LATEST NONPARTISAN REVENUE FIGURES SHOW THAT LAST YEAR WAS EVEN WORSE THAN CORZINE REPORTED

REVENUE FROM THE SALES, INCOME AND BUSINESS TAXES NEARLY $300 MILLION LESS THAN WHAT CORZINE ADMINISTRATION EXPECTED IN FY 2009

    Data provided today by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services shows that Fiscal Year 2009 ended with a new $281 million revenue gap that has been kept hidden by the Corzine administration in an August bond prospectus, prompting Assembly members Alison Littell McHose and Declan O'Scanlon to call for honest numbers from the administration and for a meeting of the Assembly Budget Committee to begin planning for this latest setback.

    "Governor Corzine promised New Jerseyans that he had the foresight to plan the state's finances through tough fiscal times, but these numbers clearly dispute that," McHose, R-Sussex, Morris and Hunterdon, said. "We are in troubling times and the least people deserve is some honesty from their government about the status of the state's fiscal health. If the governor truly cut the state's budget to the bone as he promised, then this $300 million shortfall will be felt somewhere. The governor must explain how this will affect people."

    According to OLS, business tax revenue is down $437 million from what Treasury reported in August, sales tax is down $72 million and income tax is up $228 million for a net shortfall of $281 million.

    McHose and O'Scanlon, members of the Assembly Budget Committee, also said that Budget Chairman Louis Greenwald, D-Camden, should convene the committee now to consider how this shortfall may affect the current year's budget and the one they will begin crafting next year.

    "This shortfall may be erased if revenues rebound, but we cannot afford to take that chance and be caught unprepared if that does not occur," O'Scanlon, R-Monmouth and Mercer, said. "It makes more sense to begin discussions now in a calm and deliberative manner than to wait until the spring when we will be pressed up against a budget deadline and faced with revenue numbers that are just as bad or worse."