O neof the problems facing a Statehouse reporter these days is that

when you try to explain what Coy. Jim Ho-rio has done, will do or wants to do, youare accused of being an apologist for someone most New Jerseyans think is a livingnatural disaster.But what Florio has done—and is

doing—is a lot more important thanwhether the voters like him or whetherthey will reelect him in 1993.This governor has revolutionized the

state’s tax system and done it in such a waythat has probably inoculated that structureagainst the whims of political change forthe foreseeable future. Florio has institutionalized state government as the criticaltax collector for schools and municipalities. He has made state government a partner in raising taxes for the counties.And in doing so, he has moved state

government into an arena where it is goingto have more and more to say about howlocal school boards and elected officials dotheir business. The more freight the statepays, the more it is going to demand anaccounting of how its money is spent.Florio is advancing a process that began

in July 1966 when the state’s first salestax—3 percent—was enacted. Ten yearslater, the first state income tax took effect.The die was cast.As the state gradually increased its tax-

collecting operations, it began using morestate taxes to subsidize programs forschools, towns and counties. Somewherealong the way, governors and legislatorsrealized that the more money they gave tolocal governments, the more money theyspent.The first income-tax law was supposed

to finance urban education. It did some ofthat, but it was also used as a pot of gold tobe dipped mb by the New Jersey Education Association and redistributed in theform of richer contracts for teachers. WhatFlorio is doing is dramatically increasingstate underwriting of local government andschool costs and, at the same time, trying toforce school districts and local governmentsto use much of that new money to lowerproperty taxes.Florio is, in effect, becoming the inspector general of the state of New Jersey. Thatfact has been obscured in all the tumultover his taxes and his political troubles.You don t have to be too swift to knowthat the Republican Party will pull out allthe stops this fall in a campaign urging

voters to defeat Democrats, elect a Republican-controlled Legislature and deliver a

message to the Florio administration. If thathappens, the message will be as clear as itwas last November when the voters scared12 years of chronic caution out of U.S. Sen.Bill Bradley and made an overnight star ofChristie Todd Whitman, the Republicanfrom nowhere who taunted Bradley for refusing to discuss Florio’s $2.8 billion taxpackage. The odds right now are that thevoters will turn out the Democrats.But anyone who really believes that a Re

publican victory in the fall will automatically erase the Florio taxes is living in a fantasy world.No major broad-based tax has ever been

repealed in New Jersey, and it would takean extraordinary economic recovery andtax-revenue boom to do anything but tinkeron the edges of the current and much despised tax program.What is more likely over the next 12

months is continued stagnation of the economy with, at best, a slight improvement instate revenues. The Florio administrationand the Legislature could thus be struggling with another $1 billion budget gaplike that which Treasurer Douglas Bermanplugged in June with a magic-hat act thatwould have been the envy of Merlin.When Florio and Berman moved into the

Statehouse, they promised that the one thingthey would not do would be to balance thestate budget with “smoke and mirrors,” asformer Gov. Thomas H. Kean did in his lastyear and a half in office. But when state taxrevenues continued to lag behind projections, Berman topped Kean. He invented adeal in which theTurnpikeAuthority agreedto spend $400 million to buy a four-milestretch of interstate highway near the GeorgeWashington Bridge. He speeded up collection of utility taxes to pump another $600million into the state budget. Then he agreedto anticipate $220 million in new Medicaidfunds that the Bush administration is attempting to deny the state.Chazam! There it was: the New Jersey

budget miracle of 1991.Republicans jumped all over Berman,

calling him irresponsible and charging thatthe one-shot budget gimmicks would comeback to haunt the state next spring. Theypredicted that even if Florio’s program produced real property-tax relief for mostmiddle- and lower-income residents thisyear, property taxes would almost certainlybegin to climb again in a few years.That prediction all but amounts to a con

fession from the Republicans that property

continued on page 41

BOOK REVIEW

they have a responsibility to improvethe well-being of their compatriots,regardless of any personal gain,” butwith this benevolent decision, he predicts “a new patriotism will be born,founded less upon economic self-interest than upon loyalty to the nation.”•Biosphere Politics: A New Con

sciousness for a New Century byJeremy Rifkin (New York: CrownPublishers, 1991, 326 pp.), is anotherglimpse into the 21st century. In this,his 11th book, Rifldn continues to bitelarge chunksfrom the posteriors of the proselytizers of scientific progress.Biosphere Politics examinesour culture, onethe author sees asobsessed withconcepts of security: “Securingsustenance, securing the state,and securingpeace of mindare alwaysbound up, in one way or another, withsecuring the environment,” he writes.In detail after often disturbing de

tail, he gives us the bad news andforces our attention to environmentalproblems that, quite literally, threatenthe very future of civilization. Globalwarming, ozone depletion, acid rain,deforestation, desertification and species extinction, he writes, are, for thefirst time in history, turning our attention to the issue of global environmental security. These environmentalthreats are not simply the result of scientific miscalculations or ill-conceivedmanagement decisions, Rifkin opines.Rather, it is the very notion of securitythat has led us to the verge of ecocide.Biosphere Politics challenges its

readers to join the “greens” in theirnew battle to dismantle the military-industrial complex and high techriology, and to ground science, economics and politics in the living earth.This is classic Rifkin: provocative,compelling and difficult to lay aside.•In Bully for Brontosaurus: Re

flections in Natural History byStephen Jay Gould (New York and

London: W.W. Norton& Company, 1991, 511pp.), the author, a Harvard University professor, preeminentcontemporary biologist and scientific “pop” writer extraordinaire, offers readers a more pragmatic(read: disdainful) opinion of the power allegedly being wielded bythe surging “green”movement.Firmly set in his sci

entific theories on theenvironmental movement, Gould be

lieves that, despite their collective “Save-the-Earth” mentality, the “greens” are simplywasting precious energy.Earth and its inhabitants havesurvived natural and manmade cataclysms of past eons.Thus, the strong, he assures,will continue to survive. Whatelse would you expect from amodified Marxist-Darwinian?Fortunately, Gould’s writ

ing (unlike Rifkin’s) exhibits asubtle, yet tweaking sense ofhumor that significantly lightens the substance of his works.Often, after reading Rifkin,

you feel like we’re all going to hell in ahandbasket. After reading Gould, youmay feel the same way, but you suspect the ride may be quite an adventure. Separated into ten chapters, thesewritings focus on Gould’s own enduring theme of evolution, on the innumerable, enlightening oddities ofnature (e.g., an ant with a single chromosome) and on the wondrousworksof what he refers to as “that tiny andaccidental evolutionary twig calledHomo sapiens.”•In The Worst

Years of OurLives: IrreverentNotes from aDecade of Greed(New York:HarperPerennial,1991, 272 pp.) byBarbara Ehrenreich, no subjectis taboo. Despite,or because of, the80s, the noted political satirist has becomemore prolific than ever. Thebookis a compilation of essays on the eventsof that decade that made us—depend-

ing on our individualpolitical stripes—laugh,cry, desperately want inthe system or desperately want out of it. InEhrenreich’s highlyopinionated works,there are no sacred

UINNIININI

tnose or otner supreme court justices—would affect the way he decided cases.There would just have to be times when hecame out with a different result because ofhis different perspective growing up as apoor black in an environment of racial discrimination.I think this brief encounter fairly well

sums up the policy debate about Thomas’nomination to the nation’s highest court.Were Thomas white, and the product of

a privileged upbringing, no one woulddoubt that his expressed conservative viewswould translate into a hard-line constitutional posture on such issues as abortion,the rights of criminals, affirmative actionand civil liberties. But Thomas, of course, isnot white. Thus, there is an almost a priorifeeling that he cannot be quite as conservative judicially as he has appeared. For instance, someone whose attendance at YaleLaw School was apparently assisted by affirmative action must in some fashion feeldifferently about affirmative action than thescion of a wealthy white family who hasnever benefited from it at all.How will Thomas handle this gap be

tween rhetoric and experience when and ifhe gets to the Supreme Court? The fact isthat we do not know now and will probably not be able to find out during the Senateconfirmation hearings, even if they areexhaustive. The development of a justice’sjudicial philosophy is a chancy matter.

nigh court’s more conservative members,received his nomination during the relatively liberal administration of John F. Kennedy.We can thus only speculate about Tho

mas. Perhaps he will end up somewhat likeSandra Day O’Connor. She has proven tobe sympathetic to the State with respect tocriminal rights, as perhaps befits a personwho was a power in the Arizona Legislature before starting her judicial career there.However, Justice O’Connor’s stance onabortion, a women’s rights issue, is so unclear now that no one really can predicthow she will vote if the Supreme Court eversquarely faces a decision on overriding Roev. Wade.Maybe Thomas, too, with his pronounced

views on strong family values and order,would be a criminal law conservative whileat the same time adopting a far more ambiguous, case-by-case approach to race-related issues. But who can really tell?To put this possibility into perspective,

we can recall the comments of WilliamDouglas, somewhat of a pragmatist whenhe first got on the Supreme Court, but wholater became probably the most liberal jurist in its history. Douglas stated that it took10 years for someone really to get his or herown perspective on the court’s business. Atthat point, the expectations of the presidentand others who supported the justice’snomination dropped away, and the per-

son’s own judicial philosophy becameparamount.In the case of a relatively young

man like Thomas, such a factor couldbe even more pronounced, since a 43-year-old, unlike a 55- or 60-year-old,is not likely to have a fully developedlegal philosophy.One thing is certain. The stakes are

extraordinarilyhigh. There is no guarantee that race relations in this country will continue to improve, as theybasically have since the Brown v. Boardof Education decision in 1954. We alsohad a relatively open period of racerelations a hundred years ago, fromthe 1870s through the mid-1890s. Thatperiod was not only doomed by theSupreme Court’s acquiescence in JimCrow laws. Its epitaph was also sealed,in part, by the willingness of someprominent blacks, including BookerT. Washington, to accept racial segregation as a way of life. An enhancedconservative majority in the SupremeCourt, with a black justice leading acharge against preferences forminorities, could repeat the disastrous mistakes of the 1890s.In sum, we are dealing with a per

son who may be the most importantblack figure in our country for a generation. The question thus is not President Bush’s cynicism or lack thereofvis-a-vis quotas in appointing a blackto fill a black seat. Rather the issue isThomas’ stance on race relations andwhether he will help or hurt themover the next generation. The NAACP,which has reserved decision on hisnomination, was undoubtedly wiseto do so since the evidence at thispoint is insufficient to make a judgment.For the rest of us, we can only hope

that the nomination proceedings gosufficiently to the heart of the matterof race so that some reasonable judgments can be made about Thomas’philosophy in this regard. As was thecase with Justice Douglas, we cannotknow how Thomas will develop in 10years, but the Senate has to do the bestwith the resources at its disposal nowto ensure that the nomination doesnot usher in a period of neo-segregation to follow the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. We cannot allow the 1990s to recapitulate the1890s.

Peter Buchsbaum is a partner in the lawfirm ofHannoch Weisman.

COMMENTARY from page 37

tem due to the decrease in insurancecosts from killing the hospital tax. Andlabor strongly supported the program.The small business community, however, protested in the strongest possible terms.They said the payroll tax and pen

alty system would bankrupt them.Given no savings as a result of lower-

FRONT &CENTER

continuedfrom page 2

postponed until after the election.Through its advocacy of the

Quality Education Act last year, theFlorio administration demonstrated acommitment to the plight of childrenin tax-poor communities who are denied the thorough and efficient education guaranteed by the stateConstitution. But this year, the administration backpedaled, acceptingrevisions under pressure from legislators intent on siphoning awayneeded education dollars for moreproperty-tax relief for their suburbanconstituents—that is, voters. The result is an even wider gulf in educationopportunity separating the rich,fromthe poor than existed before the education-reform measure was adopted.A decision on the remedy for this inequity has been postponed, and Flôrio finds himself in court on the issue,ironically, just as Kean did.• The consequence ofNew Jersey’s

“get tough” drug laws is a vastly overburdened judicial system that hasfilled the state’s prisons to 137% ofcapacity. To meet the demand forprison space created by a flood of drugoffenders, the state is building nearly700 new jail cells. But there is no moneybudgeted to pay officers who will haveto guard the prisoners in those cells.That funding decision has been postponed.Deferred decision-making is the

price of property-tax relief. Despitewhat you may hear in the campaignthis fall, making the choice to giveaway $2 billion in property-tax reliefwas easy. The really tough choiceshave been put off for another day.

Neil Upmeyer is the editor ofNewJersey Reporter.

ing their health insurance premiums,since many do not offer health insurance, they saw nothing in it for them.They also pointed out that a largeemployee-turnover rate among smallbusinesses, and the large number ofpart time employees, would make it acostly administrative nightmare.So our dilemma remains.But I am greatly encouraged by at

least some signs of national leadership on this issue. A plan presented inJune by the U.S. Senate Democraticleadership recognizes that uninsuredcitizens, many of themworking peoplewith children, have a basic right to affordable, accessible health care.Still, the silence of the Bush ad

ministration is deafening. Our economy, our international competitiveness, and the survival of our businesssector are dependent on this nationaddressing health care. Most important, no child in America should contract measles because he or she doesnot have access to immunization. Nowoman in a country as wealthy asours should be denied prenatal care.And no person should have to facebankruptcy because he or his familyhas the misfortune to get sick.

I am committed to devoting mypersonal efforts over this next year tolistening to New Jersey’s business andlabor communities—and to New Jerseyans—about health care reform.

continuedSTATEHOUSE from page 38

taxes are being cut or eased by theFlorio taxes. It also means that they’dbetter hope they don’t win veto-proofmajorities in the Legislature.The voters may be less than grate

ful for property-tax cuts and property-tax rebates financed by Florio’staxes, but just