So, there is no other choice but to consider a toll hike? Instead of considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a state-sponsored stem cell research facility at UMDNJ and Rutgers, that money could have gone to fixing crumbling bridges and roads. I don't have a problem with stem cell research, but there is little need for the state to finance this at a time when biomedical companies and pharaceuticals are busy doing much of the heavy lifting themselves. I question how and why the state taxpayers should take on another debt obligation when property taxes are already the highest in the nation and those taxes may again be under siege by the need to finance transportation work around the state.
Of course, it is far more prestigeous to have a ribbon cutting for a new state of the art biomedical research facility than to fix obsolete bridges and roads. It just isn't glamorous to put down blacktop when you can open up a shiny new building.
This is the choice that New Jersey politicians have made (and politicians regularly do this around the nation, but the budget situation in New Jersey is particularly dire). They have no problem spending taxpayer money on all kinds of projects that have little to do with the central mission of the state government - to provide basic infrastructure and upkeep.
By choosing to spend taxpayer money on other projects, the state has created structural deficits in capital improvements, including roads, rails, and bridges. And the higher tolls, which would affect the GSP and Turnpike will not affect all the other state-owned roads.
In other words, more taxes will need to be raised to cover those obligations.
Hard choices need to be made, but the priority should be on the critical infrastructure that enables New Jersey residents to get around the state, for goods and services to flow around and through New Jersey communities, and not on pet projects that seem to satisfy a small segment of the population.
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