TRENTON — Neat trick - if she can pull it off.
On its face, Gov. Whitman's budget proposal seems to accomplish the impossible: It starts to make good on her promise to cut the bloat out of state government - but without wholesale departmental bloodletting or cuts to services to the public.
If Whitman succeeds, it could boost her national reputation as both a tax and budget cutter - and keep her on the short list of Republican vice-presidential candidates.
But it remains to be seen whether she can successfully juggle these conflicting goals or whether the cuts that she does proffer generate a damaging political backlash from those people most affected.
As unveiled yesterday, the $16 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 proves less dramatic than Whitman's previous budget plans since this one has no tax cut.
The governor absorbs some big expenses, such as an extra $60 million for at-risk school districts. She also cuts state spending by 1 percent. And she keeps state aid to municipalities basically unchanged.
In addition, the number of positions that she plans to cut from the state workforce - 1,220 - to satisfy those goals is relatively modest and lower than what she proposed last year.
``I don't think this is going to be the hammer on anyone's head that some had feared,'' said Milton Leontiades, dean of the Rutgers University School of Business in Camden.
Of course, unions representing state workers destined to receive pink slips will find Whitman's proposal unpalatable.
And critics are already attacking her plan as fraught with peril. They claim that it is constructed on a shaky foundation of financial gimmicks, such as using a $274 million surplus out of the state's temporary disability-insurance fund. They also contend that her projected sales and income-tax collections are overly optimistic.
If those rosy projections do not pan out, the state could be in financial hot water.
``The state economy is very, very weak, and this budget does nothing to stimulate growth,'' chided State Sen. Bernard F. Kenny Jr. (D., Hudson), the Senate Democrats' chief budget expert.
Assemblyman Joseph J. Roberts Jr. (D., Camden), the top Democrat on the Assembly committee that handles budget issues, said Whitman sold her 30 percent tax cut of the last two years on the prediction that it would boost the economy and generate 450,000 jobs.
``None of that has taken place,'' he said.
