Drop Dead

On this first anniversary of the Mack Administration, we don’t have to look very far to see that this crowd is still having trouble with the fundamentals. What should be a very simple task – bidding out a contract to provide the city’s Information Technology services – is still hopelessly bollocksed-up. Really, this kind of thing should be part of the overhead, part of the background of day-to-day city operations. That there is STILL so much on-going drama with this contract is, to me, a distillation of everything else wrong with our administration.

But this morning, that doesn’t matter. I want to briefly focus on the betrayal of New Jersey’s cities – and the people who live in them – committed yesterday by Governor Chris Christie.

Now, to a great extent, this is nothing new. This Governor came to office and immediately cut funding to the state’s largest cities, including Trenton. Trenton’s Capital City Aid program which allotted us $34.9 Million in fiscal year 2009/10 was eliminated, along with other state funding that went a long way toward creating the famous $55 Million deficit in the city’s budget year that ended yesterday.

But, in the place of that Capital City Aid, Trenton and other cities were given some monies under a new program called Transitional Aid. This Transitional Aid was awarded after a competitive application process, as all the cities eligible for this aid competed for a much smaller pot of money than had been available during the Corzine and earlier administrations. The stated design of this program, as its name implied, was that state aid for cities was not going to be a permanent fixture. Rather, during these hard economic times such aid was not going to be suddenly withdrawn at once but gradually reduced to zero over three or four years as cities – supposedly – would have the time to plan how to replace the revenue.

Transitional Aid was a pretty explicit deal between the cities and the Christie Administration: we will help for a while, said the State, but that should provide you enough time to learn to do without. Now, I am not going to talk today about the case to be made for Trenton’s special position as the Capital City, and any consideration for any permanent direct aid it might be entitled to for hosting so many state buildings and facilities in the heart of our downtown. Set that aside for a bit. I want to focus on the Transitional Aid program, which helped not only Trenton, but Camden, and other towns across the state.

Governor Christie reneged on that deal yesterday. In his approval of the state Budget for Fiscal Year 2011-2012, the Governor employed his Line Item Veto to take a hatchet to Transitional Aid.

The Legislature passed a budget containing $149 Million for all eligible cities. The Governor slashed that amount to $10 Million. Total.

Trenton will now have to compete for its share of Ten. Million. Dollars. How much of this might we expect to see? Three Million? Four? Two??

Remember, we needed every penny of this past year’s award of $27 Million to balance our budget. It was pretty clear that the Mack Administration was not very far along in its plans to deal with the prospect of a gradually decreasing state award over the next three years. We have been told to expect massive layoffs this year of police and other city employees, and that was including the assumption of Transitional Aid close to this year’s grant.

How in the world are we going to absorb this hit in this new year? How can any other New Jersey city?

Governor Christie has abandoned the deal he made with the cities just last year. He did it without warning, and with the stroke of his line-item veto pen.

This is a betrayal, and a disaster for us in Trenton and other New Jersey cities.