Our Point of View

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Well, when we’re wrong, we’re wrong.
In this space last week, we said politicians, overanxious at the sound of a $500 million income tax windfall landing in their trough, would do some foolish thing — like hand out property tax rebates — with the money before they had to think of the consequences of, say, ignoring a pension shortfall that’s grown faster than Barry Bonds on steroids.

As it turned out, the governor indeed planned to fork over the money in the form of property tax relief, but Chris Christie didn’t spend it fast enough, and now the state Supreme Court has decided the state must pay another $500 million to support the 31 so-called Abbott districts.

The amount of blustering that came about in the hours after the decision was announced — the governor himself referred to the court as “horribly fractured” — was laughable, as politicians jumped at the chance to shout that throwing money at the problem wouldn’t create a solution. How quickly they seem to have forgotten the hundreds of millions thrown at Xanadu, aka American Dream Meadowlands; the Revel Entertainment project, in Atlantic City; and Newark, in arranging for a new U.S. headquarters for Panasonic Corp.

We don’t agree with the court’s decision, which removes even the faint hope that the state might have made a dent in its mounting debt, and we’re sure the already-heated budget fight will now escalate into full-on war as the Legislature considers tax hikes that Christie has vowed to veto. But most of all, we feel for the business community that is watching another nine-digit dollar amount evaporate, and knowing that the result will be ever more taxes and ever fewer reasons to stay in the Garden State.

You also have to feel for Tracye McDaniel and her Choose New Jersey efforts. Even the ancient mariner didn’t bear an albatross as heavy as the one the court has hung from her neck.