Free Republic

As even the Cuban government lays off workers, we can't seem to face the looming problems posed by our own bloated public payrolls. SNIP I suspect one thing the left and the right might be able to agree on is that it does not do anyone in the private sector any good to have a public sector that is bloated to such absurd levels. Even communist Cuba has been forced to figure this out, as front-page articles in the Sept. 14 print edition of The New York Times ("Cuba's public-sector layoffs signal major shift") and the Sept. 15 print edition...

We're grateful to our police officers. We count on them. We're proud of them.  Our state is going broke paying for them.  Same goes for teachers. We wish we could afford them, but we're having trouble.  We're having trouble paying for New Jersey's nearly 500,000 public employees. Especially at their current salaries and fringe benefits. Especially with New Jersey's property taxes among the steepest in the nation and rising.  Especially now that state officials have closed a $4.5 billion budget gap by raising taxes and cutting services while sidestepping the subject of how we compensate unionized public workers.  This isn't...

New Jersey added 59,400 state and local-government jobs in the first half of this decade, even as private-sector employment was flat, a Star-Ledger analysis has found. The 11 percent increase in government jobs -- driven largely by ballooning education payrolls -- outpaced population growth and came at a time of rising anger over skyrocketing property taxes. "It's an incredible number that leaves private businessmen and taxpayers scratching their heads and saying, 'How is this possible?'" said Philip Kirschner, president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association. "The economy is the same for all of us, so where are the...

A Bergen County school chief was awarded more than a half-million dollars in extra pay for unused sick time and other benefits, including $300,000 that was paid to his estate after his sudden death in 2004. The superintendent in Long Branch saw his income top $300,000 last year due to more than $110,000 in one-time buybacks and other payments. And a former superintendent from Teaneck may have added as much as $20,000 to his annual pension when his salary was boosted with end-of-career stipends and pay for unused leave. That doesn't include the $60,000 consultant contract and retirement golf trip...