NJ Voices

You've got opinions, New Jersey

Most of us like a great cup of coffee. Some of us are addicted to Starbucks. To some, Starbucks is an evil corporation that has driven up the price of coffee, exploited workers and forced small coffee shops out of the coffee business. In a new great read, Kim Fellner's book "Wrestling With Starbucks: Conscience, Capital Cappuccino" (Rutgers University Press, (2008) shows how Starbucks has meshed market-driven capitalism with humanist values. For example, Starbucks has provided health coverage to part-timers and domestic partners. In 1988, good benefits for part-time workers were unheard of in most coffee-shop type business and it's still rare. To get at the story, Fellner immersed herself in the life Starbucks, attending shareholder meetings, hanging out with baristas and conversing management. If you want to read a compelling inside story about Starbucks, check out Fellner's book.

So you want to be a citizen-activist. You want to stand up to the man; go to government meetings; review budgets and OPRA incriminating documents. By all means, go ahead. But, fair warning, if you get good at it, expect blowback. Where there's dirt to find there's usually also an entrenched bureaucracy whose existence you're threatening. They're apt to bite back. Consider the case of Union County et. alia. vs. Tina Renna.

Public outrage over bloated severance packages awarded to some school administrators prompted the state Education Department this summer to set new rules allowing it to veto future golden parachutes.

The New Jersey Association of School Administrators promptly went to federal court, claiming the rules were unconstitutional because they would interfere with contracts negotiated between school boards and certain classes of employees.

It is an egregious offense for New Jersey, ranked as either the first- or second-wealthiest state in the most recent census reports, to do worse than 35 other states when it comes to uninsured kids.

That is where the advocacy group Families USA placed New Jersey in a report last week, saying New Jersey had 267,000 uninsured children, the 15th-highest percentage in the country.

Once again Gov. Jon Corzine has opened his checkbook to solve a personal problem, and once again he's left the public wondering whether he's hiding something.

The governor confirmed to The Star-Ledger's Josh Margolin that he recently paid $362,500 to a former state employee. It seems the guy was threatening to sue Corzine for breaking a promise to find him a private-sector job.

The next budget -- the one that begins July 1, 2009 -- is shaping up to be a big challenge for New Jersey, with significant budget reductions, underfunded and decreasing pension assets, cities looking for more state help, courts ordering more school aid, additional hospital closings, hundreds of community agencies facing service delivery cutbacks, transportation funding approaching stagnation and more.

As announced by the Corzine administration, the state will be facing a shortfall of more than $4 billion. I think it could be much worse. Furthermore, the state budget is under stress in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2009. Even with very careful budgeting by the governor, including significant program reductions, spending below the previous year's level and exceptionally conservative revenue estimates, the state is looking at a shortfall of up to $1.5 billion.

The push to use EZ Pass on the New Jersey toll roads was suppose to be a cost savings measure - as it turned out - at $2.2 million a mile, it's not. However this new system of collecting taxes had a very comforting side effect for our "spending leaders" under the golden dome.

Complacency!

Zooming through the toll roads most of us aren't even aware of the tax we are paying that is being quietly collected through an electronic device stuck on our windshield, nor are we even aware that the tax went up.