Doug Forrester and Jon Corzine tonight on WBGO-FM! Tuesday, November 1,

8pm Listen at 88.3FM or www.wbgo.org

GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES ‘IN THEIR OWN WORDS’ below

…excerpts re: education and property tax questions  

The Bergen Record Sunday Opinion section, 10-3-0-05 Interview Q&A with candidates Corzine and Forrester. FYI - different topical questions were asked of each candidate, therefore answers varied related to the questions & candidate’s replies.

FORRESTER INTERVIEW EXCERPTS SUNDAY 10-30-05  BERGEN RECORD…..

The RECORD …If you win this election next month and you have to put together a budget by February, will you find parity aid for Abbott districts?

The constraints that the court has with regard to Abbott funding are things I can't trespass on. What I'm interested in doing with regard to the Abbott districts is finding more effective ways of providing financial resources to prepare children better for school.

For example, when I was in Newark, I visited a charter school. I said if you could change one thing about New Jersey what would it be and [the children] each said, "I want to be safe." That is directly related to education. I've made a big point about what I believe is the wrong-headed view of New Jersey dealing with substance abuse. We need a lot more education, not incarceration. That is financially stupid as well as being wrong with regard to the solution of the problem. We can't deal with these educational issues without dealing with issues of substance abuse better because substance abuse and the way in which we've dealt with the correctional model has destroyed families. Well, how do you have education if you don't have families? Very tough.

Re: Mr. Forrester’s 30-in-3 Plan

With the state's obligations, including the Transportation Trust Fund and the pension liabilities and so on, how do you pay for your plan? Every candidate who has ever come in here is going to cut out "waste, fraud and abuse." How is your waste, fraud and abuse-cutting plan different from anybody else's?

The New Jersey budget has grown by more than 30 percent in four years, and it has grown in ways that are disreputable. Disreputable because a lot of that is not even identified; the budget is really larger than is set forth. We spent $7 billion a year more this year than we did just four years ago. We have nearly 8,000 public employees, some of them court-ordered DFYS [staff], God bless that, but we've never seen anything like this in New Jersey with regard to budgetary explosion. And much of it has gone along with this idea of blowing out all the standards with regard to constraining how people use money.

The cost of my program is half of what the new spending has been in four years, and I consider it to be such an urgent situation; there are people who are voting down school budgets around the state because they just can't see straight past the property taxes.

Some budgets are decent budgets. They're generally in suburban areas where they don't get a lot of state aid and the animosity level is very great out there, tremendous animosity about the Abbott districts. We have fragmented ourselves in New Jersey, and we've alienated ourselves from one another. And it is not good for overall public policymaking in New Jersey. So we've got to stop that. That's part of the reason I think the 30 and three plan is important and urgent. We've got to provide the relief so people can start thinking straight about school budgets.

What would be your single highest priority? |FORRESTER: I've got to make good on this pledge to change New Jersey. That works two ways. One is to put the financial house in order in such a way that public money can be used honestly, and the other aspect is the property tax relief program.

I'm going to have to put my stamp on the budget-making process, and the principal stamp is to begin the phase of the 30 and three plan for property tax relief. It is a good plan. The first year is not going to be that difficult because the marginal amount is not that great over what is currently allocated for the rebate program. The next couple of years will require more attention, but at least we'll have a chance to have the time to make that part of the budget a priority.

You say you don't want to increase income taxes, but one good thing about property taxes is they're stable and they're what kept New Jersey schools open and operating without much trouble during the downturn a few years ago when some other school systems around the country were having more problems. So if you guarantee 30 percent, what happens the next time there is a big economic down turn or if the stock market tanks again and that really affects state revenues?

I think that you have raised a very legitimate point, but we're trying to balance these revenue streams. I mean just from general tax policy, it's always good to have diversified taxing mechanisms. In other words, we go through the list and we've got a lot of different revenue streams and that's not necessarily bad in itself because we need to have some that are counterbalancing influences on one another. The general rush to move everything or much more than what I'm suggesting to the state would make the state more vulnerable with regard to those obligations. Another point about what happens at the local level is that there are some areas where their reserve for uncollected taxes is pretty substantial. Well, to the extent that we're participating here at the 30 percent level, we're providing more resources for those communities where their reserve for uncollected taxes, you know, is high.

Go to this link for full Forrester interview: http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNCZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjgwMTI0Nw==

 CORZINE INTERVIEW EXCERPTS SUNDAY 10-30-05 THE BERGEN RECORD

 THE RECORD: If you're elected, what would the No. 1 priority be?

Security and safety of the public is always the No. 1 responsibility. We also clearly have to address ethics and corruption and managerial responsibility within the state. We need to have responsible property tax relief. But in no way can we turn our back on education.

Do you plan on getting involved in the details of various problems in state government?

When you have a problem, I believe in managers and leaders being hands-on.

What kind of person would you pick to head the Education Department?

We have a major problem in urban education so I want somebody with real proven competency to make sure that we're addressing the needs of the kids, which is the primary issue, but also making sure we're getting efficiency out of the dollars that we spend. I think we ought to go get the very best people.

How would you control school costs and the cost of local government?

If we don't get people to consolidate where they have fewer kids, you know, I'd get a little more heavy-handed. I'd stop talking about it and do something. There are school districts that go to fourth grade. These are luxuries that really shouldn't be continued.

So you can sweeten the pot so they couldn't resist?

You would give incentives. I think we would end up saving money on what we would have to provide back in municipal support and in school aid.

What about benefits for teachers and other public employees?

We sign contracts and negotiate these things, and we have obligations. We can consider whether we want to have different structures for future employees.

I will look for best practices. I am going to have a state comptroller who's going to have a lot of authority, who's going to look at practices, challenge contracting, make sure that financials are actually accurate. I think when you get more transparent in this process, we will be better able to encourage the 566 municipalities and 611 school districts to be more careful in their administration of funding.

In principle, do you support the idea of public employees paying some of their own health benefits?

They already do in many instances, and yes.

But there are many districts that don't.

That's an issue for collective bargaining.

Re: Senator Corzine’s 40-in-4 plan

Mr. Corzine…Will you discuss your 40 percent, four-year rebate plan?

The rebate program is a very clear thing to execute, very clear. You're going to get it restored to 2004, and then it is going to grow 10 percent each year. The people who get the most will be the seniors who make $70,000 and less - which is about 95 percent of seniors.

How do you pay for it?

We can re-engineer government. I've tried to use examples like bulk-buying prescription drugs. One of the obvious places is $15 million for passing out rebate checks, which ought to stop. We ought to cut political employees 50 percent.We ought to end no-bid contracts, including for professional services.

We believe there is $300 million to save at a minimum on negotiating pharmaceutical prices. Every 55,000 jobs produces $350 million in new revenue. So there's $650 million. Natural growth, as long as we're not in a recession, gets 3 percent growth in the economy a year.

I know we have the dough to be able to do these things. I've limited my spending programs to $100 million or less. We've actually been very careful. There is a lot of money to be saved with respect to ending no-bid contracts. Absolutely. The pharmaceutical example is the most egregious, but there are plenty of ways to do it. I'm being as specific as I can until I get in and run the government. I talk about taking 50 percent of the 800 political employees off the payroll, that the average job pays $55,000 - so the savings are 400 times that.

Go this link for the entire Corzine interview: http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNCZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjgwMTI0Ng==