Here are a few statistics that might get your wheels turning, Save Jerseyans.
Our state’s 21 counties, though hit with the same 2% cap in 2010, have been relatively untouched as compared to municipalities and school districts. Interestingly, counties accounted for a combined $4.6 billion of spending in 2011.
$337 million of this amount went towards open space and library taxes. By contrast, municipalities account for $7.2 billion of total spending and school districts about $10.7 billion. Twelve New Jersey counties accounted for 80% of all spending, and all but one of the 12 are located north of Trenton.
Stranger still, out of the 566 municipalities in New Jersey, 31% see their residents pay more to their counties then they pay to their municipality. It really makes you wonder about the services received by a taxpayer in the aforementioned 178 municipalities.
Are they recieving better or more services from the county than their municipality provides? In my county which is Camden, 45% of the residents don’t even know what services the county provides and another 32% are only aware of some of these services.
In raw dollars, taxpayers in those 178 municipalities pay $427 million more to their county than their municipality, an average of $2.4 million per municipality. That is 9% of the aggregate of all county budgets in 2011.
It seems to me that every county should strive to keep county taxes per household lower than what the municipality is levying. I understand that there are nuances; for example, certain counties provide services that can’t be handled by municipalities, and naturally there are some shared services. Still, we are talking $427 million and 32% of all towns!
Does the system make sense when you have 21 counties responsible for $4.6 billion dollars, or less than 100 elected officials calling the shots for that much money, while our Freeholders are part-time, low-paid people without professional experience?
As a Union County resident, I can you tell that almost no one in the county is aware of what te county does. Municipalities provide all the necessary services, while the county has failed to be the platform to consolidate services. The most recent example is emergency dispatch, but the reasons for that failing are mostly technical due to differences in equipment used by various municipalities.
A bigger reason that county government has failed in Union County is the lack of a strong ethics rules (they fall under the very weak NJ local ethics law rather than the stronger state laws). As a result there a significant problem with fraud, corruption and nepotism (see: countywatchers.com). The freeholders make up for their low pay by taking state jobs, then hiring their relatives in county positions. In Union County Freeholder Dan Sullivan has added about 5 family members to the county payroll. Freeholder Scanlon's son was recently accused of county stealing equipment. (he is no longer employed by the county). Our former county manager, the nephew of State Senator Ray Lesniak, was caught in a scandal where thousands of dollars in cash, raised in the name of charity, went unaccounted for. (he was the only one with access to the cash)
Nice map in the corner of this piece. It would be even better if there was a legend explaining the color codes. As far as the county controlling the funds, I am not sure of the answer. Not real happy with either the muni's or the counties. Lots of built in redundancy. But if you gave the money to the towns, they would spend it like O'bama with a double paycheck and no one watching. What we really need is some term limits from top to bottom. Stop these little feudal empires from spending money to buy votes and we could probably run the towns and counties for much less.