Christie’s Axe Keeps Swinging
I worked as Parts Control Manager of a large international company back in the mid 90′s. When I was promoted to the job, I was told to bring spending down. Now the spending was linked directly to parts needed to repair customer equipment – and it was inexcusable to leave a customer without a working machine.
My solution was to purchase from third-party suppliers as long as they provided quality parts. The company I worked for had this loophole that allowed me to purchase parts from sources other than them, and they were extremely overpriced to begin with. No savings was too small for me to switch vendors. If a vendor came in with a savings of 50 cents, I figured that equated to $50 for 100 items. Multiply that $50 by what eventually became a list of over 200 parts that I outsourced – the savings mounted. Some parts cost as much as $10 less than OEM.
New Jersey faces a $2.2 Billion budget gap this year, and Christie is looking to make a lot of small things add up. One piece of news that slipped under the south Jersey radar was the $3.6 million that Christie took back from Carney’s Point.
Some $3.6 million earmarked for the Carneys Point Regional Waste Water Management Project has been taken away by the Christie administration to plug holes in the fiscal year 2010 state budget.
I can hear the reactionaries right now. “Oh my, he took money for a waste treatment plant!” Well, if Carney’s Point had wanted that waste management plant, they would possibly have not spent $400,000 of the money on “studies”. They would have proceeded with a plan rather than allow the money to sit stagnant for seven years.
I have an idea – maybe he should rescind that $67 MILLION Christmas Tree gift left to Camden by outgoing loser Jon Corzine. Does Camden need that money? To give you a clue, the mayor doubled the salaries of her “cabinet” and appointed Corzine aides to fill the positions. it sounds like the state manager is pulling out of Camden too soon.
