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1.) Raise public employee retirement age to 62 minimum, or no benefits until you hit 62, if you retire early then you wait until 62 to draw your retirement check. i don't totally oppose this. it's a good long term change, but I don't know that i would do it to existing contracts - maybe lighter modifications
2.) Consolidate all police under the State Police eliminating a lot of overhead. Same for Fire & Paramedics. i grew up in an area that relied on state police. as a resident of a larger town, I don't want that, but I would be for more consolidation of police departments or sharing of resources
3.) Consolidate and modernize public schools. You have one school system that is an award winning system serving 300 students with a 9 to 1 student/teacher ratio bordered by another that is in the pits serving 2000 with a 20/1 ratio. sure....now convince the people who liv in that 9:1 district to support that.
4.) Eliminate the corporate income tax, property tax on all goods and other stuff that is an accounting nightmare. Corporate taxes are dead through corporations pitting one state vs. another for jobs and tax breaks which leads to the Panasonic situation. this may not be a bad idea, but how do you propose making up for the tax revenue loss?
5.) Property tax overhaul to 1% of value of the property. again - revenue loss?
6.) Legalize drugs at least weed and tax the crap out of it. YES!!!!!
7.) Bring the consultants in to consolidate state services and update technology. GOD YES!!!!!!!
8.) Privatize a lot of state jobs, my favorite one are toll ticket/money changers making 60k a year, you could outsource this and save millions. forget that...EZ PASS only no workers required
9.) Reform drug laws and commute sentences of low level offenders, saving money. Please!!!!! cut our prison population substantially and make room for the real criminals
10.) Raise the sales tax on everything but food to balance the budget. this is a great way to bring the local economy to a grinding halt and destroy our middle and lower income residents...i disagree
11.) Lottery & Gambling reform open Casinos & card rooms in Northern Jersey. i wouldnt want it in my town, but if you can find towns that do...ok
12.) Reduce pensions to where the current amount in the plans is 100% funded, underfunded pensions problem is solved overnight. Sure some public employees will cry but tough.
sure, except you have to get the courts to approve, and that's no small task. and then what do you do with all the people who no longer have enough for retirement?
Consolidation will never happen in NJ. People in NJ will rail against and moan about taxes, but everyone gets awfully quiet when consolidation is brought up.
and why? because the reality is, people want to control what happens in their local area. what would happen if a west orange resident didn't get a good response time from the police because they were all busy in orange? west orange residents wouldn't be happy. we may not all use the services on a day to day basis, but as soon as you discuss cutting them, people get very touchy about it. everyone wants to cut someone else's service, not their own. funny how that works.
brady- I was not bragging about Corzine just pointing out a fact. Miami implied Corzine gave pension enhancements but in reality he did not.
The retirement age for pensions is now 65. Many people have no idea what they are talking about when they discuss the pensions. They should actually learn something about them before they post.
The average teacher makes between $62-65,000. The average cop is above $92,000. There are many more teachers than cops and that is why teachers face the brunt of the resentment.
i'd bet the avg age of teachers is higher than the avg age of cops too...which helps inflate that avg salary a bit more. plus, people love cops, they "protect" us.
brady- I was not bragging about Corzine just pointing out a fact. Miami implied Corzine gave pension enhancements but in reality he did not.
The retirement age for pensions is now 65. Many people have no idea what they are talking about when they discuss the pensions. They should actually learn something about them before they post.
good call. he also made a small payment to the pensions (not the full payment though, but it's better than the zero prior governors were doing).
I would never-ever give away taxpayer money to any successful business. You can argue the metrics of what constitutes "successful" - earnings, stock price, whatever. I'm against it. If every business threatened to move we'd be giving away the farm to them all. What happened to the Magic of the Free Market? The state hardly ever recoups its $ when these deals are cut. It would be like trying to bribe residents to stay in NJ to keep up our tax revenues...in fact that would make MORE SENSE.
And a condition of creating just 20 jobs/year to a multi-national corporation? The state HAS to be kidding, right?
As of 31 March 2012 Panasonic employed around 330,000 staff and had around 580 subsidiary companies.[30] Panasonic had total revenues of ¥7,846,216 million in 2012, of which 53% were generated in Japan, 25% in Asia ex. Japan, 12% in the Americas and 10% in Europe.[30]
I also would not be giving sports franchises freebies to keep them here.
If the Giants/Jets were any other business, local property taxes on MetLife stadium would be $20M. but because of their sweetheart deal, they only pay $6M. That's aside from the costs to taxpayers granted for building the new stadium. I know MetLife is getting more use than the old stadium, but I'd love to see some breakdowns as to what that means for the state and local economies, because I doubt it comes close to the perks given.
Like I said, I agree with your general point, i was just parsing how to call the $102M. that's all.
I agree with bellhead I too would get rid of the corporate income tax. It currently raises about 2.5 billion. I would offset that by getting rid of all rebate programs.
To offset high property taxes I would ban any property taxes for schools and all funding would be on a per student basis (every kid would receive the same funding) from the State to a town. It would be raised by a flat income tax. I would exempt a certain level of income from tax and after that it would be the same rate. I would allow students to use a voucher to attend another public school if they live in a failing district. They could also attend any private that agrees to follow the same rules and regulations that public schools follow, included teacher credentials.
Administrative salaries would not be included in the funding but would be raised by local property taxes and be required to be detailed on property tax bills. I believe this would be an incentive for consolidation and control of administrative costs.
I should add the funding level would vary slightly depending which grade the student was in.
Question for bellhead if you want the pensions funded at 100% should the employer first have to make up all the payments missed before the adjustment is made?
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