A mayor puts empowerment to the test - Bret Schundler of Jersey City, NJ

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 23, 1993 | by Kenneth Silber

The supply-side thinking behind Schundler's tax cut also is evident in his efforts to expand Jersey City's enterprise zone program, which aims to stimulate job creation through tax incentives. The program, which helped transform the once-deserted waterfront area into the highest-priced real estate in Jersey City, recently was extended to distressed inner-city commercial districts, and Schundler now seeks to modify the criteria for participation in the zone to attract more small businesses.

Restructuring the Police Department to put more officers on the beat is another of the mayor's priorities. "Community-based policing is the first step toward reestablishing order and civilization," he says. Schundler is moving to "civilianize" a number of the department's desk jobs to make more officers available for patrol work, but this effort has met resistance from the officers union.

Schundler's plan to set up a voucher system encompassing both public and private education in Jersey City faces opposition from the New Jersey Education Association. During the campaign, the state's largest teachers union ran newspaper ads saying the proposal would increase taxes and allow a "Branch Davidian type cult" to set up a private school financed by public funds.

The mayor hopes that state legislation will be passed this fall enabling Jersey City to operate a voucher system that would serve as a pilot program for the rest of New Jersey. Schundler is disdainful of proposals, such as those of the Clinton administration, that would limit school choice to the public school system; he likens that to the "choice" among shoddy, state-manufactured cars that were sold in communist East Germany.

Welfare reform also is on Schundler's agenda. The mayor seeks to change Jersey City's welfare program to require that recipients work in exchange for benefits. He sees this as an important departure from the "philosophy of entitlement" that has dominated government social services for decades -- a philosophy that sought to rescue the poor simply by giving them material goods. "People will only be saved when they have a sense that their own lives have meaning and purpose," he says.

Schundler believes that the Republican Party can boost its appeal in cities across the nation by using markets to create opportunities and independence for the urban poor. He argues that the Democrats' entitlement philosophy often exacerbated the problems it sought to solve and now is largely spent.

Schundler will be a keynote speaker at a national Republican Party platform committee meeting this summer, discussing "how the Republican Party can become more responsive to cities." He is not a fervent partisan, however. Schundler is reluctant to make an endorsement in this year's New Jersey gubernatorial race between Florio and Republican challenger Christine Todd Whitman, preferring to praise or blame specific positions taken by the candidates. "I don't want Jersey City to be taken for granted by the Democrats or to be written off by the Republicans," he explains.