McGreevey Is Doing His Best To Make People Think He Is An Even Worse Governor Than Whitman

Christie Whitman Set A Lot Of Records, But None Of Them Did Her Legacy Any Good: Elected Twice By Tiny Margins, She Abandoned New Jersey And Left Her Successors With The Largest Deficit In The History Of State Government

Now, Instead Of Reversing Whitman’s Disastrous Policies, Jim McGreevey Cuts Help For Those Who Need It Most, But Keeps Vote-Buying Schemes That Raise Local Property Taxes In The Long Run

Dover Township - Christie Whitman left for Washington DC almost to the day in 2001 when it became clear her administration would leave the state’s taxpayers with the largest budget deficit in the history of state government - any state government.

She left the state in the capable hands of "Acting" Governor Donald DiFrancesco, the Senate President who promised more tax cuts even though he had to know that the state constitution says the annual budget needs to be balanced with real money (the federal government is the only agency that is actually empowered to print currency).

DiFrancesco Borrowed $325,000 From The
Hovnanians, Then Left The GOP Ticket

DiFrancesco was the favored GOP candidate to be Whitman’s successor, but dropped out of the race when it became known his own personal fiscal policies included borrowing $325,000 from the Hovnanian construction interests, a “loan” which he inconveniently had not paid back.

All of this was too much for Brett Schundler, the ultimate Republican candidate, to deal with; so clueless Jim McGreevey, who acted surprised when he “discovered” the huge Whitman-DiFrancesco budget deficit, coasted to an easy victory in the 2001 election.

Some recent comments by Star Ledger columnist John McLaughlin: “One old Trenton Democrat concedes he has ‘never seen anything like' the bad staff work, bad luck and bad faith attending McGreevey’s selection of nominees to major state offices.”

Mclaughlin: McGreevey, “Forever Backing Up,
Is Already A Grizzled Veteran Of Adversity”

McLaughlin describes McGreevey as a “grizzled veteran of adversity, always on the defensive, forever backing up, withdrawing programs, swallowing words, rejecting his own nominees. And all the while, desperately plugging holes in his budget one year, only to see larger ones appear the next.”

The programs McGreevey is cutting involve the state’s commitment to education (which has produced big tuition increases at the state colleges and universities), and the commitment to the mentally ill and physically challenged folks who arguably need help more than the wealthy citizens for whom Whitman’s “tax cuts” were a bonanza.

Whitman Legacy Raising Property Taxes All Over NJ

The Whitman legacy is, even as we speak, raising property taxes all over New Jersey, including many Ocean County communities, but Governor McGreevey doesn’t seem to get it.

For the first six months of his administration, he put the blame for the state’s financial problems right where it belongs, but never tried to reverse any of the Whitman-DiFrancesco Santa Claus initiatives.

Now, perhaps cowed and intimidated by legislative Republicans who are dumping on him, his criticism of Whitman and DiFrancesco has no substance, and he seems to be overwhelmed by a growing feeling on the part of many constituents that he lacks competence and substance himself.

This, in spite of the fact that every major newspaper in New Jersey agrees that, in the words of the Asbury Park Press, “New Jersey taxpayers  are weary of paying the bills she left behind”, meaning, of course, former governor Christine Todd Whitman.

All of the plans McGreevey made regarding new initiatives for senior citizens, mental health, handicapped citizens and further local property tax relief have been vaporized and subordinated to the crushing obligation to maintain state government services and fund the enormous budget deficits he inherited.
But McGreevey isn’t doing a very good job of explaining the problem, and he apparently hasn’t got the political courage to put the state in fiscal shape to confront the many-faceted dilemma Whitman left him.

OceanCountyPolitics will have more on this subject as time marches on.

(5/10/03)

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