Municipal Officials Wait For Governor Christie's Budget Address (AUDIO)
Listen to David Matthau's report
It's one week and counting till Governor Christie delivers his fiscal year 2011 budget address…and municipal leaders across Jersey are bracing for a cut in state aid to towns - possibly by as much as 15 percent.
Bill Dressel, the Executive Director of the Jersey League of Municipalities, says the Governor has made it clear to municipal leaders "that if there's an expectation that you will be receiving money from the gold dome on West State Street - that, that's a bad expectation."
He says local officials are hoping that when the Governor announces all of his cuts, he'll also give them the tools that are needed to cut municipal budgets, and "the tools that we're looking for are relief from binding arbitration for fire and police personnel, civil service regulations that can be mitigated or loosened up- to provide a little flexibility in dealing with furloughs and layoffs and bumping rights and things of that nature - and dealing with a number of DEP mandates."
Dressel insists he's looking for "things that can be done fairly quickly that can produce some savings that we'll be able to realize soon…when there is a political will from the executive branch and the legislative branch, things can happen very, very fast."
He points out "the Governor has said look, if you're not with me, we're gonna pull you out into the middle of the ring- and now is the time to start pulling people out into the middle of the ring…it's gonna be tough, it's gonna take political will, but it's gotta happen right now…they have to be committed, they have to put political politics and all this other garbage aside, and they have to deal with the real issues - and if they deal with it, I think they can do it."
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