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Next time Chris Christie offers to clean up after a storm, might we suggest a basket, instead of a mop?

You see, the mop is great for pushing the storm waters away, getting residents back in their homes and helping small business owners reopen their doors. But as wacky and devastating weather continues to plague the state — Irene, Sandy, “snowtober” and the recent blizzard, all in just the last few years — it’s clear that bailing out New Jersey’s tourism hotspots on the Shore is going to be an increasingly large piece of how our dollars are spent.

That’s dangerous because New Jersey relies heavily on tourism to stay solvent. All those beach badges and dollar slots make up a $42 billion-a-year empire that’s directly responsible for more than 300,000 jobs, according to the most recent study from Oxford Economics. But that money is under heavy siege from competing states, who want to bolster their own economies, and from Mother Nature. We don’t want the presidential candidate to put the mop away — tourism isn’t a battle we can afford to walk away from — but it would be nice to see some eggs go in a different basket.

Of course, that basket won’t come cheap, but if New Jersey does more to invest in its businesses and infrastructure, it can insulate itself against the whims of the weather in ways that it can’t right now. And we’re not talking about expensive jobs like laying down stone and steel to build coastal defense systems. By investing in the development of really robust business incubators that encourage entrepreneurs, expanding grant programs to ambitious startups and small businesses, and rewarding and incentivizing those businesses as they progress from fledgling to powerhouse, the state can create a more stable source of income than tourism — and a more reasonable one than property taxes. And when business becomes a stronger piece of the revenue picture, and when money is invested in companies — instead of paying ransoms as they hold the Garden State hostage in a bid to get tax breaks here or elsewhere — that will make those expensive storm cleanups a bit easier to swallow.

Given New Jersey’s many gems — sports arenas, historic locations and parks, in addition to the beaches and casinos — it’s hard to imagine tourism disappearing as a revenue stream. But it’s not hard to imagine what would happen if that became just a bit smaller. So we need to get down to Wildwood and Cape May to clean up — but we need to be thinking long term, too, and there’s no smarter bet than our businesses.