By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
At the moment, Save Jerseyans, New Jersey’s landmark 2% property tax cap is exacting real downward pressure on property taxes. A key component of the reform was the arbitration cap which limits annual raises for police and firefighters to 2% as well, but without legislative action by the end of March, the single greatest curb on property tax growth could be gone.
Governor Christie spent a considerable amount of time discussing the issue at Thursday’s Flemington town hall meeting:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5XbYYmvhs8
Transcript:
Governor Christie: They can’t say they’re against it because they all voted for it. This is a time when you should be really wary of a politician. When a politician is quiet, that’s a problem, right? Most times politicians are always talking. You don’t always believe what they’re saying, but they’re always talking. When they’re quiet like this, that means something’s afoot. So it’s 11 days left. It’s time for them to stand up and say where they stand. Do they stand with you to keep the arbitration cap in place and to continue the progress we’ve made on property taxes in this state? Or do they stand with the special interests who supported them in their election campaigns? It’s a pretty simple question. All 40 of you voted for it in the Senate. 76 of the 80 of you voted for it in the Assembly. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue everybody. It wasn’t four years ago. It should not be now. Why all of a sudden is it becoming partisan now? Something changed. It wasn’t that inflation went up to 5 or 6% is it? No. What happened? I don’t know.
Back to his mantra. When all else fails, blame public workers.
My town has 42,000 residents. Does it really need 42 people drawing police salaries?