NJ Transit Cuts Workers, Freezes Spending; Fare Hikes Likely
By Jon Whiten • Mar 2nd, 2010 • Category: Blog, News
NJ Transit says it is implementing more than $30 million in budget cuts as part of its efforts to bridge a projected $300 million budget gap for Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011. The cuts include laying off more than 200 workers, freezing spending, cutting executive pay and contributing less to employees’ retirement accounts. The agency also says a plan on pending fare hikes and service reductions will be announced next week.
In a statement, the agency’s executive director James Weinstein calls the moves “extremely painful,” but pledged to make NJ Transit “the leanest, most efficient agency possible.”
Specifically, the agency is cutting 401(k) contributions by 33 percent, while cutting executive salaries by 5 percent. The 200-plus workers laid off represent about 2 percent of NJ Transit’s total workforce, and include both union and non-union employees.
“Fare and service changes will have to be a part of NJ Transit’s overall response to this financial crisis,” Weinstein adds. “I know this will be painful for our customers. I welcome their suggestions and ideas as well as those of the public.”
The cuts come in the midst of a last-minute cut to the agency’s current budget from Gov. Christie, who announced that he would withhold $32.7 million from the total state funding of $296 million for the current fiscal year. That $296 million in state funding was already $62 million less than NJ Transit had received the previous year. What’s more, as Christie warned in a budget address earlier this month, further cuts to the agency in coming years are likely.
While transportation advocate Zoe Baldwin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign applauds NJ Transit’s decision to “look internally first before passing the burden to riders,” she isn’t optimistic about next week’s scheduled announcement on potential fare hikes and service cuts. “We’re really going to have to wait to see what comes out next week,” she says.
Baldwin adds that the problem here isn’t just NJ Transit; it’s the way the state pays for transportation projects from road and bridge repair to mass transit.
“This is just a band-aid for a larger problem, which is a broken statewide transportation funding system,” she says, adding that New Jersey needs to take a more holistic approach. “[We need] a motto of ‘everyone benefits, everyone pays.’”
If NJ Transit fares rise by 30 percent, widely considered to be the worst-case scenario, Baldwin says that would mean bring the total fare increase since 2000 to 75 percent. Meanwhile, the state’s gas tax has remained stagnant.
“We’re leveraging our transportation system on the backs of transit riders, while not asking drivers to pay the full cost of driving on the roads,” Baldwin says of this discrepancy.
Gov. Christie has said he refuses to raise the gas tax, as part of his hard-line stand against raising any taxes. But as folks like Baldwin and others are starting to point out, some of Gov. Christie’s cuts simply amount to a tax by another name.
“This fare hike is going to feel the same as a tax hike to transit riders,” Baldwin says.
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Jon Whiten is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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