Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Time to change the stump speech

Monmouth County Republican candidates for county office routinely site the county's AAA bond rating as a reason to vote for them, as if those candidates actually had something to do with achieving that rating.

The AAA bond rating is a great thing to have. It means the county has a vibrant economy, high income demographics, conservative debt structure and a well managed government administration, in the view of the rating agencies. The ratings mean that the investment community believe that their interest payments will be received as agreed and that their principle is secure. This allows the county to borrow for capital projects at the lowest rates available in the market.

But is a AAA rating a Republican phenomena? If so, the rating agencies must have missed the fact that Middlesex and Bergen Counties are run by Democrats. They both enjoy AAA ratings. Republican Ocean County has a AA+ rating.

1 comment:

Lugar96 said...

The AAA bond rating is a great thing to have. It means the county has a vibrant economy, high income demographics, conservative debt structure and a well managed government administration, in the view of the rating agencies.


If the AAA rating means, in part, that the county has a well managed government administration, isn't that something the incumbent party should mention as a reason to keep them in power?

Maybe the specific candidates ( at this point Jeff Cantor)weren't part of the county government at the time the county earned that bond rating, but being of the party that controlled the county government that earned it is a plus.

Certainly it is not just a Republican phenomena, except that in the case of Monmouth County, the government has been run by a Republican majority for so long that I believe the party does deserve credit for the bond rating. Any candidate of the party can make the claim that he or she wants to continue the good work of his/her fellow Republicans even if the individual cannot take personal credit for the achievement.

Hey, lets not take away the one thing everyone in that room on Saturday can actually agree on.