I know people are joking about this COBOL thing, but this is the reality: I worked for the State of South Dakota in 2005. The computer system we used then was close to two decades newer than the system many agencies of the NJ state government use. (1/ )

There are some obvious culprits, some not. First, it’s not a coincidence that the systems were last updated before NJ began its experiment with trickle down economics, starting with the massive income tax cuts under Whitman. (2/ )

That experiment with trickle down continued through the Great Recession, when Corzine was forced to bargain furloughs with state workers but the legislature wouldn’t consider a slight tax on income over $1 million (3/ )

The legislature refused to reinstate the slight tax on income over $400k when it expired under Corzine. And then it got worse as Christie won massive corporate tax cuts paid for by pension and benefits cuts for public employees. (4/ )

The result is tons of debt, a decimated state workforce, an aging and inefficient fleet of vehicles, shrinking aid to towns, and annual budget crunches that mean upgrading computer systems is an unaffordable luxury. (5/ )

But there are other, less obvious choices. Some groups pushed—and won—$ for new green spaces but didn’t include $ for stewardship of current spaces. So we have no $ for upkeep of places that are used but lots of $ to buy new spaces where things like affordable housing should go

For those of you who frequent the state house, this is why we excavated an historically significant, pre-Revolutionary sure to the east of the state house, then partially filled it in and now it’s a hole exposed to the elements (7/ )

And then there was the time Chris Christie found $110 million for a private company to upgrade some computer systems. Except they didn’t listen to the state employees telling them why it wouldn’t work the way they planned, and the only oversight was by another company. (8/ )

But it turns out Company A was doing the upgrades while Company B was doing the oversight in NJ, in other states Company B was upgrading while Company A provided oversight. Nice work if you can get it! (9/ )

The result is that taxpayers were on the hook for up to $110 million to two companies to upgrade a system the workers knew wouldn’t work. Surprise! It didn’t work. But BOTH companies still got paid! (10/ )

Christie’s parting shot was to finance, essentially on debt, a new Department of Labor while razing the current building (Labor wasn’t the only agency this happened to). The catch is that the new Department of Labor will be much, much smaller. (11/ )

(Some unions and civil rights advocates actually got into bed with Christie and the Wall Street bond holders on these projects, but that’s a story for another time) (12/ )

The result is that the only option in the event of an emergency is to work your current workforce in some cases literally to death, while going the super expensive and oversight-free rout of finding contractors, which basically means rich people profit off our emergency (13/ )

Happy Sunday, everyone! (14/14)