Election season is nearing and while there is no presidential or gubernatorial election to focus wide attention, there are a series of regional and local elections for a variety of positions where choices may matter more than one knows.
That’s part of the message of three statewide reports released incrementally over the past year — with two just released over the summer.
The first comes from the Steve Sweeney Center for Public Policy at Rowan University in southern New Jersey.
It is named for former New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who is a member of the Multi-Year Budget Workgroup.
Their recent publication is the 19-page “New Jersey’s Fiscal Future II Comparing Five-Year Revenue Forecasts with Current Services Budget Projections.”
Despite the publication’s dreadfully dull title, the informed report is an unsettling look at the New Jersey finances coming down the road. It also suggests that current crop of candidates needs to be more than just charismatic and be ready to make some serious decisions
Not convinced? Here’s what the report has to say:
For the past several years, New Jersey state coffers have been flooded with tax revenue consistently exceeding official Treasury revenue projections by billions of dollars each year, pushing the state budget over $50 billion and swelling the state’s surplus to nearly $10 billion.
The Governor and the Legislature last June used the unexpected revenue surge to enact the ANCHOR rebate program that increased direct property tax relief from just under $1.4 billion to more than $3 billion and raise state aid to school districts by $800 million.
This year, the Governor’s budget proposal would roll back a 2.5% surcharge on corporate income taxes for companies earning more than $1 million in profits in New Jersey. Democrats and Republicans have been pushing competing proposals to further increase property tax relief, with the Democratic StayNJ plan to cut property taxes in half for all senior citizens initiated by the Assembly Speaker and backed by the Senate President moving rapidly through the Legislature.
Just (several) months ago, It looked like the good times would never end, as the Treasury Department boosted revenue projections for the current FY23 budget year from the $50.359 billion projected last July to $54.055 billion and forecast a $53.829 billion tax harvest for the upcoming FY24.
However, in her May 17 revenue update to the Assembly Budget Committee, Treasurer Elizabeth Muoio was forced to cut those revenue projections for those two fiscal years by over $2.2 billion as revenue collections slowed.
Even if Treasury hits its $52.802 billion revenue projection for FY24, the Multi-Year Budget Workgroup (MYBW) projects that New Jersey faces a looming fiscal crisis, with state revenues projected to fall $3 billion to $4 billion short annually of the amount needed to continue state programs and state aid at current service levels from Fiscal Year 2025 to Fiscal Year 2029.
The MYBW’s fiscal policy experts and economists agree that there is an 80% probability that revenue collections will fall between $12.5 billion and $18.5 billion short of the projected expenditures needed to continue current services and state aid from FY25 to FY28 with future increases in those years limited to the 3% annual growth needed to maintain a Current Services Budget.
Read more at chss.rowan.edu/centers/sweeney_center/docs/multi-year-budget-workgroup-report-0615-final-to-web.pdf.
Meanwhile, there is another problem taking weed in the Garden State: terrorism.
As the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP) published the 44-page “2023 Threat Assessment” shows, the terrorists are both foreign and home grown.
NJOHSP director Laurie R. Doran gets to the point in her introduction by noting, “In recent years, domestic and foreign threat actors’ tactics have continued to evolve, substantially transforming the threat environment as witnessed by New Jerseyans and the nation. With threat prevention a key priority for the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (NJOHSP), we continue to focus on countering terrorism and cyber threats while also addressing new concerns, such as disinformation and counterintelligence threats from nation-state actors.”
The report then categorizes the threats from high to low.
At the top are Homegrown Extremists and White Racially Motivated Extremists.
Moderate threat groups include Abortion-Related Extremists, Anarchist Extremists, Anti-Government Extremists, Black Racially Motivated Extremists, Militia Extremists, and Sovereign Citizen Extremists.
And low threat groups include Al-Qa’ida and Affiliates Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Animal Rights Extremists, Environmental Extremists, HAMAS, Hizballah, and ISIS.
That the report — available online at www.njohsp.gov/analysis/2023-threat-assessment — shows that the highest and majority of threats are mainly homegrown is a cause of deep concern and reflection — as demonstrated in the third publication.
“Exposing White Supremacy in New Jersey” is a 57-page New Jersey Attorney General Office publication that focuses on one of the previous report’s high threats — a home grown movement that is a subset of the dominant cultural and racial demographic.
The report does several things, including showing how the threat works and offering suggestions on how to thwart it.
As the following excerpt shows, that includes paying attention to local elections at all levels:
In 2020, New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and the United States Department of Homeland Security confirmed what many members of our community already knew: White supremacist violent extremists are among the most “persistent,” “hostile,” and “lethal” threats to our State and our Nation.
This report seeks to outline that threat, highlights the severe human cost of white supremacy, and calls upon all New Jersey residents to stand united against hate, actively work to dismantle white supremacy, and to hold ourselves, each other, and our institutions accountable for doing the same.
White supremacy encompasses the full spectrum of bias-based behavior — including biased attitudes, acts of bias, and systemic discrimination — that results from a belief in the superiority of white people. White supremacist violent extremism is the willingness to threaten or engage in white supremacy-motivated physical violence and crime. Both white supremacy and white supremacist violent extremism inflict trauma on the many communities they target. White supremacists target not only the Black community, but all communities of color. They target not only the Jewish community, but all faith communities. And they target community members not only based on their race or faith, but also based on their gender and sexuality.
More than 200 community members and experts participated in the listening sessions that formed the foundation of this report. Their accounts bore witness to the inescapable reach of white supremacy and the widespread trauma it inflicts. Five key themes emerged from the presentations and testimonials participants shared at the listening sessions:
First, community members’ expressions of white supremacy inflict widespread trauma on communities that are targeted by white supremacy, and especially on young people. Community members regularly subject Black people, Jewish people, and other groups to expressions of white supremacy.
Second, through a deliberate strategy to normalize and mainstream white supremacist ideologies, extremists influence community members to promote white supremacist causes.
Third, some white supremacist violent extremists have pursued a deliberate strategy to infiltrate positions of authority in government and law enforcement and (mis)use their authority to harass, assault, incarcerate, and disenfranchise Black people and other people of color. As the FBI has explained, the infiltration tactics used by some white supremacists have been leveraged to seek positions of power in all levels of government, from law enforcement agencies and state legislatures to executive offices and local school boards.
Fourth, white supremacist violent extremists and adjacent extremist groups recruit white people — especially young white people — by leveraging their insecurities to inspire them to target others. This recruitment frequently occurs online, via multiplayer games, online message boards, social media, and other internet forums, where white supremacists use memes and “jokes” that are racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQIA+, antisemitic, and otherwise hateful to normalize bigotry. Young white people who have experienced trauma are particularly vulnerable to such recruitment.
Fifth, it is critical for white people to partner with communities of color and other targets of white supremacists to counter white supremacy.
Finally, based on the presentations and testimonials of experts and community members at the listening sessions, the report identifies a set of best practices for dismantling white supremacy:
1. Listen to and learn from the experiences of those targeted by white supremacy — especially people of color.
2. Don’t contribute to normalizing or mainstreaming hate — in-person or online.
3. Proactively discuss race and racism with youth.
4. Educate youth on how to avoid recruitment.
5. Recognize the risk for and signs of radicalization, and intervene early if you see them.
6. Equip youth and adults with resources and support systems for coping with and combatting white supremacy.
These best practices are crucial so that community members can protect themselves, their children, and their communities from the damage white supremacy inflicts.
To read the full report, go to www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases23/2023-0710_WSR-2023_v14.pdf.
But if reading the reports is not enough, reading the candidates abilities and motivations are key to our economic and social wellbeing.
