Steve Lonegan's blog

FOR 190 YEARS, New Jersey had no income tax and no sales tax. As recently as 1966, it had only the third-highest property taxes in the nation.

Through home rule, local governments delivered efficient and inexpensive services. New Jersey's small towns powered the state to become an economic powerhouse, capable of turning on a dime to meet economic challenges as local governments capitalized on geographic strengths.

Trenton’s legislating machine is running in over-drive. The radicals who are running the engine of big government have opened the throttle of central planning and are bent on ramming through their agenda, regardless of disturbing economic indicators, skyrocketing taxes and the evacuation of job producing taxpayers.

The Swedish-style Paid Family Leave scheme is being railroaded through the legislature, despite its destructive effect on the state’s small business community.

It is clear that the big-government radicals running Trenton today will stop at nothing to advance their vision of an even bigger nanny state no matter what or who is destroyed on the way to achieving the “Common Good.” So much so that they will pass drastically flawed and dangerous bills that will destroy New Jersey’s competitive business climate in favor of emotion based, job destroying politics. This time, however, they got caught on a procedural technicality.

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation; its top income tax rate is the fourth highest in the nation; and we have one of the highest sales taxes. There is no question. New Jersey citizens are among the highest taxed in the country.

The question is why,

New Jersey has one of the most poorly-run state governments in the nation and Governor Jon Corzine has only made it worse. In just two years, he has raised the sales tax after a government shutdown, pushed a sham so-called property tax relief that amounts to larger rebate checks (that are unlikely to continue beyond a couple of years), enacted a dubious new school-funding formula, and now is pushing the largest debt issue in U.S. history, funded by a massive 800 percent hike in New Jersey’s tolls.

This year’s toughest political battle in New Jersey may be the biggest gimmick in Wall Streets history. Governor Corzine’s Asset Monetization proposal is said to reach as high as forty billion dollars and may be the largest borrowing plan in the world. It is a gimmick that will leave a legacy of massive government growth and several life times of financial destruction resulting from poor judgment.

Governor Corzine stated in his State of the State Address that if anyone had a better idea than his Asset Monetization scheme that will raise a 35 cent Parkway toll to nearly $2 then he wanted to hear it.

Here’s the plan.

Click here to listen to Steve Lonegan's Response to Governor Corzine's State of the State address. Lonegan is Americans for Prosperity - New Jersey's Executive Director.

Today, December 31, is the last day of my twelve year tenure as mayor of Bogota. A term I am proud of and that has given me tremendous insight into the functions and failures of government.

The most disturbing lesson I have learned is the danger that is posed by the growth of the Trenton bureaucracy and its consequence of destruction of our property rights, local control and the drain on our families' resources as we stagger under the burden of ever increasing taxes. and, ultimately, the erosion of individual liberty and freedom.

This November, Governor Corzine should have learned an important lesson.  The people of New Jersey are not as “hopelessly liberal” as some would have us think, turning back his radical agenda by voting no on two ballot questions.  In the light of open public debate, the liberal blueprint for our state’s future fails miserably.