Yesterday the Assembly Republicans decided that it was time to start playing hardball and forcing the Democrats hands on the important Toolkit bills proposed by the Governor over a year ago. The bills, a few of which have already been passed, are instruments to allow municipalities to better cope with the economic and budgetary realities of the day, as well as to keep costs and taxes down in the new era of the 2% property tax cap. The move came just a day before the Budget Committee roundtable hearing on property taxes was to take place. So far in the hearing, the Committee has heard from a few groups crying out for action on what continues to be an awful system for counties, towns, and of course, taxpayers.
Assemblyman Bucco will be making a motion to pull a number of toolkit bills out of the committees where they have been rotting. The Democrat plan was to simply let the bills die in committee during this session and never to allow their members to take what I sure will be very politically unpopular ‘no’ votes on the legislation. The narrative they want to push is that in the final year of 4% property tax increases, Governor Christie and his responsible budget is the reason that taxes have continued to climb in our state. But we all know this could not be further from the truth.
The reason property taxes are so high is a lack of innovation at the local level combined with an addiction to state aid that never should have existed in the first place. Municipalities need to start working together to find consolidation and shared service solutions to drive down costs. There is no reason that every single municipality in a county needs to have its own inspectors or assessors, there is no reason why every single little town needs its own full police force, and there is no reason for service that could be provided at the county level should be done on a smaller scale per municipality. These problems all have common sense solutions, and they happen to reside in the Toolkit bills.
Now the Democrats will have to put their names on the line to pull these bills from purgatory and actually show the taxpayer what we at Save Jersey have known all along: they don’t care.
STEVE SWEENEY: 'Tool kit' not the answer
Broader reforms needed to cut property tax
Gov. Chris Christie has blamed everything and everyone for the highest property tax increase in four years. He continues to state that if only his “tool kit” were passed, New Jersey’s property tax problems would magically disappear.
Closer scrutiny of the governor’s kit proves his claims are false and are merely meant to distract from his own culpability in property tax hikes. The governor cut more than $2.4 billion in funding to schools and municipalities last year. That is why your taxes are going up. The tool kit will not make up that shortfall.
There are reforms that must be implemented, such as pensions and health benefit reforms, which I have supported since 2006. I am committed to getting those done. But those reforms are not — and never were — part of the governor’s proposed tool kit.
First, let’s have truth in numbers. The governor started by saying there were 33 bills in the tool kit. Actually, there were 24 after items were combined. Now, the governor says there are 20 because he finally realized that four proposals dealing with issues at colleges and universities have absolutely nothing to do with property taxes.
The Legislature did pass eight tool kit items. First was the creation of the 2 percent cap on annual property tax increases, which the Legislature lowered from the 2.5 percent cap the governor initially proposed. Second was arbitration reform for police and fire contracts, which was heralded across the state by local officials as key to reining in property taxes.
Two others — comprehensive civil service reform and a cap on sick leave payouts for public employees upon retirement — were passed and sent to the governor, who vetoed them. We have no reform in these two areas because the governor chose to kill reform.
Civil service needs to be reformed and modernized, but abolishing it will not lower property taxes. Only one-third of New Jersey towns are bound by civil service rules, and those towns actually have lower property taxes per capita than towns without civil service.
Civil service was established to protect against political corruption and nepotism. It is puzzling that the governor wants to completely eliminate this protection.
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Sick-leave payouts should be capped, but the governor vetoed a bill to do that because he wants to take away benefits workers already have earned. That may be a nice talking point, but it won’t stand up in court. And it would create a flood of new retirements as workers cash out before the law would take effect. If the governor got his way, this tool actually would cost taxpayers even more.
Two other parts of the tool kit already are in comprehensive shared services legislation I am sponsoring with Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt and Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, which goes far beyond what the governor envisioned, and which will move through the Legislature later this spring.
These are the only parts of the tool kit that will save you money on your property tax bill. We did them. The handful of remaining bills that the governor clings to won’t save you anything.
One would cap spending on state government operations — which already exists under law, and even if it did not, would have no impact on local property taxes. Another would allow local governments to use furloughs to save money — which they already can do as long as furloughs are negotiated.
Another bill to centralize all power over civil service decisions in the Civil Service commissioner (read: czar) would only consolidate the governor’s power and do nothing to lower property taxes.
One bill would move school and fire commission elections to November – a move whose total property tax savings, according to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Service, would be “minimal.”
Others would change the way some employee discipline measures are handled (OLS estimated savings: $140,000), require the mailing of only one sample ballot per household (OLS estimated savings: $1.4 million) and allow municipalities to offset property tax delinquencies against state income tax refunds (OLS estimated net savings: zero).
The governor’s rhetoric does not stand up to simple math. The tool kit bills that haven’t yet been passed offer no real help from New Jersey’s crushing $25 billion property tax burden.