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The war against cultural diversity
This war has spread to New Jersey:
There's East Rutherford, then Carlstadt, then Moonachie, then -- whoosh-- faster than the car radio can play the latest hit single, you're in Little Ferry, the next borough over. That's four boroughs in one song. You pass through Moonachie during the refrain.
Moonachie is small: about 2,700 residents. That's smaller than some New York apartment complexes. That's just one-seventh of the seating capacity of the arena at Madison Square Garden.
That's too small, says New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D).
Corzine, who presided over mergers and acquisitions as chairman of Goldman Sachs, is telling hundreds of New Jersey's smallest towns and boroughs that they are too small to exist. Multiple layers of government are financially wasteful, he says, and the littlest towns and boroughs need to merge with their bigger neighbors to achieve economies of scale.
Corzine's incentive -- more like a hammer -- is a threatened cutoff of state aid.
I would be disappointed if they did away with East Rutherford and Moonachie. Here is the full story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 31, 2008 at 04:05 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
I support diversity where it arises naturally or out of people's choice, I am against /forced/ diversity.
Posted by: Speedmaster at May 31, 2008 7:53:50 AM
I live in one of those "small" towns in Bergen County (pop 11K). If he wants to cut off state aid, we need to cut off the amount of our taxes going to Trenton. I like Massachusetts' rule that tax rates must be the same for everyone.
Posted by: Rich Berger at May 31, 2008 8:20:38 AM
East Rutherford and Moonachie would still be there, they just wouldn't have their own local government. I'm not sure this would be such a bad thing for cultural diversity, especially if places like Moonachie (notably low-density and 86% white, FWIW) are currently using land use controls as a de-facto restriction on entry.
Posted by: Jim at May 31, 2008 8:24:24 AM
Corzine is clearly not from a small town.
Posted by: JB at May 31, 2008 8:59:01 AM
I don't believe that these small towns will be going away under Corzine's plan. He simply wants small towns to pool resources and services when it makes economic sense. There is an incredible amount of administrative redundancy in these small towns that has, in part, led to sky rocketing property taxes in them. (It is not unusual for a household to pay more than 10k a year.) This tax burden is pushing out many of the long time blue collar and middle class residents who provided these towns with a sense of community and tradition. The rich are becoming the only people who can afford to live in these towns. (Having been born and raised in a small South Jersey town, this has made me more cognizant of the "downsides" of gentrification -- something which I had never really comprehended.) Even if most governmental services are consolidated, it is not clear to me that this will eliminate cultural diversity or the unique sense of place. This "local color" is already being maintained -- not by governments -- but by civic/religious groups and, in the case of our wonderful "main streets," by quasi-private "business improvement districts." Those interested in these issues should read Richard Briffault's articles on BIDs and the "local government boundary problem."
Posted by: David at May 31, 2008 10:06:39 AM
I would say leave it up to the voters. If they really find that the supposedly high costs of the current setup are not worth having more localized control, then they can vote to merge with other communities. It may take a while, but they should give the political Coase theorem a chance - sometimes it's better to let things happen naturally than forcing change.
Posted by: Jesse at May 31, 2008 11:13:47 AM
Multiple layers of government are financially wasteful
I agree. I suggest abolishing most of the NJ state government.
Make all highways toll roads (not a hard thing to do as NJ residents are used to tolls already). Sell long term leases on all the toll roads as has been done elsewhere in the US.
Continue to finance the courts and state prisons. Pardon everyone convicted of a nonviolent drug crime and refuse to prosecute any more drug "crimes", excepting sales to minors.
End all other state government, excepting the minimum needed to collect taxes efficiently.
Pay off the state debt, and lower taxes to the level that barely covers everything listed above.
Let the cities and towns self-finance whatever else government they want. Let the citizens self select which communities they want to live in, be they high tax and spend, or low tax and spend.
Posted by: happyjuggler0 at May 31, 2008 12:04:05 PM
Jim,
Political diversity is at least as important as cultural diversity. If the local residents are willing to bare the costs and want to remain a small town, then Corzine should put a cork in it. Like everything else a government wants to do, I am extremely suspicious of this. Corzine wants this to happen to consolidate his authority over the state.
Currently, it's too hard to negotiate with the large number of municipalities and local govs to get done what he wants. The solution is simple, eliminate the smaller govs by consolidating into larger govs. With larger populations, just by the law of large numbers, the politicians elected to these offices will now be more amenable to Corzine's efforts (he was elected by the entire state). This weakens the power of local citizens by diluting their voting choices. As this local political power weakens, this will have a considerable effect on the local culture. Probably homogenizing the culture for the same reason listed above: with more people making decisions about a broader locality, the more diverse laws and customs will be washed out by the average vote as it becomes 'more average' simply by having a larger N (population) in the equation.
Posted by: Ken at May 31, 2008 12:15:16 PM
Also, read the following:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/article.aspx?id=081505A
Posted by: Ken at May 31, 2008 12:16:41 PM
Massachusetts and Virginia are two Commonwealths that have essentially one level of government under the state. In Virgina if you are in a town that town is not in a county-- so you are only in one or the other and never both. In Mass the county is very weak and about all they do is administer the courts and prisons.
But in Mass we already have much of what happyjuggler is advocating. The some 351 different towns and cities are very different. Some exclude almost all commercial development and set very high property taxes to finance very good school systems. Other towns are very commercial and industrial and have poor school systems.
There is a wide range of combinations of this and an individual is free to move from one community to another. When my kids were growing up I lived in a very expensive town and paid very high taxes so my kids could go to the outstanding schools in that community. After the kids left home and the dog died we moved to another community with much lower tax rates, extensive commercial development and a so-so school system. We also built a smaller house since the land in the expensive community was so valuable that it was uneconomical to build a small house there.
So in this respect at least liberal Massachusetts is much closer to the libertarian ideal then many other states.
Posted by: spencer at May 31, 2008 12:27:51 PM
First as to VA. Incorporated CITIES are not part of their surrounding counties, and have their own jurisdictions, towns do not.
Next: Over the years studies have been made showing the various effects of consolidations, such as a major city with its surrounding county. It has been found (this may be at American Heritage)that the efficiencies,which may be had initially, but dwindle, are had at the cost of reduction of direct citizen influence.
As always, there are unintended but often forseeable, consequences.
Posted by: R Richard Schweitzer at May 31, 2008 1:48:12 PM
Neighborhoods offer cultural diversity, not municipalities. You can have neighborhoods in large cities. Municipalities, especially small ones, are inefficient and redundant governments that can be just as coercive and power-crazy as big governments.
Posted by: Bandwagon Smasher at May 31, 2008 3:58:32 PM
Efficiency and inefficiency in government are not about keeping spending down, they are about delivering value for money for the taxes we choose to pay. The only way to judge whether value for money is being delivered is to find out how happy the citizens are about paying for what they get. When you ask them, citizens everywhere tend, rather strongly, to be happiest (or least unhappy) with the services provided most locally. So Gov. Corzine should be asking what services he can move out of Trenton to the townships. In doing so he should bear in mind that each township does no tneed to do everything itself. A great many services can be bought in from neighboring towns or from private corporations. Very small townships can be very efficient, and can provide a very wide range of services.
And Gov Cozine should be getting together with his fellow governors to extract services and the setting of taxes to pay for them out of Washington.
Posted by: Diversity at May 31, 2008 4:29:17 PM
Multiple layers of government are financially wasteful"
so get rid of federalism
Posted by: karl at May 31, 2008 5:15:18 PM
I don't know the details, but is this a matter of him wanting the rich white enclaves to pay for the government services in other areas in ways that they aren't right now?
Posted by: BillWallace at Jun 1, 2008 1:51:27 AM
So, a state government is complaining about innefficiency and high taxes of local governments. Next we'll be hearing the Feds say small states are innefficient. Please. Besides, is this any of their business?
What services are redundant and wasteful? Why? Are the dog-catchers in both tows twiddling their thumbs?
Towns don't manufacture things, so I don't see economy of scale being a big issue.
And, to mass produce or consolidate does involve standardization, and standardization is the enemy of diversity.
Privatize, reduce services, shared resources, etc.
For the towns that Corzine plans to cut funding, is he cutting their taxes too? If not, Corzine should be ashamed of himself. I don't care if he isn't chairman of Goldman Sachs anymore. He hasn't got sense enough to wear a seatbelt.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 1, 2008 4:20:22 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Corzine
"Corzine won the three most populous counties (Bergen, Essex, and Middlesex), five of the top six, and seven of the top nine."
This probably has nothing to do with anything.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 1, 2008 4:29:23 AM
Pittsburgh has the same problem, too many little municipalities, each with their own police dept, city council, etc. There are pluses and minuses but my sense is it definitely contributes to the crazy property tax rates (3.4% of assessed value/year where I live, and the assessed values are 80%-100% of the market value of houses for most people).
Posted by: Andy P at Jun 1, 2008 6:37:01 AM
This is a terrible idea. If there's one thing that actually WORKS in NJ government, this is it. Corzine is attacking a target of opportunity. If he wants to fight waste, let him take on the taxing and appropriations process at the COUNTY level. There are huge redundancies and inefficiencies there that are administered as patronage by the boards of chosen freeholders which are controlled, in each an every case, by unelected party bosses. Corzine is intimately familiar with this--these are the people he had to buy off to be nominee for both US Senate and Governor.
Andrew-- a lot of the tiny towns ARE in those very populous counties.
Posted by: ck at Jun 1, 2008 3:07:13 PM
"Corzine, who presided over mergers and acquisitions as chairman of Goldman Sachs, is telling hundreds of New Jersey's smallest towns and boroughs that they are too small to exist."
Why not state that states are too small to exist? Maybe even nations are too small to exist. Or even one step further, the UN, ASEAN, EU, are too small to exist. Surely Corzine will agree that anything short of a one world government is too small to exist.
Posted by: Jay at Jun 1, 2008 11:59:49 PM
I'm from Sewaren, NJ - pop. 2,700. Our government is the Township of Woodbridge. There is definitely nothing wrong with getting rid of the small town governments and creating townships with centralized public services.
Everybody who thinks the small towns are going away needs to relax. Either way, they're not going to get any money - either it's cut off, or they merge and the money goes to their larger "township". Not a big deal locally - except for the small-town mayors who'll have to do something else with their time.
Posted by: John Ur at Jun 2, 2008 9:38:32 AM
I'm from Sewaren, NJ - pop. 2,700. Our government is the Township of Woodbridge. There is definitely nothing wrong with getting rid of the small town governments and creating townships with centralized public services.
Everybody who thinks the small towns are going away needs to relax. Either way, they're not going to get any money - either it's cut off, or they merge and the money goes to their larger "township". Not a big deal locally - except for the small-town mayors who'll have to do something else with their time.
Posted by: John Ur at Jun 2, 2008 9:38:44 AM
And Gov Cozine should be getting together with his fellow governors to extract services and the setting of taxes to pay for them out of Washington.
So make me (a resident of another state) pay for everyone and their brother working for the small town government in New Jersey? No thanks.
If the small towns could self-finance their local governments then this wouldn't be a problem. But they can't, and of course the first thing to go is police and fire so the small towns can scream that someone's gonna die because they don't get the money. Never mind that the mayor's secretary / relative is getting a $100k a year job to do nothing.
Posted by: BlogReader at Jun 2, 2008 10:53:34 AM
*** If the small towns could self-finance their local governments then this wouldn't be a problem. But they can't ***
Anymore than the big cities can finance their own governments? My guess is that big cities get a lot more funding, both from the feds and their state, than little ones.
Who knows what Corzine is trying to do?
1) He's punishing small town residents because they didn't vote for him.
2) He's trying to make all of us equal by ensuring that we're all equally unhappy with our governments - thus turning us all into Democrats.
*** Never mind that the mayor's secretary / relative is getting a $100k a year job to do nothing. ***
Proof that you know nothing. Do you really think that a town with 2,500 people wouldn't miss that money; or wouldn't know that person happens to be his relative, and happens to do nothing all day? It's in big cities where the real money goes down a hole and where no one notices. Witness the lady wokring for the DC govt who stole millions while no body noticed.
If there's one thing people in small towns know it's who their government is. They pay attention. They get involved. That's traditional democracy and it's worth defending - even if it does cost slightly more (which all the evidence shows that it does not).
My guess is that Corzine's just being a dick.
Posted by: Mark at Jun 2, 2008 4:03:37 PM
They already tried privatization in New Jersey when the state's Division of Motor Vehicles were made for-profit under Christie Whitman. The result? Fraud, waste, poor service of every kind.
http://law.onecle.com/new-jersey/39-motor-vehicles-and-traffic-regulation/39-2A-2.html
The only good thing McGreevey accomplished was sanely reverting the NJDMV back to state control.
If you're looking for a fancy word to use in place of the word "scam", you couldn't do any better than "privatization".
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