As of 2002, the state of New Jersey had a total of 21 counties and 324 municipal governments. Over the years, the New Jersey State government and the federal government have continued to fund most of the projects undertaken by the local governments especially in matters of educational funding. With the government remittances to local governments in New Jersey and in the whole of America in a consistent upward trajectory, questions have emerged whether the State governments and the Federal government can continue to fund the local governments over the long term with regard to education and other essential services (Vo). In this essay, I will seek to reveal to what extent the federal and state governments can possibly fund local governments into the near future and to what extent it may be unable to fund the local governments in future.
It is worth noting that the problems facing the local governments are very complicated and lengthy to solve. Local governments also lack the proper financial infrastructure required in order to collect maximum revenue from the public and to reduce tax evasion. With this regard, the state and federal governments are likely to continue funding the local governments in the critical areas where they lack finances such as education and health (USGS). However, some areas which are not considered to be critical for the economy may see a sharp decline in the allocation of funds both by the federal government and by the state government as they are expected to settle the expenses incurred by these projects internally and not from the federal or state government (USGS).
Urban mayors and councils are very dependent on outside aid especially from the federal government and from the state government. This is because most of the local governments lack the financial resources to solve their own problems. There has been a slow shift of costs from the state and federal governments to the local governments granting them full responsibility to solve the problems but with hardly enough resources (Vo). Programs such as education would stall if the responsibility of financing them was left for the local governments instead of the state or national government.
It is estimated that the government spends a sum in the range of 15,000 to 19,000 dollars to send each child in New Jersey to a public school in one academic year. This figure is extremely high and cannot be financed by the local governments alone. Governor Christie’s budget proposal for the fiscal year 2014 suggests the distribution of funds totaling nine billion dollars to be used as aid provided by the state to schools within the New Jersey jurisdiction (Christie, 49). This amount is an increase of about 97.3 million dollars from the funds distributed in the whole of the financial year 2013. With such huge sums of cash required to fund education ventures in the state of New Jersey, it is obvious that the local governments need assistance from both the federal government and the state government to a to their locally generated revenue and fund education (Christie, 49).
It is evident that it may take longer than anticipated for the local governments to achieve full financial independence from both the state governments and the federal government of the United States of America. This is mainly due to the undeveloped financial infrastructure necessary for the efficient collection of revenue. However, the local governments are expected to show improvement in raising revenue in future so that their reliance on the state government and the federal government can reduce gradually.
Works Cited
Chris Christie State of New Jersey FY 2014 Budget Delivering on the Promise of a Quality Education for Every Child 2013
Retrieved from: http://www.nj.gov/treasury/omb/publications/14bib/BIB.pdf
Lanm Thuy Vo How Much Does The Government Spend To Send A Kid To Public School? 2012
Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/155515613/how-much-does-the-government-spend-to-send-a-kid-to-school
US government spending (2013)
Retrieved from: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/New_Jersey_state_spending.html
