Home rule is a very big cow and it’s time it either produced a beverage or became an entrée.

Next week, Christie delivers his budget address. The fiscal reality is bleak. But there are ways of providing many of the services we expect while still spending less. We don’t have too many teachers. We don’t have too many parks. We don’t have too many roads. We have too many districts. We have too many municipalities. We have too many departments that essentially duplicate other departments.

Christie has the personality to withstand the blowback from reactionaries afraid of change. Change is happening. The issue is whether it is change for the better or for the worse. It is time to put the home-rule sacred cow on the altar of fiscal sanity.

In desperate times, every cow is accountable. Either produce milk or end up as hamburger.

Alfred P. Doblin in The Record taking no prisoners on home rule.