Phil Murphy got you a surprise Christmas present | Sheneman

It’s the season for giving, just not as much as before. It had to happen at some point, the days in which big wads of federal pandemic money were distributed to the states are over and so is the enthusiasm with which it was spent. Memos leaked this week in which the Murphy administration calls for austerity measures such as salary and hiring freezes unless required by law and spending cuts in the region of 5 percent. The party is over if you can call a global pandemic a party.

This transition to this new relative austerity is not just limited to New Jersey. Many states have warned of the dreaded “fiscal cliff” if once-abundant federal funding dries up. There will certainly be a lot of budgets in the coming year that aren’t nearly as bold and bold as they used to be.

Christie’s last budget was just over $34 billion, Murphy’s most recent budget is just over $56 billion. So what do we get for our money? Some pretty cool stuff actually. Murphy has increased school funding, invested in the long-neglected pension fund and spent heavily on property tax rebates like the ANCHOR program. These items come with high prices and yet the state has a surplus of $6.2 billion, up from $8, but not bad. If we want to keep the shiny new toys subsidized with federal money, the money has to come from somewhere else. The cuts and cuts outlined in the memo don’t seem all that draconian, but we’ll have to wait a few more months to see what the next budget, Murphy’s last, has in store.

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