New Jersey is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year as both overtaxed residents and businesses are literally heading south where they can afford to live.

The Garden State’s giant socialist state government has finally put New Jersey into a $35 billion debt hole, and there’s no way the state can bail itself out of this financial disaster without laying off half the politically appointed workers in the State Capital of Trenton.

And that’s not a bad idea.

I’ve been waving the red flag in my weekly syndicated columns since the 1970s, when the state budgets started soaring to the billion-dollar budget levels.

I remember when Republican Governor Bill Cahill introduced the first billion-dollar budget in 1970. He called on the Democrat-controlled State Legislature to put the brakes on wasteful tax-and-spend programs and projects that the state simply could not afford to underwrite.

So here we are in 2008 with another liberal Governor imposing surcharges on already existing taxes in a futile effort to balance the state budget by June 30. July 1st begins the next fiscal year.

So what’s it like living in the most expensive state in the country?

Our regional newspaper, The Asbury Park Press, found a typical hardworking business man in Monmouth County, Central New Jersey. He is Don Novak, 61, of Lakewood. The headline for The Press’ feature article reads:
Fed up with N.J, man moving business to Pa.

He’s had it with spending, corruption

Don Novak installs auto lifts in mechanics’ shops. These days, while measuring garage bays and drilling holes, this senior citizen wonders whether to move his auto-lift business to neighboring Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey.

Don has grown upset over political corruption and what he considers excessive state spending over the past several years.

Then, in January, Governor Jon Corzine announced plans to borrow up to $40 billion to buttress the state’s weak finances and increase tolls eight-fold on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike by 2022.

That, Don said, was the final straw.

“I don’t think customers will put up with a surcharge on my bills for tolls,” he said. “If the tolls go up like this, I would have to put it on a surcharge, so people know that my work is competitive.”

It’s not just the tolls, Don pointed out. It’s the rising cost of living and doing business in New Jersey, including property taxes and a $2,000 jump this year in his private workers compensation insurance premiums.

Don believes state government is full of waste, and he said he’s seen it firsthand.

“I’ve been into garages that the state operates, with 30 or 40 mechanics, and you’d be hard pressed to find anybody working in there,” he said.

Corzine’s approval rating has been sinking since the plan was announced. In a Quinnipiac University poll a few weeks ago, 52 percent of voters said they disapproved of Corzine’s job performance, and three-quarters said they opposed his toll plan.

Pollsters say the public has seen enough of broken promises and politicians facing corruption convictions, and so voters are unwilling to accept the Corzine plan.

Don’s anger has simmered for a while. He still recalls the details of the Monmouth County corruption cases, such as the $92,000 salary of former county bridge superintendent Anthony Palugi, who is now serving time in federal prison for extorting bribes.

Don doesn’t own an E-ZPass transponder for toll roads because he refuses to pay the $1-a-month surcharge. He said he remembers the surcharge was used to bail out the E-ZPass system when its questionable funding plan, put in place by former GOP Governor Christie Whitman, collapsed.

“They wanted us to pay for their screw-ups,” Don said.

The only thing keeping me from moving out of New Jersey is my loving family – two daughters, three granddaughters and two sons-in-law. It’s also a struggle for them to live their entire life in one place – New Jersey.

We’re all prisoners of a corrupt, sick state!

(Gordon Bishop is a ‘Who’s Who in the World’ award-winning author, historian, syndicated columnist and New Jersey’s first “Journalist-of-the-Year” –1986/New Jersey Press Association.)