Didn't we see this coming?

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The Borgs and other wealthy North Jersey families breathed a sigh of relief today, learning from The Record of Woodland Park that Governor Christie won't renew higher taxes on the rich. The rest of us got slammed with big cuts in his budget message to the Legislature, but are we really surprised?

If you lived through the administrations of Tom Kean and Christie Whitman -- or Ronald Reagan's -- you know Republicans are sworn enemies of environmental regulation, unions, diverse public schools, mass transit, public health-care programs and the Public Advocate, among others.

You won't see this in The Record, which seems to be firmly in Chris Christie's corner, though a Page 1 column yesterday and an editorial today warn the former federal prosecutor to tone down his tough talk lest he totally alienate Democrats, who control the Legislature.

Another thing you didn't see in Christie's speech or the former Hackensack daily was an attack on home rule, the incredibly inefficient system of local government that inflates property taxes. Are any of the executive orders he issued going to lead to cuts in those taxes? Homeowners aren't holding their breaths.

As I predicted yesterday, people who don't own cars or who rely on local buses get a royal F.U. from pompous Road Warrior Columnist John Cichowski and in news coverage of the snowstorm's aftermath. No matter how many big stories head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Laughs A Lot" Sykes tackles, she always screws up. Inevitably, the copy is late and riddled with errors and major omissions. And she was the one who promoted the lazy Cichowski to columnist.

"Bunkering down"? It's right there in the lead paragraph on the front of Local under the byline of Staff Writer Alison Pries, formerly a clueless clerk in Business. Is that supposed to be a play on the words "hunkering down"? Or something everyone on the inept assignment and news copy desks missed?

The online Urban Dictionary defines "bunker down" this way:

"A term morons use, particularly when bad weather is afoot, to which they confuse the meaning of 'hunker' with. Bunker is a noun, yet hunker is a verb, thus while the words sound similar, when thought of in their linguistic context, one is blatantly wrong."

 The rest of the lead graph about storm cleanup isn't great news writing, either. Way to go, Sykes.

Sykes and her incompetent minions have always thought you cover a big story by throwing as many reporters and photographers at it as possible -- about 20 yesterday, maybe 40 the day before. But what inevitably happens is that everyone runs around gathering way too much information, and much of it never gets used. That alienates staffers who don't see their quotes in the paper and cheats readers and news sources. Then, the editors give the job of writing the story and blending the material to a relative novice such as Pries.

For example, the section of Pries' story on downtowns trying to "regain momentum" completely omits Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other important towns. In fact, there are only quotes from one merchant in Tenafly, which happens to be where Publisher Stephen A. Borg lives in a $3.65 million mansion, courtesy of a North Jersey Media Group mortgage granted months before big staff cutbacks.

Does The Record have to do the same story about drivers reserving parking spaces with furniture after every major storm? How about writing about the plight of local bus riders who have to cross dangerous snowbanks in front of their uncleared bus stops? Doesn't Sykes remember how she fell heavily and was injured in The Record's Hackensack parking lot after a similar storm? My recollection is she was trying to get over a snowbank.

On A-2 today, The Record finally corrected a typo in a headline about the Baha'i faith that ran Monday.

In Better Living, readers get only a partial listing of restaurant health-inspection ratings. For another week, Wyckoff ratings are conspicuous by their absence as is an explanation of why they haven't appeared for many years.