Every way they turned this week, New Jersey commuters were faced with bad news.

Commuting by car, which is almost as expensive as it is maddening, may get worse, thanks to a brilliant budget balancing idea floated a while back and now being picked up by legislators as well — the sale or lease of the New Jersey Turnpike and the state’s other toll roads.

For how many years have we been listening to legislators and governors pledging that they would find a way to eliminate tolls on the Garden State Parkway and the Turnpike? Didn’t they just remove some of the toll booths on the Parkway not more than a year or two ago? Haven’t some politicians made eliminating tolls one of the primary issues of their election campaigns?

Of course, that was before Trenton started scrambling for a way to plug the dike of excess spending and borrowing. Let’s be right up front: We have a governor who has not only had to balance a budget, but who has made us the promise of a $2 billion property tax rebate. How can Democrats possibly do that while maintaining the levels of state spending we have come to expect and paying down the state debt? The answer to that equation is simple — they can’t — unless they get an infusion of capital from somewhere.

Hence the birth of a very bad idea.

It’s a funny thing to see Democrats pushing for the privatization of state services and assets. Isn’t that something that is traditionally on the Republican agenda?

But the temptation of a privatization scheme that may raise as much as $10 billion is simply too much of an attraction — and state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Dist. 20) has announced that he would introduce such legislation as early as January.

The idea is based upon economically successful privatization programs which have been tried in other places. In Indiana, the state sold the rights to run its toll road to a Spanish and Australian consortium and raised $3.8 billion last year. But the Indiana deal allows the company to raise the tolls by 70 percent through 2011. The same company also bought the right to run the Chicago Skyway for 99 years; it may raise the tolls around 8 percent a year for the next eight years. In return, Chicago made $1.8 billion on the deal.

Can you imagine the Turnpike being turned over to an Australian company to run? For 99 years? With toll increases like those in Indiana and Chicago? Forget the Boston Tea Party. We’ll be heading for Trenton and dumping E-Z Passes into the Delaware.

Opponents are already organizing to stop the sale of “New Jersey’s Main Street.” And for many good reasons.

As noted by state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Dist. 19), this is a really short-sighted scheme to give up control of critical state transportation assets.

As is the case with so many other budget gimmicks, the money never ends up where it is supposed to go, but the debt is lasting. Take for instance the tobacco settlement funds, which were supposed to go toward health and antismoking causes, but which were instead used by Christie Whitman to balance her budget and pay for tax cuts.

Gov. Jon Corzine already plans to use the privatization funds to pay for property-tax relief, to build schools, to buy open space, and to pay off the Transportation Trust Fund. We’re selling an asset for the long term just to get funds for short-term spending. That is economically irresponsible. I can’t imagine that Corzine made his millions on Wall Street investing in companies that resorted to such schemes. It’s like selling family heirlooms to pay the electric bill.

Let’s consider that last item on the spending list: transportation. Shouldn’t the sale or lease of transportation assets be dedicated to transportation work and capital assets? Shouldn’t it be used to fix crumbling infrastructure, build more roads, and improve mass transit? Doesn’t that make more sense than using transportation monies for school construction?

There are other obvious reasons for concern. Do we really want to put the control of such important parts of our state transportation system in the hands of private companies? What if they decide that they aren’t making enough money on their deal, and fail or refuse to maintain or plow the roads to our satisfaction? What if they are financially irresponsible or even go bankrupt?

Worse yet, this is not the only privatization of state services being considered. There’s talk of selling the state lottery. Talk about legalized gambling…