After weeks of floating trial baloons about tax increases, acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey is now hinting that the upcoming state budget will actually be “frozen” meaning the total dollar amount will be the same as last year, approximately $28 billion [link]. Supposedly there is at least $800 million in increases that are mandated, so that means in order to hold the budget he’s either going to suggest real spending cuts in other areas or a tax increase in order to keep the budget in balance.

The article says republicans in Trenton are applauding the governor for the freeze. If he is truly going to propose no spending increases, it will probably take the democrat special interest groups only a few days to start holding press conferences crying about this arts program or that welfare program. If state education aid to towns is frozen, look for mayors to really complain since that will force them to either cut spending or raise property taxes. It will be a tough sell for Codey.

In addition to the overall freeze, Codey will try to reduce the size of the government payroll through attrition. Let’s see what happens next Tuesday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 at 10:39 pm and is filed under New Jersey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.