NJ Government Gone Wild – "The Soprano State"

Posted on 18 February 2008

I couldn’t help but borrow the Trentonian’s front page headline today as it is too good to pass up. The headline refers to a story about a book written by Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure entitled

The Soprano State-New Jersey’s Culture of Corruption

If the book is half as good as the article about it, I can’t wait to read the details. One of the references from the book discusses why it has become such a problem to get spending under control.

“In New Jersey, government is not about taking care of what people can’t do for themselves. It’s about jobs,’’ reads the introduction. That’s government jobs, of course, and not just in the huge state bureaucracy.

It’s jobs in Jersey’s 566 towns, 616 school districts, 21 counties, 486 sewage and other authorities, 187 fire districts and 92 special agencies with the power to tax.

Of course, this is just the beginning.

The book says there are 444,000 local government workers, 154,500 on the state payroll and 19,119 elected officials, not counting the governor, and 120 state lawmakers. It works out to 81 government workers per square mile, compared with the national average of 6.

So when the Governor says that it would be horrible to cut state employees and just the other day was so proud that the state employee roll was cut by 1,500 since he came to office…..that’s just one percent of the state headcount, we should be a bit skeptical.

Get out and read the book. I intend to and will post on what I find personally.

Category: Elections, local government

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NJ Government Gone Wild – "The Soprano State"

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