We all know what a “Christmas tree” is, Save Jerseyans, but Trenton is a strange place. It has a different meaning there than it does everywhere else.
In the capital city, “Christmas trees” are spending on pet projects; the scale varies, ranging from $10,000 for a local Elks Club in Bergen County to $100 million for a Rutgers basketball facility refresh and an indoor football facility.
One legislator wants to put an end to the madness.
“Enigmatic Christmas tree items have long been a feature of government budgets in the State, but as the cost of this Governor’s budgets have skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the list of pork projects receiving payments,” explained state Senator Mike Testa (R-1). “Santa Murphy has established a new standard in gifting, handing out multi-million-dollar packages to friends, mostly in North Jersey, like candy canes. Taxpayers, and those without direct connections to the front office in Trenton, have had to settle for stockings full of coal.”
Testa cited some other crazy examples:
- $7 million for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC)
- $5 million for the Cherry Blossom Center in Branch Brook
- $4.6 million for a North Bergen park
- $4 million for Union County’s Clark Reservoir
- $3.6 million for the visiting Lambert Castle Visitors Center in Patterson
- $3 million for the Brick City Peace Collective in Newark
“Many of these payouts may be for very worthy causes. Without a doubt, the State needs to provide funding for higher education,” added Testa. “These awards should be transparent, competitive and merit based, but what we’ve seen out of Trenton is secretive, arbitrary and unfair. The legislature is locked out of it and New Jersey residents, who ultimately end up paying the bill for these partisan plums often have no idea where the money is going or what it is being used for.”
Unsurprisingly, according to an NJ Spotlight analysis, “just 5 cents of every $1 went to Republican-controlled districts” between fiscal years 2018 and 2022.
Testa’s legislative proposals (and descriptions supplied by his office) are designed to reinject fairness into the process:
- S-3388 – “Redirects a $300 million special line item for undisclosed capital projects at Rutgers (believed to include $100 million Rutgers sports facilities) awarded without an open or fair application process to a grant program run by the Commission on Higher Education that would be open to all public and private higher education institutions as well as vocational schools. Funding allocations would be based on merit with a regional Statewide balance.”
- S-3386 – “Would redirect approximately $356 million in special local government line items to named recipients awarded without an open or fair application process to a grant program run by the Commissioner of DCA that would be open to all local governments. Funding allocations would be based on merit with a regional Statewide balance.”
- S-3387 – “Would redirect approximately $22 million of eight line-items awarded to arts and cultural organizations without an open or fair application process to a grant program run by the Secretary of State that would be open to all arts and cultural organizations. Funding allocation would be based on merit with a regional Statewide balance.”
“This is blatant favoritism based on how influential the recipients are and not on any fair or balanced process which governors of both parties traditionally advocate,” Testa continued. “This is no way to allocate state spending, and the legislation I have introduced are designed to bring the procedure out in the open so everybody can have a fair shot at the money, regardless of politics or geographic preferences.”
