By Drew Sheneman | For The Star-Ledger
‘Tis the season of giving, just not as much as before. It had to happen eventually, the days of fat wads of federal pandemic cash distributed amongst the states have come to an end and with it the enthusiasm with which it was spent. Memos leaked this week of the Murphy administration requesting such belt tightening measures as pay and hiring freezes, unless mandated by law, and spending cuts in the range of 5 percent. Party’s over, if you can call a global pandemic a party.
This shift to this new relative austerity isn’t exclusive to New Jersey. Plenty of states have been warning about the dreaded “fiscal cliff” when the once plentiful federal funds were set to dry up. There are bound to be plenty of budgets in the upcoming year that are no where near as fat and sassy as they used to be.
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