Who Needs Progress?

"I've been getting up earlier," allowed Governor Richard Hughes, "to get my worrying done." He could have stayed in bed. Re-elected last year on a "progress" platform that pledged a state income tax to improve sadly in adequate schools, hospitals, highways and welfare programs, Democrat Hughes was confident that the state's first Democratic legislature in half a century would adopt the tax he needed.

The $180 million it would raise--two-thirds to be allotted to education --would redeem his campaign promises to bring New Jersey up to date. Last week, in the most bruising defeat of his career, the Governor learned that his lawmakers would sooner change the name of the state to Old Jersey than approve new taxes.

Hughes gamely announced that he would try instead to introduce a sales tax, the remedy advocated by Wayne Dumont, his Republican rival for the governorship. "That," Hughes admitted, "would have to be a bipartisan effort." If that also fails, the nation's most heavily industrialized state will be unable to provide college space for several thousand new high school graduates or treat more than 1,000 retarded children now awaiting state care. It will have to defer badly needed highway construction, and deny the financial aid that its two major railroads need to maintain commuter service.

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