Today’s Platform speaker was Gordon MacInness, President of the New Jersey Policy Perspective, a Trenton based think tank and one of the best sources I know for a progressive analysis of New Jersey politics.
Gordon’s talk was about how we got into the fiscal mess we’re in and how our bond rating when from one of the best of the 50 states to one of the worst (we are currently the 49th worst, the only state with a worse rating is Illinois) after a quarter century of tax cuts, false promises, and high-risk financial shenanigans. You can read all the gruesome details here if you like.
Gordon also spoke at some depth about how unusual New Jersey’s governance model is. New Jersey’s 1947 re-write of its constitution gave the governor more power than in any other state and both the Senate President and Assembly Speaker likewise have unusually broad powers to stop legislation dead in its tracks if they like (Gordon served in both the Assembly and Senate, by the way).
