It's not just the tax burden - NJ is run horribly

An excellent article appeared in the City-Journal yesterday. I lays down the case for the fact that New Jersey is not just over-taxed, it is exceptionally poorly run:

In a new study, Governing ranks New Jersey the third worst-managed state in the country, not only because of the shambles that its finances are in, but also because of its lack of investment in infrastructure, its poor employee training and development, and a failure to apply technology and data to manage public services well. Talk about a quadruple whammy for the state’s residents, who ought to be asking exactly what the heck the state has been doing with all their money.

The article also takes on New Jersey's recent hiring frenzy in state government. When Governor Corzine talks about cutting employees, the state employee unions howl. The problem with that is that they forget that government employees serve at the pleasure of the people-they are not entitled to their jobs. And why is it that in the private sector, employees must work hard to make their jobs relevant or they will lose them. But apparently, inefficiency combined with over-staffing compared to other states is status quo in New Jersey:

One thing that Jersey’s patronage-ridden government has been doing is hiring workers at a rapid rate, far faster than most other states. Last week, when Corzine proposed cutting $500 million in spending out of the state government, he pledged to trim the state’s workforce by 3,000 employees, which drew a howl from public-sector unions, as well as warnings from some editorialists that the cuts might hurt services. Corzine might have noted that from 2000 to 2006—after the meltdown of technology stocks on Wall Street and the economic fallout from September 11—a succession of New Jersey governors added 10,000 workers to the state’s executive workforce, a 17 percent gain, even as the state’s population grew by only 4 percent.

The hiring spree didn’t stop there. Agencies and authorities subsidized by state government but not directly controlled by the governor were rapidly boosting their own payrolls, adding approximately 13,000 more full-time (or full-time-equivalent) workers to the state’s payrolls, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. Only a few other states increased their public payrolls as quickly; all were far larger than New Jersey and had more rapidly growing populations. By contrast, even New York State was a model of efficiency, growing its workforce by less than 1 percent during the same period.

The article closes by bringing up the patronage that has destroyed the management of the state. People are hired not for their talent but as a byproduct of a patronage society that has no real measurement culture. Of course, I really haven't heard much from the Governor or the legislature that shows that they want to change it.

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