It is like a gasoline truck running out of fuel. Despite billions in revenue from highway

tolls, license fees and the state gasoline tax, New Jersey’s beleaguered Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) will soon run out of money, a scenario that has played out several times since the fund’s establishment in 1985 as legislators repeatedly raided the trust to balance the state budget.

That has forced a succession of governors to borrow money to prevent the fund from going broke and to continue funding bridge, road and rail projects across the state. Meanwhile, mounting interest payments continue to eat away at the principal intended for transportation infrastructure improvements.

Early next year, New Jersey will turn over $865 million to pay off the debt service incurred by borrowing against the TTF, which will nearly bankrupt the fund and drastically reduce the number of projects that can be funded in 2011.

The result could be economically disastrous for New Jersey, according to officials.

The TTF is vital to the state and regional economy, with Union County’s Port Elizabeth playing a major role, according to Gene Feyl, first vice chairman of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) and chairman of the authority’s Project Prioritization Committee.

“Funding infrastructure and area roadways is critical to that port,” Feyl explained. “We have a lot of other ports looking for business on the East Coast and the lowest-cost provider will get the bulk of the business."

“We believe New Jersey has a strong transportation infrastructure to start with. Some of it is growing tired but if you look at the port and inland, the investment in the port and rail, we are well placed to handle additional freight, particularly if we get funding and some dredging of the port."

“We have to make sure our port is competitive with Charleston, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Baltimore and others.”

Gov. Chris Christie has promised to craft a rescue plan to restore stability to the TTF. The governor and James Simpson, commissioner of the state Department of Transportation (DOT), have been working on the plan, with an announcement expected sometime next month. Details have yet to emerge.

Christie did address the TTF shortfall in September. “I instructed my administration months ago to present to me a variety of options for the reauthorization of the transportation trust fund,” Christie said, before adding, “When they present those options to me, I will make a decision on what I think is best for the future of the Transportation Trust Fund.”

Feyl, who also is Morris County freeholder director, is confident the governor will come up with a no-nonsense plan that will work. “The trust fund has faced crises before,” he said. “The governor and Commissioner Simpson have indicated they will have a plan for the fund by years’ end and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from this governor, we can take him at his word.”

One option would be to increase the state’s gasoline tax, one of the lowest in the nation: 10.5 cents per gallon on regular gasoline and 13.5 cents for diesel fuel. The tax has not been increased since 1988.

Christie has resisted that option.

Union County Freeholder Angel Estrada disagrees with the governor, insisting an increase in the gasoline tax makes the most sense.

“What other funding mechanism can you use to fund the TTF?” Estrada asked. “Increasing the gas tax is the best answer. That was the original intent when it was first created. New Jersey is an old state in terms of our infrastructure. Traffic here is heavier than (in) most of the nation and we need the funding to take care of our roads, our bridges.”

One solution offered by Feyl and Gail Toth, executive director of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association (NJMTA), is to shift the money that had been designated for the $9 billion Hudson River train tunnel project, which was derailed by Christie last month after consulting with advisors who were concerned by potential $5 billion in cost overruns.

New Jersey had committed $2.7 billion to the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) project, which would have created a second train tunnel nine miles long beneath the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York.

Nearly half of New Jersey’s commitment to the ARC project came from toll revenues from the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. Toth noted that members of the NJMTA driving north and south on the Turnpike generate about 30 percent of those revenues annually and said they are willing to pay a higher fuel tax to help bolster the TTF.

The truckers’ organization has 775 members, including the 10 largest trucking companies in the United States. Toth said members are hopeful the TTF will reap a windfall from the illfated ARC tunnel project.

“The best way to go is to take the funds that were to be used for the ARC tunnel and move them to the TTF,” Toth said. “That could go a long way to helping it out. We’ve urged the governor to take the money and put it into the Transportation Trust Fund.”

Toth said the NJMTA would support an increase in the diesel fuel tax to fund the TTF. “From a consumer’s perspective, no, but from a trucking perspective, we’d rather see that than another toll increase,” she said. “We’re paying the fourth-lowest fuel tax in the nation. All trucks passing through New Jersey will pay it and we can build that increase into our rate structures. That’s less oppressive than raising tolls. It’s more fair.”

John Kruse is president and owner of J. Way Trucking in Hillside and a member of the Bi- State Motor Carriers, which represents trucking companies in New York and New Jersey that transport freight to and from Port Elizabeth. Kruse is concerned that the depleted TTF could have a negative impact on Union County and the metropolitan region.

“There’s a ton of distribution warehouses at the Turnpike Exit 8A and we’re actually seeing our competitors serving that area out of Baltimore and Norfolk,” he said. “That’s not something we like to see. It should all be here.”

To enhance access to the port, Kruse believes a dedicated exit off the Turnpike between Exits 13A and 14A is long overdue.

“Our organization has supported that but it’s fallen on deaf ears,” Kruse said.

A sound secondary road system in and out of the port is critical, as well, according to Kruse.

“The port has to be one of the biggest employers in Union County and the state,” he said. “We’d hate to lose volume due to a lack of infrastructure. The biggest issue is the roads. They haven’t (been) expanded and kept up as the port volume has increased.”

As the state continues to wrestle with a long-term solution to restore stability to the TTF, the DOT continues to adhere to a policy of “Safety First, Fix It First” to prevent any further deterioration, according to Feyl.

“There are projects begging for billions like the Pulaski Skyway, the Bayonne Bridge, port infrastructure,” he said. “From a commerce standpoint, the TTF is critical.”

Yet the fund is nearly on E.

By Karen Miller

When the recession hit a few years ago, one of the first industries to suffer was the hospitality sector. As the calendar changed and businesses slumped, companies were forced to say bah humbug to holiday parties and restaurants, banquet facilities

and caterers felt the cold of quiet winters.

Some businesses were too strapped for cash for host employee or customer parties, while others deemed it poor taste to announce layoffs while at the same time hosting a holiday lunch or dinner.

As the economy has strengthened in the last year it has raised the hopes of restaurants, banquet facilities and caterers for a better holiday party season this year.

So far locally, however, results are mixed. “Businesses are still cutting back on holiday parties,” says Karen Kamichof of the catering and sales department of the Crowne Plaza Hotel Clark. Not only is the hotel seeing about 30 percent fewer bookings this year than last year, groups giving parties are cutting back in other ways.

“If a business is having a party they are often choosing not to serve alcohol or they are switching from a sit-down meal to a buffet,” she said.

Some companies are requiring staff to pay to attend a department party, resulting in fewer reservations, according to Kamichof.

“I had one client call me recently to change to a smaller room,” she said. “She had expected to have 75 reservations for the party, but so far she only has 40.”

Bookings are about the same or slightly higher at The Westwood Banquet Center this year, according to the director of catering, Cathy Jones.

“A party is still a nice way to show appreciation to employees or clients, and you can still give a very nice event even if you feel you need to scale back a bit,” she said.

A few of the trends Jones is seeing are cocktail parties versus traditional dinners; lunches or breakfast events instead of evening affairs; and family events rather than employee-only parties. Cocktail parties are particularly popular for several reasons; they usually are shorter than a dinner or lunch event and allow guests to mingle and socialize.

Breakfast with Santa also has become a popular alternative to traditional company holiday events, because employees can bring their families, according to Jones. The

Westwood held a successful Breakfast with Santa party last year for its own employees.

“Particularly when families are feeling strapped for cash, parents are more willing to come out to an event where they can bring the children,” Jones said.

To attract more holiday parties, restaurants and other facilities must be flexible in hours, discounts and packages, according to Noelle Stary, marketing strategist and owner of 20 Lemons Marketing in Woodbridge, which specializes in marketing for the hospitality industry.

“Bundle services to make things more attractive to the client,” she suggests.

For example, a restaurant could add a buffet table or carving station as well as pass around hor d’oeuvres, she offered.

“People always want value for their dollars, but that’s particularly important right now,” she said.

One local restaurateur found that offering two proteins, for example chicken and salmon, is becoming popular rather than a beef dish because the combination costs less than beef but has more perceived value than chicken alone.

Other options to attract holiday business include a “bounce back coupon” for attendees to draw them back to the restaurant over the holidays or in the New Year. Kamichof at the Crowne Plaza is offering special overnight packages for holiday dinner guests who want to enjoy a few drinks at the party and not worry about driving home afterward.

One of the best ways for facilities to add to their holiday bookings is to extend the holiday season, experts say. A new trend shows companies holding parties early in January rather than in November or December, which offers many advantages.

“If you are laying off employees it may seem tasteless to hold a holiday celebration, while an event at the beginning of the year to talk about what you hope to accomplish in the new year will work well,” Kamichof said.

For the restaurant or catering or banquet facility, adding a party in January – traditionally a much slower time than November and December – is good for business.

The most important thing to remember right now for everyone in the hospitality industry is creativity, added Stary.

“You have to work harder and think creatively right now to bring in the holiday business,” she said.

Secretariat was known for speed, not duration, yet winning the Belmont Stakes required a potent combination of both qualities.

Normally, Secretariat started a race back in the pack before moving up to win. According to the film, in the Belmont Stakes the trainer left a critical decision up to the jockey, Ron Turcotte – how to run

Secretariat, how hard to push the horse.

Turcotte decided to drive Secretariat hard from the outset. As a result, Secretariat led from the opening bell and continuously increased the lead until the end of the race – winning by an unprecedented 31 lengths.

Until this race, Secretariat’s trainer never challenged the time-honored racing tenet – speed or duration, but not both.

If Turcotte didn’t drive Secretariat hard from the outset, the team never would have discovered Secretariat could deliver both speed and duration. They would have continued to embrace a self-limiting assumption.

Self-limiting assumptions aren’t confined to horse racing – they also are the bane of salespeople, who are responsible for business development. A major debilitating sales assumption is: We can’t push the prospect.

When salespeople don’t want to call a prospect again to ask for the order or ask the prospect to do a reasonable behavior (like check references), they typically say, “I don’t want to push the prospect. I may ruin the relationship.”

What relationship? If they aren’t buying, there isn’t a relationship to ruin.

What justifies calling the prospect one more time, pushing the prospect to do a reasonable behavior? We need to “earn the right” to a relationship. We do this through a material difference – a difference so strong it motivates a change in prospect behavior.

Material difference is how we earn the right to call the prospect again. Anytime you have a new material difference to offer the prospect, give them a call. If you don’t have a new material difference but want to call the prospect anyway, look for a new material difference.

Examples of material difference:

   • Ipods replacing CDs, which replaced records

   • Healthy foods replacing foods grown with pesticides

Material difference by itself is not enough. In addition we need:

   • A strong message to transmit the material difference;

   • The will to use it, to drive the prospect forward into a relationship.

How strong a message do we need to drive the relationship forward? We need to follow the example set by Benny Goodman in 1938. Until then, no jazz band had performed in Carnegie Hall. In 1938, Benny Goodman legitimized jazz by being invited to perform at the revered concert venue.

When a later contemporary jazz band leader played Goodman’s music from the 1938

concert, he said the music was so strong it “peeled the paint” off the walls at Carnegie Hall.

That’s what we need to do with prospects – present a case so strong it peels the paint off the walls. We do this by driving the relationship forward with strong material difference.

Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes because he was driven hard from the outset. We need to do the same with prospects. They can take it, just like Secretariat.

In fact, they will want to take it if we make a material difference.

In the world of twenty-something males it is called beer muscles, when testosterone trumps common sense and leads to pig-headed immaturity. On the playground it is echoed in the childish retorts of oh yeah and so there, am not and are to.

In New Jersey, this petty gamesmanship plays out daily in the halls of Trenton, with the state’s residents being the only true losers. One of the current tit-for-tats revolves around the failure of the Senate to act on dozens of Gov. Chris Christie’s nominations to fill vacancies in the state’s courts, commissions and authorities, apparently in retaliation for the governor’s refusal to renominate Justice John Wallace to the state’s Supreme Court.

Many political insiders and pundits describe this as the standard dance of government, one branch vying for leverage over the other in an effort to achieve compromise. Others claim either that Gov. Christie started this battle by ignoring a long tradition of renominating sitting Supreme Court justices, thereby politicizing and undermining the judiciary, or that Senate President John Sweeney is childishly punishing the governor for removing a justice he considered sympathetic to his causes.

Both arguments are wrong and overlook one key constituency in the equation – the voters.

But why bother with trivial details?

There are three basic points to the argument that the Senate should stop holding up reviews and votes on the governor’s nominations. First, the residents of New Jersey deserve to have their courts, commissions and authorities functioning at the most effective level at a time when the state is fighting for its economic life, as well as its reputation – which plays no small role in its economic future.

Second, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the ousting of Wallace and the replacement nomination of Anne Murray Patterson is entirely independent of the need to fill open positions at the Port Authority or Sports & Exhibition Authority, for example. Whether Christie was right or wrong on Wallace is irrelevant to these positions.

Third – and perhaps most importantly – the purpose of electing a new government is to have a new government. The voters of New Jersey elected Christie because they wanted a change in the direction of the state’s government – not just in its statehouse. Voters elected an administration, not just one man. Christie deserves to be able to name men and women whom he feels will best follow a philosophy he laid out to the voters when he campaigned.

That does not mean the Senate should abrogate its responsibility to properly vet the governor’s nominees and bring them to the full Senate for a vote. It just means they must do both rather than neither. Nor does it mean that any governor should undermine the judiciary branch for the benefit of his or her political philosophy. If the clearly defined system of nomination, review and vote is followed, that should not be a concern. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court survived a so-called stacking of the court more than 60 years ago.

Earlier this year Christie promised to significantly rein in the state’s runaway boards and commissions that spent $1.8 million lobbying state government in 2006-2007 and employ nearly 750 people earning more than $100,000 annually, according to the state’s comptroller and Inspector General, respectively, as reported in the Star Ledger. Executive Order 40 eliminated 60 boards and commissions, a great step toward honoring that promise.

Those boards and commissions that remain need to be properly led and the governor deserves to have that leadership exercised by people he selects – as long as they pass muster.

When the governor’s Judicial Advisory Unit resigned en masse over the Wallace decision, Christie shrugged and replaced the unit with seven new members, including retired Supreme Court Justice Peter Verniero. The pillars of the state’s judiciary did not topple. Let us show greater respect for our judges and other members of the judiciary than to think they can so easily be turned into puppets.

Similarly, when Christie in September made direct appointments to the State Ethics Commission that did not require Senate approval, there was no concern of undermining the commission or its mission to protect New Jersey residents from political corruption.

It is ironic that through all this bickering, one important act forced by the governor’s decision not to renominate Wallace and Sweeney’s refusal to consider Patterson has risen above petty politics. When Chief Justice Stuart Rabner appointed Judge Edwin Stern to temporarily fill Wallace’s vacancy, he selected a widely considered apolitical jurist and showed wonderful maturity.

The Senate should follow suit and move on Gov. Christie’s nominees.

New Jersey is making national headlines and, for the first time in a very long time, it’s for the positive. The state’s Republican legislators have teamed with popular reformist Gov. Chris Christie and, together, we are ushering in an era of much needed government reform at both the state and local levels.

In July, Gov. Christie signed into law a historic bipartisan 2.0 percent annual cap on local government spending which will guarantee permanent property tax relief for New Jersey taxpayers, who pay the highest property taxes in the nation.

Since 2001, spending at the local level has increased 69 percent from $26.5 billion to an estimated $44.7 billion. Taxpayers bore the brunt of that surge in government spending, with property taxes growing an astonishing 70 percent from 1999 to 2009. The average New Jersey household now pays $7,281 a year in property taxes.

The Tax Foundation estimates that at 11.8 percent of income, New Jersey’s state and local tax burden percentage is the highest in the country. This is well above the national average of 9.7 percent.

The new hard cap will ultimately put an end to skyrocketing property taxes. Cap 2.0 is the most important initiative in Gov. Christie’s government reform agenda, but when he first proposed the tax levy cap, he told the Legislature the cap will not work unless local government officials have the necessary tools to rein in spending.

Republicans understand that local governments are facing the same difficulties we are facing at the state level – depressed revenue, reduced aid and fewer resources. In order to control property taxes, county governments, municipalities and school districts must look inward and conduct the same rigorous reviews of services and programs the Christie Administration is performing in state government.

To date, however, the Democrat-controlled Legislature has taken minimal action on the legislation. When they had the opportunity – and they have had several – to post property tax reform legislation for a floor vote, they instead either cancelled scheduled committee hearings or posted bills on non-priority issues.

When they finally took a step toward arbitration reform in October, Assembly Democrats ignored a Republican-sponsored bill that called for a hard cap on arbitration awards and instead passed through committee their version of an arbitration bill which lacked substantive reform. The bill never made it to the General Assembly floor.

No one can dispute that the state’s economy is in crisis. Excessive taxation, spending and borrowing have crushed economic growth and job creation. Public sector job growth during the past 10 years has far exceeded private sector jobs. At the center of this storm are unrelenting property tax rates which contribute to New Jersey’s unfriendly business environment.

Republicans know that in order to attract businesses, entrepreneurs and companies need long-term predictability regarding the fiscal health of our state. We need to get government out of the pockets of our taxpayers and business community. This begins with fundamental reform of government at all levels. We must get our fiscal house in order and that’s why the governor’s Tool Kit is a must.

Neither the governor nor Republicans claim any one aspect of the reform plan is a cure-all, but taken collectively it will help fix the problems left behind by the previous three Democrat administrations. It also won’t happen overnight. It will take time to see the fruits of our labor.

The road ahead of us is long, but we must stay the course and not waste this golden opportunity to make New Jersey affordable again for our families, business community and future generations.

The firm also participated in the 15th Annual Lee National Denim Day fight against breast cancer, raising more than $400. Employees were encouraged to wear denim in exchange for a $5 donation to the Women’s Cancer Programs of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF).