The wheels fell off of the Jersey City budget on Wednesday. When it was announced to the public that the State of New Jersey has refused to accept the city’s current spending plan, Council President Thomas DeGise added that an anticipated $16 million in state aid was also in jeopardy. Without that anticipated Distressed Cities revenue, budget officials predict that there will be no money left to pay city salaries in June. As long as the current budget sits before the council, there is a new $16 million hole before the spending legislators. “We did not let them adopt the budget because we are unsure of their financial position at this time,” Al Steinberg, director of the Division of Local Government Services said last week. Part of those recommendations include slashing approximately 30 more jobs from the payroll, despite the current budget’s funding of all positions. Specifically, the state communicated to City Hall that they would not accept a budget that contains money to fund the buyouts offered to 109 municipal employees, or any of the $6 million settlement funds acquired after federally-mediated litigation with a real estate developer. “We made recommendations in cuts, and the mayor and City Council have decided not to take our advice,” Steinberg said. The state recommended that Jersey City slash non-essential municipal services to make ends meet. But after a valiant fight by the unions, the city has managed to avoid what could have been as many as 1,271 city layoffs. One way that was done was through the administration-fueled buyouts. The recommended cuts, according to Steinberg, were introduced in a meeting attended by Mayor Bret Schundler, then-Business Administrator Robert Lombard, and a budget officer. According to the council, which is responsible for approving any money the city spends, those cuts were never brought to their attention. “The City Council had never been formally given a list of these recommendations,” DeGise said at Wednesday’s special meeting, originally scheduled to continue introducing budget amendments. The state was painted as evil at that meeting, as their exact recommendations remained a mystery to the council. There was never so much as a cover letter attached to the state budget recommendations, Lombard said. But a state official disagreed. “We met with him one on one,” Steinberg said. “We didn’t need to give him one. The internal communication between the mayor and the council is not the business of the State of New Jersey. Maybe not everyone is on the same page, but Jersey City is a single entity to us.” While there may be a breakdown in communication between the mayor’s office and the council chambers, council members criticized the disappearing act the state is playing with the $16 million in aid. Jersey City, facing a gaping budget hole last summer, asked the state for $27 million in aid. The state would not go that high, and limited their assistance to $16 million, a number that the mayor continues to attempt to raise. From the beginning, Schundler has accused the state of not keeping aid in pace with yearly inflation increases. The total of the money Trenton owes Jersey City, according to the mayor, amounts to $27.4 million. The aid money was guaranteed, according to union and administration officials, pending a vote in the state legislature. With their budget capabilities handcuffed, the open hearing for the first amendment to the budget was closed. The amendments, introduced last week by President DeGise, will save $708,000 this year, translating to about 14 cents against the tax rate. The amendments also account for no layoffs. “Every position would be funded,” DeGise said. “The $708,000, quite frankly, is a joke,” Ward A Councilman Robert Cavanaugh said, unveiling his own set of amendments that he claims can save the city $6 million. In most cases, the mayor gave each department more money than what they asked for in the budget that was originally introduced to the council in December. Cavanaugh’s amendments give the municipal department directors what they asked for, rather than what the mayor assigned to them. “Why we’re giving more money to people than what they’re asking for,” Cavanaugh said, “I don’t know.” In other lines, Cavanaugh lowered the operating expenses of city divisions to what they spent last year, adding a 3-percent increase in living expenses. The largest slash Cavanaugh makes in his amendment is a $242,000 reduction in financing the mayor’s office. “Since 1997,” Cavanaugh said, “[the mayor’s office] has been on a hiring binge.” Cavanaugh’s amendment also decreases funding to the offices of Constituent Services, the Law Department, Risk Management, Tax Assessment, Engineering and Transportation and Senior Services. In a handwritten addendum to the proposed budget changes, Cavanaugh has also eliminated all funding to the Neighborhood Improvement Division, to be transferred into the Incinerator Authority’s funds. The Cavanaugh amendments met a fierce challenge from some council members and representatives of the administration. Many of the funds in the budget have already been spent by the seventh month of the fiscal year, and there will be more expenditures as each day passes, throwing off some of Cavanaugh’s figures. Cavanaugh’s numbers, according to Heights Councilman William Gaughan, do not speak to the effects on the payroll, changes to individual department funds or elimination of the NID altogether. “It’s amazing that a councilman would take the side of the state in an argument over aid,” DeGise said. “He is actually arguing that the city should receive less money.” As each new amendment is introduced to the council, the new materials must be revealed to the public, debated in an open hearing and finally voted into the working budget by the council by simply closing the public hearing. In a quietly-introduced third set of amendments, Councilman-at-Large L. Harvey Smith introduced his own cuts to the spending plan. In his figures, Smith states that by promoting four Fire Department captains on the Battalion Chief’s Civil Service Promotional List, the city would save $102,228. In a short cover letter, Smith explains that by promoting the four captains, the city would avoid paying them for the responsibilities of another rank, as the four captains have been operating under the titles of Acting Battalion Chief. Having more on the table to examine is a positive step, according to the council. “We want to see if there’s a smarter way to skin the cat,” Ward E Councilman Mariano Vega said.