3.4.10   As Un-Governor Christie continues to govern with his big budget hatchet, finally revealing where he wishes to make Big Cuts, he needs to be reminded that Cost-shifting is not “cost-cutting”. If he cost-cuts by cutting unemployment benefits, the cost will shift to the working families of NJ who can ill afford costs now.
 
If he drastically cuts aids to the cities, towns, villages and townships of New Jersey, he will be merely ‘cost-shifting’ to those town-folks, who will in turn be forced to raise property taxes. Small towns are already more efficient than the state and engage in cost-cutting all the time, each budget year. This already happened back in the mid-nineties, when the other Governor Christie cut income taxes drastically ---resulting in a cut of state aid to town. What happened was a sharp increase in property taxes. How do I know this to be true? It was one of the key issues that got me elected to the Flemington Borough Council in 1994---in a town that was 3-1 R to D.
 
A better approach would be to provide zero-base budgeting workshops for each and every town in NJ, who are already not using that budget method. I tried to initiate that in Flemington, and much to my chagrin it was not adopted when it was most needed. Fortunately, they do it now come budget time.
 
Real zero-based budgeting is “a technique of planning and decision-making which reverses the working process of traditional budgeting . In traditional incremental budgeting, departmental managers justify only increases over the previous year budget and what has been already spent is automatically sanctioned. No reference is made to the previous level of expenditure. By contrast, in zero-based budgeting, every department function is reviewed comprehensively and all expenditures must be approved, rather than only increases. Zero-based budgeting requires the budget request be justified in complete detail by each division manager starting from the zero-base. The zero-base is indifferent to whether the total budget is increasing or decreasing.”
 
Thanks Wikipedia. Could not have said it better myself.
 
So, once again—I remind the Governor that (1) scalpels cut better than hatchets. (2) You can get more done by playing well with others (Hint: Read the rules from “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”. (3) It is a marathon, not a sprint.
 
Give you props on your approval ratings. Now.