Group: Poverty worsening, Corzine can help

from the Cherry Hill Courier Post

By TOM BALDWIN
Gannett State Bureau

Poverty is worsening in New Jersey, an anti-poverty group said today, though it says Gov. Jon S. Corzine could help ease the pain without affecting his expected bare-bones budget due out next week.

"Not only are poverty rates failing to move down, the people counted in those percentages are facing a harder time," said Shivi Prasad, policy analyst for the Legal Services of New Jersey Poverty Research Institute, based in Edison.

Serena Rice, the institute's managing director, joined Prasad and others in a news conference to highlight the Poverty Benchmarks 2008 report, which paints a broad-stroke picture of the poor in New Jersey, among the wealthiest of states, where nevertheless people cannot find housing, health care and good-paying jobs.

The report said the poverty rate has not dipped in three years and that from 2004 to 2006, 9 percent of New Jersey's 8.7 million people lived below the federal poverty bar - a family of three scraping by on $16,000 a year or less.

"When compared with the data on need identified in this report, New Jersey's responses are clearly inadequate," Rice said.

The group noted that Corzine has said he will propose deep cuts in the budget he intends to propose to lawmakers next Tuesday, which he said will keep spending at its current level despite rising costs for things such as salaries, benefits and ordinary inflation. But the advocates said they hoped the poor would be the exception.

"Even no increase is a cut," Rice said.

Corzine spokesman Jim Gardner said, "Governor Corzine has made clear that the budget for the upcoming fiscal year will involve deep and painful cuts. The governor's guiding principles are maintaining public safety and caring for the most vulnerable in society. But it will be necessary to cut at nearly $2.5 billion just to keep ... at last year's level of $33.5 billion, and additional reductions may also be necessary.

"These cuts are an essential first step to restoring New Jersey's financial health, and must be followed up with future restrictions in spending and borrowing," Gardner said.

There are ways, Rice said, to help their cause without affecting the budget.

She said New Jersey could increase its minimum wage from $7.15 to $8.25 an hour, allow for employee-funded paid family leave and step up outreach efforts to enroll people in established programs such as food stamps and school breakfast programs.