The New Jersey government has been partially shutdown after a budget impasse between the Governor and the Legislature. The proposed budget from the Governor has proposed an increased sales tax to meet a deficit of $4.5 billion. Apparently the legislature and governor are still about $1 billion apart on the final budget - negotiations have been ongoing for over 100 days.

The interesting thing here is that the Governor is a Democrat, and both houses of the New Jersey Legislature are controlled by Democrats as well. Normally most budget impasses are caused when different parties control the Legislature and Executive, but that is not the case here.

What's certain is that there will be a lot of pissed off people very soon, particularly if the casinos in Atlantic City have to close because no state officials are available to monitor them. Ironically this will make the situation worse as the state will then lose all the taxes that they normally get from the casinos.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 1:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)