Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon has been getting a stream of congratulatory phone calls since he took aim at Newark Mayor Cory Booker and threatened to cut state aid to the city.

Most came from the suburbs, especially his district in Monmouth County, a Republican stronghold.

“These folks are absolutely getting screwed,” O’Scanlon says. “There is a growing fury among people who are helping foot the bill for cities like Newark.”

That is a recurring theme in New Jersey, where the cities are all dependent on suburban taxpayers to stay afloat.

But is the reason really that cities such as Newark are “unwilling to help themselves” as O’Scanlon claims? Let’s take a look.

Booker has shrunk the city workforce by 25 percent, while raising taxes even more. Killing jobs in a city where unemployment is raging is not easy. Neither is laying off cops when trigger-happy thugs are terrifying so many good families.

The mayor’s popularity in town has taken a big hit over these moves. But they had to be done.

When O’Scanlon was asked to name a single town in his district that has matched that kind of austerity, he came up empty.

The truth is that cities are taking more painful hits than the suburbs by a long shot. Camden, Paterson and Newark have all laid off cops in the face of rising violence, much of it fed by demand for drugs from suburban buyers.

So when O’Scanlon says cities are unwilling to help themselves, he is spewing a demagoguery that tears at the fabric of the state, driving wedges between suburb and city, the middle class and the poor, white and black. Listen to talk radio, or read the comments on NJ.com, and you can see how quickly the conversation turns ugly and racial when you throw gas on these flames.

O'Scanlon is normally a thoughtful guy, respected in Trenton for his courteous demeanor and his knowledge of the state budget. But he needs to spend more time in the cities.

"I have sympathy for people facing dire times," he says. "But when it's dire times of their own making, I don't."

Really? Newark’s government has manufactured these hard times?

The city was overflowing with poverty long before Booker arrived, and today, half the families survive on less than $27,000 a year.

In New Jersey, thanks to its dysfunctional reliance on property taxes, it is impossible to govern a poor city like this without outside help. There just isn't enough property to tax. And of the property Newark does have, 45 percent is tax-exempt.

Back to O'Scanlon's indictment: He cites two examples of waste in Newark, both of them valid, but both of them small in scale.

One is the city council's spending on itself. This gaggle of blowhards awards itself the highest salaries in the state, along with a free car. It is enough to make you scream.

But putting the council on a crash diet, as Booker has proposed, would save about $2 million a year. That's one-third of 1 percent of the city budget.

O’Scanlon is also aflame about the $3.7 million Newark spent on its legal fight with the Devils, which he called Booker’s “personal vendetta.” And he claims the city plans to spend another $1 million on an appeal of its earlier loss.

“These folks in the suburbs are tightening their belts, paying their bills, and they see entities like Newark squandering a million bucks,” he says.

True, Booker blew this one. He should have settled. But O’Scanlon concedes that the Christie administration has gambled and lost in court as well. It happens.

As for the $1 million cost of the appeal, he is way off. Those costs are capped by contract at $100,000.

After discussing all this, O’Scanlon said he wishes he had chosen his words more carefully.

As for Booker, he wouldn’t talk, perhaps because he’s waiting for $24 million in emergency aid from Trenton. And even if he gets it, his budget calls for more tax hikes and more job losses, even among uniformed cops.

From his seat in downtown Newark, things look a lot more grim than they do from Monmouth County.