quote:

Corzine Shut Downs New Jersey's Government By RICHARD G. JONES TRENTON, July 1 -- Unable to break a bitter impasse with the New Jersey Legislature on a new budget, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed an executive order today that shut down the state’s government for the first time in its history. The order began a process that over the next few days will see the state close its parks, beaches and, depending on the outcome of a court decision, possibly the 12 Atlantic City casinos. The effects of the order were felt almost immediately. Department of Motor Vehicle operations were suspended when offices around the state closed at noon Saturday. Horse racing was called off. Road construction projects were halted. And the New Jersey Lottery, which with $2 billion in annual sales is the fourth-largest source of revenue for the state after income, sales and corporate taxes, was ordered to stop selling tickets tonight. “It gives me no joy, no satisfaction, no sense of empowerment to do what I am forced to do,” Mr. Corzine said. “We will do everything we can to bring this to a short conclusion.” Essential operations, like the prisons, the state police, child protection services and mental hospitals, will continue to run during the shutdown. But roughly 36,000 of the state’s 80,000 employees were immediately furloughed under the order. The status of the state’s casinos remained unclear. Lawyers representing the casinos had gone to a state appellate court on Friday seeking a ruling that would allow them to remain open. But the court said that it had no jurisdiction to consider the request until after Mr. Corzine issued the shutdown order. The court was expected to take up the matter after Mr. Corzine signed the order and Stuart Rabner, the governor’s chief counsel, said that if a judge upheld Mr. Corzine’s request, casinos could close as soon as the morning after a ruling was issued. Mr. Corzine, a Democrat, said that he felt compelled to sign the order after he and the Democrat-controlled Legislature could not reach agreement on Mr. Corzine’s proposal to help balance the budget by raising the sales tax to 7 percent from 6 percent. The governor has argued that the sales-tax increase is needed to close a deficit of roughly $4.5 billion in the state’s $31 billion budget. But a group of legislators, led by Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., opposed the new tax, arguing that the deficit could be filled with spending cuts and the expansion of existing taxes. And even in New Jersey, where politics can often be a contact sport, the vitriol that has surrounded the budget debate has been noteworthy. Earlier this week, a legislator had to break up a shoving match during a committee meeting and Mr. Corzine, in a bit of gamesmanship, ordered a cot for his office in a maneuver that aides said demonstrated his resolve to stay at the State House until he had a budget deal. Negotiations continued in an effort to meet a midnight deadline on Friday, but Mr. Corzine said today that talks had broken down between him and Mr. Roberts, with the sides having agreed on all but about $1 billion in spending cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Corzine has said that he believes the increase in the sales tax will generate about $1.1 billion. Going into this week’s discussions, New Jersey had missed the June 30 budget deadline three times in the past five years. But no governor has ever ordered a shutdown, according to the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, the official research arm of the state Legislature. “New Jersey has experienced budget delays before,” said David P. Rebovich, managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics. “But never a shutdown that will move forward and there may be political consequences.” Already Republican lawmakers have begun to seize on the issue. “The Democrats that run the Legislature had 101 days to enact the governor’s proposed budget, modify the budget that was provided to them, or propose one of their own,” said State Senator Robert E. Littell, a Republican from Sussex County, who was referring to the number of days since Mr. Corzine’s budget address on March 21. “Yet they have done neither. Instead, the have subjected the people of New Jersey to a State House version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.” On Friday night, about two hours before the deadline, Mr. Roberts appealed to Mr. Corzine to abandon his plan to order the shutdown. He compared the prospect of a shutdown to legislators having “a gun placed to our head.” “We urge this governor to retreat from the precipice and not push the state over the edge into the uncharted waters of a government shutdown,” Mr. Roberts said. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/n...nd-corzine.html

wow wtf? If anyone has a way to blame this on Bush please let me know.