"I admire the governor's willingness to take on a huge problem, because everyone else has chosen to ignore it, but a 50% rise every four years is a huge increase. It could hurt the state because of the negative business climate that has affected distribution centers in New Jersey, specifically exit 8A, which was one of the best industrial real estate markets in the US. It's stalled, and 100 miles away in Pennsylvania, industrial is not stalled. That's not an accident. That's people making a conscious decision that the cost of doing business here is too high.

"Pharma has left, and job growth in the state is anemic. In 2006, I believe we created 5,000 white-collar jobs. That's terrible and can't really sustain any growth. We're not growing in the areas of biotech or life science. It's a real issue.

"In 2006, there was a proposal to raise the gasoline tax, and people fought it tooth and nail, so we settled for a 1% increase in the sales tax. That really only paid for one more year of unsustainable rebates on real estate taxes that were out of control. So it didn't put a cork back in the bottle, it just made the bottle a little bigger for one year. It's nowhere near a long-term solution. Yes, it'll create some relief and bridges and roads and tunnels need to be revamped, but nobody's asking the question of why is transportation so underfunded? The answer is because bridges and roads and tunnels don't vote. There's not going to be any capital allocation, so that means we're going to play catch-up every 25 years, and that means some major increase in taxes.

"There's never any effort to say, 'let's look at the model because it appears to be broken.' The knee-jerk reaction is always 'where can we find more revenue?' not 'where can we cut expense?' because cutting expenses means you might lose your job.

"The only people who are going to be trapped into paying these increases are residents who have to go to work or get home. Anyone who can avoid it will, so I question the models that they're using, saying that these increases will generate the sort of revenue that's expected. My bet would be that the revenue will not be nearly what they predict. It's like the MTA with the subway, every time they raise the fare they lose riders, so they need to raise the fare again. The cycle is endless. I suspect that people in business will find ways of going around these tolls. If you tell truckers and people with businesses that tolls will cost $5000 a year more than it did before, they will find ways of avoiding that. You're suddenly competitive with air freight and trains. The whole dynamic changes.

"This would be a huge change in quality of life for residents, and it's not on the ballot. It's going to be negotiated in Trenton by people who have proven that they put self-interest ahead of the best interests of the state. The governor is being intellectually honest, he sees a huge problem and his background training is telling him he needs a huge solution. He's not wrong, but the emphasis is wrong. You need to go after the expense base in the state and reduce it. We've gone from being one of the top states in which to do business to number 47. We've gone from the highest per capita income in the country to being second or third. Everything is trending in the wrong direction. And, what's the solution? Raise more revenue, which exacerbates the problem, it doesn't solve it."