‘Can it happen here?’

To the Editor:
We were told by a resident of Bayonne in last week’s “Community News” that there was a loss of 25,000 private sector jobs, but an increase of 65,000 government sponsored jobs in New Jersey for the period between 2001 and 2009. These, I am sure, were created jobs that we could have done without.
Recently, our neighboring state of Pennsylvania did not pay their state workers until their budget crisis was resolved. Could this happen here in our state or in Bayonne? The likelihood of it happening at the state level is already a fact, as many state workers were told in February to expect days when they would be furloughed because the state doesn’t have enough money to pay them. It seems they never have enough money, and in our lifetime they probably never will.
California’s bond rating was lowered again, and so could ours if we continue to spend billions more than we take in. I can remember when most of the state’s government offices were in Trenton. Today, they are in the surrounding towns as well and we just keep adding more space to run a government that is out of control. Can this ever change? With the increase in government spending and the proliferation of public sector jobs, the tax burden is now distributed among fewer taxpayers in the private sector. At sometime, you start to ask yourself: Should we continue to live in New Jersey or move to a state where property taxes are half of what we pay?

THOMAS J. BRAGEN

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