“This month’s jobs report was a mixed bag for the state’s economy,” stated GSI’s president Regina M. Egea. “The strong increase in the size of the state’s workforce was a positive development, however a decline in the workforce participation rate and stagnant job growth while the U.S. continues to grow, shows an economy that lacks vibrancy. Of particular note, was the significant job losses in the Professional and Business Sector. That will bear monitoring in the months ahead.”
Garden State Initiative’s president Regina Egea was a guest on this weekend’s edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato. In a wide-ranging interview Ms. Egea touched on GSI’s focus on restoring New Jersey’s ability to compete with other states, her recent op-ed separating the facts about New Jersey’s economy from Governor Murphy’s rhetoric and GSI’s research report series Adding It All Up on the cost and size of New Jersey’s government and opportunities for savings.
“New Jersey’s underlying employment data stands in contrast to the Administration’s aspiration of “getting more people to work,” said GSI’s president Regina M. Egea. “The state shed private sector jobs this month. Coupled with the poor growth of our workforce size and a lagging participation rate, this month’s report illustrates an economy far behind the national economic boom.”
The Garden State Initiative is dedicated to making New Jersey a place where families and businesses can thrive.
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We work with the public, policymakers, and partners throughout the state to build a sustainable, effective economic infrastructure for today and tomorrow.
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Latest News
The editorial board of the Press of Atlantic City takes Governor Murphy to task over his recent comments at a gathering of business leaders at Rowan University where he appeared indifferent to New Jersey residents and businesses impacted by high taxes:
“Politicians in democracies typically don’t say things that could suggest they’re dismissing and ignoring a significant part of the electorate. To do so requires a confidence of staying in power usually found only in places with tyrannies or one-party rule.
Murphy should consider whether his party’s dominance of state government is encouraging an unrealistic feeling of power that might undermine his persuasiveness and personal political ambitions.”
On NJSpotlight.com, John Reitmeyer reports on several troubling trends for New Jersey’s fiscal health with a possible economic slowdown looming in the future.
Earlier this year, GSI’s president Regina M. Egea authored an op-ed that suggested the crash of Connecticut’s high-end housing market may be predictive of a similar occurrence in New Jersey due to exorbitant property taxes. In a column published on NJ.com, Paul Mulshine indicates that the market decline may have finally reached New Jersey with dire consequences for the middle class:
“…as the prices drop on those high-end homes, so do the tax assessments. That creates pressure on the people in the middle-class homes in town.”
Samantha Marcus of NJ.com reports on a new analysis from S&P Global Ratings that finds New Jersey’s public employee pension fund is the worst-funded in the nation: “For the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2018, the most-recent year for which records are available, the public pension fund had enough money to cover just 38.4 percent of what it needs to provide retirement benefits to some 800,000 current and future retired workers.”
In an op-ed published on NJ.com, Tom Byrne, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party and a former chairman of the N.J. State Investment Council, takes issue with Governor Murphy’s recent assertions that New Jersey’s economy has grown stronger under his policies:
“In a recent op-ed, Gov. Phil Murphy stated that “New Jersey is getting stronger” but cited no data in support of that claim. In fact, the most recent data shows New Jersey tied for dead last among states in the mainland U.S. in economic growth so far this year.”
In an interview with Elise Young and Danielle Moran of Bloomberg, Senate President Steve Sweeney offered an ominous warning on the state of New Jersey’s finances: “Why am I yelling fire in a crowded theater and everyone else is saying that we’re fine,” Sweeney said. “We’re not. And it’s going to go up in flames. I would rather not go down in memory as the guy that told everyone the pension system was going to collapse and be found that I was correct.”
Bloomberg reported that the state’s retirement system had about $82 billion of assets in 2018, only 38% of what it needs to cover checks that are owed in the decades ahead. That’s lower than any other state system in the U.S.
Garden State Initiative’s president Regina Egea was interviewed by TaxNotes.com’s Lauren Loricchio on the concept of New Jersey entering into a multistate tax incentives truce:
“However, Regina Egea, president of the conservative think tank Garden State Initiative, was skeptical that such a compact could work, pointing out that the Kansas-Missouri compact is regional. "I haven't seen anything that would indicate that [Kansas and Missouri] think there's enough commonality of interest that they would expand that to the state level," she told Tax Notes August 16.
Egea said she can't imagine why Cuomo or Wolf would support such a truce because they have more favorable tax environments for businesses. "As long as we insist on keeping our tax rates so high, we'll be required — just to level the playing field — to use incentives," she said. “
In an op-ed published on NJ.com, Jared Walczak, the director of state policy at the Tax Foundation, takes apart the latest lawsuit filed by high tax states against the IRS on the SALT deduction cap:
“…this lawsuit may be more about posturing than law. It’s about supposedly progressive states trying to shield their high earners from the consequence of their own state tax laws, or at least about looking like they’re trying to do so. It’s a stunt in service to a shell game. Your tax dollars at work.”
NJBiz.com reports on GSI’s release of our latest Adding It All Up report focused on achieving savings in New Jersey’s infrastructure investments:
“In the report, GSI identifies three cost savings recommendations for the state: de-layering and consolidation of services; private public partnerships; and modernizing project planning, budgeting and scoring.”
On ROI-NJ.com, Emily Bader reports on GSI’s analysis of the gap between public and private sector benefit costs in the US and in New Jersey:
“Garden State Initiative on Thursday analyzed the latest employee compensation data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and found major differences in compensation costs between the public and private sectors.
In particular, GSI said government costs for pensions and medical benefits far exceeded the private sector, especially when looking at how New Jersey spends. The analysis said there’s a 50% differential in cost between the state and the rest of the U.S.”
