By Matt Rooney
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The New Jersey Supreme Court sided with Phil Murphy this week, permitting the state to borrow billions of dollars – without voter approval – to cover alleged COVID-19 revenue shortfalls. Murphy still wants a federal bailout, too.
Some of us (yours truly included) have been questioning the math and asking for months whether the demanded money was even necessary.
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Guess what?
We probably won’t need it.
NJ Spotlight’s John Reitmeyer summarized some new state treasury data released on Thursday which throws a bucket of cold water on the entire Murphy Administration borrowing narrative:
Over a 13-month period that ended July 2020, total revenues were off less than 1% compared to the 13 months that ended July 2019, according to Treasury's report. $34.9b (13-mos. 2020) vs. $35.1b (13-mos. 2019).
— John Reitmeyer (@johnreitmeyer) August 13, 2020
N.J. cash collections (July 2019 through July 2020) were down about $200M, from $35.118B to $34.919B.
0.6%.
Murphy’s “the sky is falling” routine was probably unwarranted.
Again, this isn’t a surprise to those of us who are honest AND paying attention.
“We know the $10 billion revenue shortfall that the administration predicted months ago hasn’t materialized. It’s likely we’ll learn that revenues have far exceeded expectations when the administration provides an update on sales, income, and business tax collections,” state Senator Steven Oroho (R-24) predicted on Wednesday.” Based on today’s court ruling, each extra dollar of unanticipated revenue we collect will cut a dollar from the administration’s ability to borrow.”
If there was any justice in the universe, folks, Murphy would be refunding us for the legal expenses of fighting a constitutional war which didn’t need to be waged.
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