Posted on 03/02/2010 1:03:41 AM PST by Daisyjane69
They run airports and regulate charity bingo. They borrow money to build schools and try to ban bikini waxes.
They provide "soft landings" — complete with fat salaries and pensions — to allies of the politically powerful. And they spend billions of public dollars every year.
Now New Jersey’s 700 boards, authorities and commissions are being dragged from obscurity into the crosshairs of Gov. Chris Christie, who has slashed their spending and ordered a broad review that could put some out of existence.
It’s a mission as wide-ranging and complicated as the entities themselves, many of them unique kingdoms with their own budgets, structures and standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Good. Most of the time, we’re just paying to be regulated.
He’s showing the others how it’s done for all those new Republican guvs being voted in this fall.
700 bloody boards and commissions in just one state, all feeding fat off the public trough?
No surprise New Jersey is so screwed up. It's long past time these leeches were sent to pasture.
This needs to be done at local, state, and federal levels all across the country...
I will never forget, when my Mom was dying and we were desperate to get help- any kind of help- paying the bills, driving all around and all across my city and county, looking for an agency to help us out.
What did I find?
No help, anywhere, but at least one-fourth to one-third of the office buildings county and city wide were staffed not with private businesses- but with “authorities...”
And “agencies”— of various governmental bodies.
Lit, heated, staffed with people ( who, no doubt, had their own medical plans and retirement plans, paid for with our tax dimes... ) who generated nothing but more paperwork.
Let’s try an experiment- cut government by half— 50%- and see what happens.
Bet you won’t see any difference except an improvement.
New York and Massachusetts are the same.......tons of so called "authorities". So are other old North East States. These are havens for hacks, for entire families of politically connected hacks, and for friends of hacks. All feeding at the public trough in this life and the afterlife. The afterlife referring to the big pensions they get upon retirement from their no heavy lifting jobs
When the word gets our in NY that he means business. People will flock across the bridge.
If he actually starts to get rid of some of this featherbedding, he’s going to be sleeping next to Jimmy Hoffa...
Boy, the no-show pigs are going to scream loudly, like (well) pigs!
Chris Christie: Best Governor in the USA!
Bryan Christiansen, the embattled chief of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, will step down from his $313,000-a-year post on March 1, according to a spokesman for the agency.I've been a political junkie for over 25 years now. And I've never seen a governor more willing to take on sacred cows. He even went after unemployment benefits! Up til now, they were all to scared of the backlash from the media and voters. But in NJ, Christie has shown that taxpayers will back up the politician who takes an axe to government. Bravo, governor! I believe you may be showing your fellow politicians that the days are ending where pols pat themselves on the back for spending other people's money!The 55-year-old Christiansen and his Newark-based agency emerged as prime targets earlier this month for Gov. Christie, who labeled the PVSC a house for “political hacks” with “obscene” salaries and promised reforms aimed at reining government spending in New Jersey.
The agency employs more than 600 people and counts more than 80 employees with salaries in excess of $100,000 on its $46 million payroll.
With nearly three decades in the state pension system, the former Edgewater mayor is entitled to an early retirement pension estimated at roughly $140,000.
According to a 2009 report...the PVSC arranged for special lump-sum departure payments to certain administrative employees.
...Christiansen, if terminated, is guaranteed a cash severance benefit equal to six months’ salary for every year employed, up to a maximum of 24 months. Such a payment could be worth more than $600,000.
I saw a report the other day that said retirement eligible bureaucrats in NJ are beating a path to the retirement door, before Christie cuts them off! At risk is pay for unused sick time and all that crap.
LOL !!!
They asked if I would be interested in future polls. My answer? You betcha!
The worst part of these boards and commissions is that they provide a place for all of the state government hangers-on to hide out while their political party is thrown out of power. Then when the possession of Trenton changes back, they can all come back to the state government, having never had to brave the job market out in the “real world”. In this way they have served the Republican and Democrat insiders alike, at the expense of the public.
It would be far better if the otherwise-unemployable cousins and nephews of the political class were forced to make their way out in the job market every time there is a changeover in Trenton. That way a small portion of them might actually become productive citizens, and the rest could move away and afflict some other state.
I can't think of any towns in our region, including the metro areas, that haven't expanded their government drone warehouses.
Too funny,
Cities use to worry about White flight.
Now they worry about rich folk slight.
Seriously, this guy is kicking it and I am amazed, good for him. Finally a RNC member that doesn't need a testicular or spinal transplant.
But I think we have the Tea Parties to thank, and this isn't against the Gov. Here in MI yesterday, my better half had the local news on as they got ready for work. For once I was watching.
Two local communities one being Troy MI were featured as Troy declined a millage increase and was about to cut back big time. Police and Fire consolidated, Park and Rec Privatized, Teachers cutback, etc etc etc.
The bottom line, Glenn Beck is right get active locally, some have even stepped into the breech and have run, and they are making a difference. People are awake, and have said enough, and it will occur faster at the local and state level and it has already started.
The question is when will Fedzilla wake up. My guess, Nov 5th ish, 2010....
As one reads the ubiquitous stories about public pension abuse, there’s always the qualifier: Can’t cut or change those pensions or other benefits because, once granted, the constitution says you can’t take them away.
Every time I read that, I respond:
SO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION!
I want someone to go after all those gold-plated, ill gotten pensions that will drain taxpayers for the rest of our lives. There is simply NO justification for some 52 year old pointy headed bureaucrat pulling down $100k a year for 30 years of NOT WORKING.
I thank you for the kind thoughts. Mom slipped away in her sleep before the bills got unbearable, but it was very revealing- this was in 2003— how vast the government had grown.
We had a city councilman who tried to get to the bottom of why the city had burgeoned from 200 to over 600 employees in a few years, but he unfortunately died before he could reveal anything- natural causes, he was fighting lung cancer— and nobody else took up the fight.
I’m afraid we have reached that stage in a country when enough people have figured out that they can raid the treasury by electing the “right” representatives who will give them access.
In the private sector you can stop a "defined benefit plan" anytime, and freeze it in time and you are not violating and ERISA statues. If so in Jersey they have a state constitutional provision banning this change, they may have that authority under the 10th Amendment, but I'd like the Gov. to challenge that with an executive order to get the ball rolling too change the consitution.
As someone who sat on the other side of the table and got to see the net worth statements and pension benefits of highly unionized state employees and then get to hear their leftist lunacy, I say freeze it in time, give them a 401k with higher matching and Health Savings Accounts and let them be proactive and figure out what is best for them....
The IRS has targeted "government authorities" as the locus classicus for government fraud. Some of these authorities make Madoff look like a saint.
Authority appointees get salaries for little or no actual work. Also includes credit cards, expense accounts, free travel and meals, state cars w/ free gas and maintenance, Cadillac benefits, six-figure bonuses, hidden equity positions in vendor companies, access to govt property, cell phones, electronics, computers, Blackberry's, pagers, etc etc etc.
All of that gets the “Authority” appointee several huge state pensions, eternal benefits, bonuses and several annuities (to evade taxes).
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ANOTHER GOVT SWILLER Christy needs to scrutinize..... ex-Assemblywoman Nilsa Cruz-Perez of Camden. She did not seek re-election, something to do with colluding to aid and abet Sen. Steve Sweeney to be Senate president. Her price was the chance to swill at the Camden County Improvement Authority.
Cruz-Perez got The Big Payoff, appointed full time to the Camden Authority for $90,000 a year........plus a bank vault of tax-paid extras. This sucker also gets to put her family, her cronies, and half of the Camden latino population on the govt payroll (whether they show up or not). Nepotism and cronyism facilitates more authority fraud.
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