Corzine: "We're going to fight to hold our education funding"

Thank you, Jon Corzine! Even when times are tough, we should avoid reducing our expenditures on education.

Except he's playing the typical bureaucratic trick: the fight to hold our education funding is actually a fight to expand it by a third of a billion dollars.

Budget troubles endanger $350M preschool plan
Delaying expansion of programs would be last resort, Corzine says
Thursday, October 30, 2008
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Star-Ledger Staff

Mounting state budget troubles may force New Jersey to delay plans for a $350 million expansion of public preschool programs, but such a move would be a last resort, Gov. Jon Corzine told a convention of school board members yesterday.

"We're going to fight to hold our education funding," Corzine told about 500 delegates at the New Jersey School Boards Association's annual workshop in Atlantic City. "That doesn't mean there won't be any cuts. That doesn't mean there won't be any freezes. But it means it will be the last thing on the table."

This is just another example of the Nanny State -- literally, in this case -- expanding even in the face of catastrophic fiscal burdens in the state.

"But wait," you say, "I thought we had to fund pre-K programs for needy students."

You're right, we do, because of Abbot v. Burke. But this gluttonous expansion isn't part of that ruling:

Part of the new school funding formula enacted last year, Corzine's plan would be the state's biggest expansion of preschool for low-income students since the state Supreme Court's Abbott vs. Burke rulings, which ordered universal pre-kindergarten in 31 of the poorest districts.

The plan would take the court rulings a step further and order similar preschool for all low-income students, wherever they live. Depending on the numbers, districts would be required to establish the preschool themselves or contract with outside centers to provide the service for eligible students. The state would pay the tab and estimated 17,000 more students would be served as the program is phased in over six years at an eventual cost of $350 million. [Emphasis added.]

So this isn't court-mandated, it's a Corzine pet project.

Jon Corzine wants to add $350,000,000 in spending. Not expanding the budget will be the last thing on the table.

My jaw drops. It makes me wonder what it's like to be inside Corzine's head.

Well, let me try. He thinks that higher tolls will solve budgetary problems, right? So maybe I should think of it this way: It currently costs $6.45 to go from exit 18W to exit 1 on the Turnpike, so we're talking about 54,263,566 trips down the whole length of the Turnpike. Since we're already using all of the current money from the Turnpike, we'd have to increase the number of trips on the Turnpike by that much.

Somehow I don't feel better.

But I'm still not thinking enough like Corzine. After all, he wants to octuple our tolls. If he did that, each trip would cost $51.60, which would only be 6,782,946 trips.

Now that's a much smaller number. What a relief! And since he'd be forcing most people off of the Turnpike and Parkway, we'd see a massive improvement in our statewide carbon footprint, too! See? Win/win!

I'm trying, people, but I still don't see how he forces himself to ignore the fact that increasing the price of using the Turnpike will reduce peoples' willingness to use it. How does he ignore basic laws of supply and demand?

His mind must be the opposite of his budget: flexible, focused, and disciplined.

My own school superintendent gets mentioned in the piece, too:

Jerry Tarnoff, superintendent of West Orange schools, said he was encouraged that Corzine suggested the preschool funding would only be cut as a last resort. "I am pleased he would like to commit to full funding," said Tarnoff. "Anything less, if the program were to go forward, would make it extremely difficult for the local taxpayers."

Now, Jerry's a smooth politician, and I don't think he would say anything that would irritate Corzine unnecessarily. But look at what he's saying: if the program were to go forward, and the state didn't pay for it, it would be a serious burden for local taxpayers.

So there's the threat of an unfunded mandate to the towns that would increase taxes substantially, whether the towns like it or not.

And I have another question: if it would be a serious burden for local taxpayers to pay for this, who would be burdened if the state funded it?

Those rich guys in Mendham, I guess. To hell with them, though. If they can afford to live near Whitney Houston's birthplace, they should pay for the pre-K programs in West Orange and Edison and Camden. And I hear Neil Cavuto lives there! For Pete's sake, if a Fox News anchor lives in New Jersey, he should pay twice what the ordinary citizen does!

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