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May 10, 2010

Doblin: $10.4 million is a small price for literacy

Monday, May 10, 2010
By ALFRED P. DOBLIN
RECORD EDITORIAL COLUMNIST

THE NEW JERSEY Sports and Exposition Authority’s budget is in the hole for approximately $30 million. The authority has reportedly reduced its payroll by $1.3 million to $11.3 million. A fifth of its employees make more than $100,000.

While state agencies, municipalities, school districts and public employees are being asked to cut back big time, the Sports Authority is hoping Trenton will come to its rescue. We all knew there was a rail spur into the Meadowlands. Now, we know in addition to NJ Transit, the gravy trains may run on the same rails.

Even before he took office, Governor Christie wisely put together a commission to study what has been happening at the Meadowlands. There’s a lot to review. There’s the bad stadium deal that turned a revenue stream for the Sports Authority into a meager trickle. The new football stadium is owned by the Giants and Jets, not the Sports Authority.

The Nets are leaving. The Devils have long gone. The Red Bulls are gone. The race track is losing its audience base. There is no sports tenant remaining at the Izod Center, and Xanadu, the entertainment/retail mega-monster, is unfinished. I use this analogy with apologies to the state of Michigan, but if one more revenue source leaves the Meadowlands, the complex should be renamed Flint.

I hope the governor continues his policy of cutting state funding to wasteful agencies and does not fork over $30 million to the Sports Authority. His advisers have a tough job in sorting out what role, if any, the Sports Authority should play in the future of the Meadowlands or racing in New Jersey. If we have reached the point where lunch ladies have to fight for their very existence, we have reached the point where the Sports Authority has to justify itself.

This leads me to the rather paltry sum of $10.4 million. That is the amount of money that the Christie administration has proposed to cut from library funding. It may seem small in the bigger scheme of the state budget, but it represents 74 percent of state funding toward libraries.

Consider how small an amount 100 percent of state library funding is compared to the Sports Authority. The authority is looking for the state to provide more money to bail itself out of its hole than all the state’s libraries received before the budget axe fell — almost triple.

It is a clear example of the skewed past priorities of Trenton. Christie has been consistent in his budget-cutting message. But there are some things that really cannot be cut during a fiscal crisis. Libraries are only expendable to people who are rich enough to not need them or too ignorant to know that they need them.

Years ago, I dragged then-Passaic Mayor Sammy Rivera into a branch library in Passaic that he wanted to shut down. The library was supposedly in need of massive repairs. What it was in need of was city leadership passionate about public libraries.

Ironically, the service most affected by the proposed 74 percent cut is interlibrary exchanges. At exactly the same time the state is encouraging consolidation of services, a shared service between libraries is imperiled.

Libraries are like bread — they are a staple of the human diet. They aren’t sexy like sports teams. But they don’t leave communities like sports teams. As a state, New Jersey has bent over backwards to accommodate sports franchises. Most of these teams don’t even acknowledge the state they play in on their uniforms and merchandise. But when it comes to a commitment to public literacy — the currency of success — there is little fanfare. There is little notice.

There is nothing more fundamental to public education than libraries. I don’t know if the Sports Authority can find another $30 million in cuts. I don’t why New Jersey still has a Sports Authority.

I do know libraries statewide will be devastated by a 74 percent cut in funding. And I do know why we need libraries. If only Trenton did as well.

Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter.

Posted by tumulty at May 10, 2010 10:47 AM

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