Gov. Minner released her final budget today, recommending an operating budget total of $3.06 billion for FY10. This budget is a 8.9% decrease from FY10, but doesn’t close all of the projected $556.8 million revenue gap. This budget included $190 million worth of cuts leaving $366.8 million of additional cuts to close the projected gap to the incoming Administration and Legislature.
The NJ provides a summary of the proposal:
• $128.1 million by driving down mandated costs and discretionary spending: Reducing program expansions, delaying the addition of four state troopers in Sussex County, not authorizing several judgeships in the Judicial branch, not authorizing the addition of workers in the Attorney General’s office to handle increasing caseloads, no new school-based health centers or provider payment increases, reductions to mandated costs to Medicaid.
• $31.1 million from maximizing special funds: Reductions by $10 million each to the open-space and the farmland preservation funds. Movement of funds from Abandoned Property from Transportation to the General Fund.
• $30.8 million in base budget reductions: Eliminating 37 vacant positions, cutting pass-through funds by 15 percent, cutting the higher education budget by 3 percent and closing the Governor Bacon and Emily P. Bissell long-term nursing homes.
The work to close the FY10 budget gap is further complicated by the fact that the Legislature still needs to pare about $160 million in spending from the FY09 budget to close this year’s gap due to the financial meltdown.
Certainly this is going to be a very big job and once this is resolved, there will be massive cutbacks in the services provided by the state, probably across the board. Interestingly, Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Mike Jackson provides a way to visualize the magnitude of the cuts to come:
He said $556.8 million also could be covered by completely eliminating Health and Social Services, an agency that provides Medicaid, children’s health insurance and a long list of public assistance programs.
They aren’t making that proposal, of course, but that is an 18% cut in total budget spending and that does not include any of the cuts are still needed to close the FY09 gap. But 18% is a serious cut back and likely means not just eliminating job vacancies, but layoffs, furloughs and fewer days off as well as reduced services across the board.
The House Majority Caucus responded to Gov. Minner’s proposal, noting that there are no easy fixes and that they’d preference cutting budget spending before considering additional revenue generation.
Jack Markell and many of the new legislators campaigned on finding better ways to provide health care to the un- and underinsured; finding better ways to be better stewards of the environmental assets of the states; investing in efforts to make the state more business friendly — and in light of the financial meltdown and the real shortfalls in revenue pretty much everywhere I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some of these goals are postponed. But I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear in the next few months that the revenue shortfalls are bigger than published today — the corporate fees and income taxes that the state relies on tend to be very volatile revenue streams especially as the national economy contracts, partially led by the banking and insurance industries.