PODCAST: Toward a Fiscally Responsible New Jersey

In this episode of The GSI Briefing, GSI’s president Regina Egea was joined by Tom Healey and Thad Calabrese to discuss the upcoming release of their new report for GSI “Toward a Fiscally Sustainable New Jersey: Analysis and Recommendations.”

Some will recall there was a report issued by a 2012 New Jersey State Budget Crisis Task Force that looked at how the great recession of 2008 disrupted government revenues and financial plans. That report included recommended reforms and steps for policy makers to implement, particularly highlighting pension reform and curtailing new taxes.

Sound familiar? Well, our new report finds that the problems described in 2012 have not been adequately addressed by any of our subsequent government leaders. Thus, after a decade of global economic growth and prosperity, New Jersey remains very much stuck with the degraded fiscal condition having fallen further behind other states who adopted policies that better sustained them through these trying last two years of COVID. However, there are changes New Jersey can make that Tom and Thad outlined in their report. But the longer we delay facing these facts, the longer the climb out of our current unsustainable position.

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ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Thad D. Calabrese, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Public and Nonprofit Financial Management at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University where he currently serves as the head of the school’s finance specialization. He has published academic articles on public and nonprofit pensions, operating reserves, and debt issuance, among other topics. Professor Calabrese served as the Chair for the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management and currently serves as the Treasurer for the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action. He also serves on the Governmental Accounting Standards Advisory Council. Prior to academia, Professor Calabrese worked in the City of New York’s Office of Management and Budget and as a financial consultant for healthcare organizations.

Thomas J. Healey is the founder and managing partner of Healey Development LLC and founder of several investment funds. He served as the chair of the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefit Study Commission under Gov. Chris Christie. Mr. Healey was a partner and managing director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he created the Real Estate Capital Markets and Pension Services groups. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance under President Ronald Reagan. Prior to that, he was head of Corporate Finance at Dean Witter Reynolds. He is a founding board member of the Garden State Initiative and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He serves on several other non-profit boards, including the Leadership Roundtable, FADICA, and the Cristo Rey Network. Mr. Healey received a B.A. from Georgetown University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.