State Department cuts more shift than slash
BY CHRIS GAETANO Staff Writer
Gov. Jon Corzine's proposal to cut three departments in the state government, if it is approved by the Legislature, will be less of an elimination and more of a merger, according to some state officials.

During the governor's budget address on Feb. 26, Corzine announced that, as a cost-cutting measure, he would seek to eliminate the state departments of Agriculture and Personnel as well as the N.J. Commerce Commission. It is one aspect of an overall spending plan that he called "cold turkey" budgeting, saying that the state has been living beyond its means and must learn to cut back.

The plan, which proposes some $500 million in cuts, brings the current proposed budget lower than last year's, something that has happened only four times in state history since 1951. Included are cuts to things such as municipal aid, school and hospital funding, and a pledge to cut 3,000 state jobs by attrition.

At the moment, it is unknown how many of those proposed 3,000 job cuts would come from the departments ofAgriculture, Commerce and Personnel, as the specifics of how exactly these cuts would work must still be worked out by the Legislature. What is known is that many of the functions that the departments currently handle would be absorbed into other state agencies. Department of Personnel (DoP) spokeswoman Mary Anne Jemison said that many functions of the Personnel Department would be mostly taken over by the Treasury. Gary Rose, chief of the Office of Economic Growth, said that the Treasury would also handle much of what the Commerce Commission currently does.

According to the Department of Agriculture (DoA) spokeswoman Lynn Richmond, it is currently unknown how, if the proposal passes, that department's functions will continue, though she stated that they will still be performed.

Still, despite the fact that this move is in its very early stages, with the budget not even needing to be approved until July, this move has drawn some fierce discussion, particularly with regard to the proposed elimination of the DoA.

The New Jersey Farm Bureau, an organization that represents agricultural producers in the state, has been particularly vocal in its opposition to cutting the department. Ed Wengryn, a spokesman for the organization, said that taking the functions of the DoA away from a body that is dedicated solely to agriculture is a mistake because the needs of the farmer won't be prioritized in the other departments.

"The emphasis and focus on agriculture as an industry gets lost. So what you have, [for example] if the animal health division ends up at health and senior services where human health is the primary mission, animal health could get lost in an agency like that," said Wengryn.

Besides being heavily involved in the promotion of the state's agricultural industry to other states and countries, the DoA also has significant regulatory functions, such as overseeing food safety standards, certifying produce as organic and handling health inspections for animals coming in and out of the state. Corzine has publicly stated that critical functions of the DoAwill continue.

Another area of concern for Wengryn is the Farmland Preservation Program,where parcels of land are preserved for agricultural use. It is his concern that moving responsibility for this program to a state agency, for instance, the DEP, might interfere with the mission of farmland preservation. He noted that sometimes farms are considered a disturbance to open space and are not always in line with the mission of the Green Acres Program, which preserves open spaces.

In a press release issued by the farmbureau, officials said that the savings from eliminating the DoA would be between $300,000 to $400,000, a sumthat is dwarfed when compared to the proposed roughly $33 billion budget.Wengryn said that this is the cost of the secretary of agriculture, Charles Kuperus, and his support staff.

Tom Vincz, a spokesman with the Department of Treasury, said that the three departments' closures is anticipated to save the state about $2.5 million.

Rose, with the office of economic growth, said that many of the cuts, at least with regard to the cutting of the Commerce Commission, aren't so much aimed at saving money directly but rather at increasing efficiency within the state government.

"[It's] a merger, functionally. The gover- nor proposed in his budget that the Commerce Commission, as it is, will be eliminated, but the services we have will not be," said Rose.

TheNewJersey Commerce Commission primarily assists businesses in New Jersey, as well as people looking to do business in New Jersey.

It functions, essentially, as a resource for the business community but also oversees economic development programswithin the state. Rose said that the commission had already been restructured about a year ago, when the tourism promotion component wasmoved to the State Department, allowing the commission to focus almost exclusively on private-sector assistance. He said, then, that a merger with the Commerce Commission would only be continuing the government'smission of eliminating redundancies.

"So if, as the governorwishes, Commerce and the [Economic Development Authority or EDA], in effect, wind up working in a tighter coordination, it will be nothing but a furtherance of what we've been doing," said Rose.

According to Mary Ellen Peppard, manager of government relations for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, many of the functions of the Commerce Commission can, in fact, be credibly taken over by other parts of the government, so she is not terribly worried about its potential cut.

"To say you're eliminating the commerce, the business support function for the government, isn't necessarily true since you already have that Office of Economic Growth, and EDAand [department of] Treasury does a lot. Let's say a businesswants tomove into the state, the Office of Economic Growth in the Treasury would assist with that, so it may seem they're eliminating a department, but a lot of the functions will move elsewhere. But there will still be job losses [in the government]," said Peppard.

She went on to say that as long as the businesses in the state receive the same level of service that they had fromthe Commerce Commission, the New Jersey Chamber is not concerned about the reorganization.

It is a matter of not looking "so much as specifically at who is doing what … as long as the services remain intact," said Peppard.

Aspokesman for the Department of Personnel, meanwhile, like others in the state government, said, it is too early to tell how the specifics of a potential removal of the department will play out, except that the duties the department carries out will not go away but rather will be taken over by other departments.

"The functions of the department don't go away, since things still have to get done whether [or not] it's under the Department of Personnel," said Jemison.

"Some of it will go into Treasury; that's what it looks like right now.

"Of course nothing is down until the budget is passed."