February 11, 2010
Governor Christie's decision to cut funds from the Public Advocate's office is a hopeful sign for a proposal to abolish the unnecessary office, Assembly members Gary Chiusano and Alison Littell McHose said today.
The Assembly Members, both R-Sussex, Morris and Hunterdon, sponsor A-167, which would abolish the Public Advocate's office and its $16 million budget by reassigning all its responsibilities to the agencies that handled them before the office was reinstated in 2005. It had been abolished in 1994.
"The public has 120 advocates in the Legislature and if each one identified a proposal such as this - to cut $16 million from the state's budget without affecting services to residents - then we could wipe out the $2 billion deficit that greeted Governor Christie when he entered office," Chiusano said. "That's probably an overly simplistic notion, but it does stress the point that we are under severe economic distress and must be diligent about not wasting a single tax dollar, let alone 16 million of them."
Chiusano and McHose said they hoped Christie's $819,000 cut leads to permanent elimination of the office.
"The Public Advocate's office drains precious tax dollars at a time when our state faces serious financial peril," McHose said. "There was no reason to bring it back and there is no reason why we should keep it when its duties can be performed by existing resources elsewhere in state government."
