By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
New Jersey’s leftists are wringing their hands over a number of Governor Chris Christie’s many Tuesday vetoes, Save Jerseyans, including his decision to pocket veto S-1279/A-2325, legislation which would’ve dedicated $10 million to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) for Lead Hazard Control Assistance Fund.
They wanted to use the money to remove lead paint from old homes. The truth? It’s yet another one of Trenton’s obnoxious solutions in search of a problem.
As always, I did what Trenton never does: go to the statistics and think critically.
Check out the Center for Disease Control and Prevention‘s data for yourself. In 1997, 2,865 children were tested and confirmed as being inflicted with lead paint poisoning in the Garden State. By 2013, that number had shrunk to 841. That’s a tiny fraction (0.128%) of the total population of children under age 6, and before you ask, more than 14-times as many children were tested in 2013 than 1997.
Check out the trend line:
Lead paint has been illegal for residential use in the United States since 1978. The median age of an owner-occupied home in the United States is approximately 35 years old. Most insurance companies require some species of lead paint certification for multi-home units.
What all of this means? The problem is solving itself.
What SHOULD be the relevant question: Why should Trenton spend more money that we don’t have (!) to correct a problem that is quickly self-correcting itself?
Am I tempted to spend $10 million to figure out what the State House’s denizens are inhaling as the catalyst for their monumentally stupid and undemocratic impulses? You bet. But it ain’t easy to get that kind of rich in New Jersey any more by their own design.
I think someone in Trenton was chowing down on paint chips when this bill was hatched!
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