Breaking Buono’s Property Tax Logic

Buono Uses Creative Math and Criticizes Christie for Tax Disaster that Happened On Her Watch

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Did you catch Barbara Buono’s big national TV debut this week, Save Jerseyans?

Yeah… me neither. But I found it on YouTube, and it’s a clear illustration of why she was the Democrat back up plan for 2013:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prpl3IHBB-8

There she goes again! Blaming Chris Christie for the mess that she and her liberal Trenton buddies engendered over the course of two decades. And her property tax logic (claiming a 20% increase under Christie) is miserably off the mark… 

Sen. Buono’s been in the legislature since 1994… when I was 9 years old, folks. That’s a looong time! But let’s just consider her State Senate tenure which reaches back over a decade to 2002. From that year forward up until January 2010 (during which time Democrats controlled both houses), Buono served in the upper chamber contemporaneously with three separate Democrat governors (McGreevey, Codey and Corzine, respectively).

The average property tax increase during those years? 5.75%.

The average property tax increase for 2010 and 2011, Chris Christie’s first two years in office? Only 2.6%. The property tax cap championed by Governor Christie resulted in $552 million in savings for property taxpayers in 2011 alone. In fact, 2012’s average increase of 1.4% represents the smalled increase in two decades, or right before Buono went to Trenton!

Are you getting the picture, Save Jerseyans? And I have no idea where Buono’s “20%” number comes from. Let’s say I pay $10,000 per year. If I average a 2.6% increase over three following years, I’d pay approximately $10,800. That’s not even a 10% increase! Higher yes? Too high? Sure. But why didn’t Buono propose a cap in her two decades under the dome? Why did her Democrat colleagues oversee average property tax increases roughly twice Christie’s annual average rate of increase during an infinitely better economic cycle?

The 20% is a mystery to me. I’d love to see where that number came from. Perhaps she’s mixing up the real property tax stats with her upcoming margin of loss in November 2013? God only knows.

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8403 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.

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