New Jersey’s current administration is being described by some as “revenue-hungry”, looking for ways to pad the coffers to keep their social programs going. On the other hand, it appears that maybe they are more interested in personal agendas than taking advantage of an opportunity to put more dollars in the bank.

Bob Magnan is a retired U.S. Navy commander. He holds an MBA and works for an insurance company. But what many of us would consider most important, he is a hunter. Magnan also has suggestions as to how New Jersey’s governor Corzine can do some real good for the residents of the Garden State.

“I understand that the Governor is in favor of monetizing a substantial portion of the state’s long-term assets in an effort to alleviate public debt,” wrote Magnan. “Allow me to suggest that given the current policies of the Corzine administration, we may be missing an excellent opportunity to monetize a public asset that is self-renewing.”

Magnan’s suggestion isn’t one that would be typical when sitting around the table discussing money issues like budgets and finding creative ways to increase revenues. He wants the governor to consider an approach to bear hunting from a business perspective instead of one laced with emotion and driven by politics.

When Magnan crunches a few numbers, something I would guess he might be pretty good at, he figures the state spends upwards of one million dollars each year dealing with bear issues, issues that never get resolved and are a growing problem to many New Jersey residents. He has a method that would eliminate those expenditures and add around a million dollars in revenue to the state. It’s simple really. Allow hunters to spend their money and hunt bears.

“I’m aware of monetization,” said Magnan in an interview. “If you are looking at institutional investments, you realize the monetization of infrastructure is becoming a whole class of investments. We need something to sell. … The fact of the matter is, the DEP is spending money on ineffective means of controlling something for a political objective when instead, if they would treat it like everything else — and let the hunters hunt — they’d have a source of revenue off of a renewable resource.”

This may be too sensible for New Jersey. Their agenda is clearly anti-hunting while finding more ways to tax its people to promote their socialistic programs of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It sounds to me like Bob Magnan is too much of a capitalists to be living in New Jersey.

Tom Remington

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