Web Search powered by YAHOO! SEARCH
share
email
font size
options
 
Friday, November 13, 2009
Cost to preserve open space is worth it
Conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan campaigned against the open-space bond issue. (BEN FOGLETTO / The Press of Atlantic City)

 

Some causes are worthy enough to overcome any amount of misguided opposition. Consider the effort to preserve what’s left of New Jersey’s open space.
 
Last week, voters passed a referendum to continue funding state purchases of open space and farmland. In doing so, they not only rejected an eleventh-hour campaign against it by Steve Lonegan, the conservative Republican activist who has made a hobby of defeating ballot questions (or at least taking credit for doing so). They also overruled the environmental lobbyists who had launched what amounted to an ill-timed attack on, um, environmentalism.
 
The $400 million referendum, which passed with about 52 percent of the vote, will replenish the nearly empty Garden State Preservation Trust, which pays to preserve open space, recreational areas, farmland, and historic sites in the nation’s most crowded state.
 
Its passage was remarkable in a year of economic distress and palpable voter anger, which led to the rare ouster of an incumbent governor. It was also reminiscent of the 2007 voting, in which a similarly peeved electorate passed another open-space referendum even as it refused to borrow funds for stem-cell research, normally a popular cause.
 
It seems New Jerseyans have learned from experience that unspoiled land is a precious and dwindling commodity that they are willing to pay for. This was the 13th consecutive success for statewide open-space questions in the past half-century.
 
Representatives of two state environmental groups, the New Jersey Environmental Federation and the state Sierra Club, had done their best to end the streak by opposing the ballot measure earlier this year. They argued that the Legislature should instead pass a new tax on water or something else and dedicate the revenue to open-space purchases.
 
Most of the state’s environmentalists supported the measure from the get-go, and the dissenters ultimately backed off after lawmakers decided to put the question to voters.
 
New Jersey’s mounting debt has caused deserved concern — much of it, incidentally, from the governor who was just thrown out. But some critics have become so hysterical in recent months as to suggest that all state borrowing should be rejected out of hand. Soon they’ll be demanding a return to the gold standard.
 
Unlike covering day-to-day expenses by mortgaging a tobacco settlement — as former Gov. Jim McGreevey did — buying open space is one of the most defensible uses of government bonds imaginable. The state is gaining a capital asset that would otherwise disappear, and it is seeking voter approval to do so. Critics of the measure have yet to explain why that’s any less desirable now than it was two, 10, or 50 years ago.
 
Yes, New Jersey has a debt problem created by decades of irresponsible and unnecessary borrowing. And it absolutely should avoid any further such borrowing while looking for ways to retire the accumulated burden. But forgoing even reasonable borrowing would only create other problems, some of which — such as the disappearance of the state’s last green spaces — would be permanent.
Posted by Inquirer Editorial Board @ 1:00 AM  Permalink | Post a comment
Comments   
0 comments
About The Inquirer Editorial Board
Harold Jackson, a winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, grew up in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights movement. He graduated from Baker University in Baldwin, Kan., in 1975, with a degree in journalism/political science. He has also worked at the Birmingham Post-Herald, United Press International, the Birmingham News, and the Baltimore Sun. He was at The Inquirer in the mid-1980s, returned in 1999, and became editorial page editor in 2007.

Paul Davies is the deputy editor of the Editorial Page. His newspaper career has spanned more than 20 years and includes stints at The Wall Street Journal and the Philadelphia Daily News. He graduated from the University of Delaware and received a masters in journalism from Columbia University, where he was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. He was born in Philadelphia and still lives in the city.

Tony Auth began drawing while bedridden for a year and a half at the age of five. He graduated from UCLA in 1965 and worked for six years as a medical illustrator while doing three cartoons a week for various college newspapers. Tony has been happily ensconced as The Inquirer’s editorial cartoonist since 1971. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976, and has won numerous other awards, including five Overseas Press Club Awards, the Sigma Delta Chi award for distinguished service in Journalism, and the Herblock and Thomas Nast Prizes. Tony is married to Eliza Drake Auth, a painter of realistic landscapes and portraits.

Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer’s editorial board. Her column appears twice weekly in The Inquirer and runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq.

Kevin Ferris is an assistant editor on the Editorial Board who oversees the Sunday Currents section and writes a weekly column on a wide range of issues. In his 15 years on the board, he’s handled letters to the editor and the Community Voices pages and has been Commentary Page editor. He started with The Inquirer in 1986, and his assignments have ranged from the copy and news desks to the Chester County bureau and the national/foreign desk.

As an editorial writer for The Inquirer for the past two decades, Russell Cooke has written on a wide range of topics covering government, legal, civic and social issues. Before joining the Editorial Board, he was a reporter in the Inquirer’s City Hall bureau.

Editorial writer Dave Boyer joined The Inquirer in 2002. He writes about politics, government, the economy, sports and many other subjects, but draws the line at writing about "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." He has won journalism awards and insists bribery was not involved. A native of Allentown, Boyer graduated from Penn State. He and his wife reside in Center City, where they enjoy strolling and paying the wage tax.

Melanie Burney joined the editorial board in January 2008 after covering education at the Inquirer for eight years. She previously worked at the Associated Press in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey. She is a graduate of Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Josh Gohlke has been The Inquirer’s op-ed editor since last year, editing the daily commentary page and writing occasional editorials. He came to the Inquirer after eight years at The Record of Bergen County, N.J., first as a reporter covering local and state politics and government and ultimately as the deputy editorial page editor. He also worked as a reporter for several smaller papers in New Jersey and California. Josh was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from Stanford University. He lives in Philadelphia.

Advertise Here