By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Steven Fulop earned the adulation of media outlets and liberal activists this week for announcing that Jersey City will henceforth cover the gender reassignment surgical bills for its public employees.
We can spend all day debating the scientific and moral issues at play here, Save Jerseyans, but it’s Saturday. I’m not in the mood for anything that heavy. It is worth noting that there are only a few hundred of these surgeries performed in the U.S. every year, so maybe New Jersey sees a dozen of these things performed here annually? So this change impacts at most… no one actually on the Jersey City payroll going by the statistics? But whatever. You get the drift. We’ll assume there are legions of Fulop’s underlings who want this surgery and can’t afford it.
The good news? We don’t even need to get deep into the ethical muck to understand why Fulop’s decision is obnoxious.
You see, Steven Fulop isn’t going into his own pockets for this stuff. Neither are Jersey City residents, at least not in full. Or much at all as I’ll explain below. New Jerseyans OUTSIDE of Jersey City are subsidizing Fulop’s social experiments ahead of an expected Democrat gubernatorial primary in 2017. A primary Fulop wants to win. Badly.
Anyone who follows New Jersey public policy closely knows where I’m going with this; the problem, perhaps, is that too few people know HOW we pay for things in this state. Jersey City’s government takes advantage of the rest of the state in two significant ways.
The first is the PILOT system, one which our friend and 2015 candidate Harold Kane recently explained in a guest Save Jersey post:
Jersey City claims that they have no wealth to tax so that they must remain an Abbott municipality. It will receive $418 million in state aid this year or $14,000 per student.
Part of Jersey City’s lack of wealth is self-inflicted. It is called PILOT – payment in lieu of taxes. With PILOT, a municipality makes an agreement with a developer where the property being developed is exempt from property taxes, but instead pays the municipality an annual fee “in lieu of taxes.” With this type of arrangement, the school districts can be starved for funds as the PILOT goes completely to the municipality.”
Scam #2? Jersey City, which as Harold pointed out is currently undergoing a housing boom, hasn’t had a reevaluation since 1988. When I was four years old! The end result of all of this madness is that $750,000 homes in Jersey city are paying a fraction of the property taxes that the same priced property in one of North Jersey’s nearby suburbs.
These surgeries aren’t cheap either. Female-to-male reassignment can cost more than $50,000 while the male-to-female procedures run anywhere from $7,000 to $24,000.
So Mayor Fulop can afford to pay for expensive gender reassignment surgeries to suck up to a key Democrat constituency (with a BIG liberal donor pool), with YOUR money in an increasingly wealthy urban center, while you sell your suburban house and move to Pennsylvania because you can’t afford to pay the property taxes…
Does this system make sense for anyone? Besides Steven Fulop and his political cronies?
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I hope to live to the day when every elected or unelected bureaucrat who pulls this sort of crap on people will undergo a forced gender reassignment surgery with whatever power tool the angry mob will come by.
He’s a HUGE disappointment to Jersey city. My old neighbor, he lied, cajoled, misrepresented himself and we all fell for it. Healy is looking better and better
Twisted logic here! Transgender people have been paying for everyone else’s necessary medical procedures and have been screwed out of receiving benefits! Also, nobody has been forcing anyone to have gender affirming surgery here in NJ, except for “big government” Christie who vetoed twice a birth certificate bill that would taken the decision from a bureaucrat under an outdated law and put in in the hands of an iindiviuals licensed medical provider! So cut the BS! Did Fulop do the right thing? Yes! Will doing the right thing help him in the 21st Century? Of course!
Veterans can’t get life saving
help they need but we can squander funds on elective surgery?
While it is true that the State House in Trenton is populated with thieves, liars and hypocrites, it is also true that yours is a REPRESENTATIVE form of government.
Embrace the suck and choke on it, New Jerseyans.
it is not elective, it is medically necessary! Glad you brought up veterans because transgender people are much more likely to be veterans than the generally population
The PILOTs are an abuse of the Abbott decision. Having said that they would not significantly affect the state aid. A recent study by a watchdog group reported that all of the abated properties have deprived the district of about $50 million in revenue per year. That assumes, of course, that each of those projects would have been built to the same scale (let alone whether they would be built at all).
There is an easy solution for this at the state level as well. Change the long term tax abatement law so that any abated properties apportion their PILOTS between city, county and school district taxes in the same manner that conventionally taxed properties are.
Still, given that Jersey City’s aid is around $450 million, even if all the abated properties were conventionally taxed the state would still be giving aid to Jersey City.
As for the city paying for transgender surgery, good for Fulop. Trans employees have as much a right to surgery as to any other employees.
Actually, the claims of costs to a employer are not the complete story and are not accurate – the benefits actually counterbalance the cost in premiums.
Who pays for the mental and physical preps to the surgery and post surgery therapy?
When will the lunacy end?
This is the candidate JC wanted and JC got. If he becomes the governor we must wonder what in the world are we voting for? Politically correct speech or practical fiscal policy?
Okay Mr. Mayor! I am going on record to the fact that you finally reached the very last straw with me! If you feel these people, no matter how few, should have this type of surgery. Let them pay for it, or YOU pay for it. I am so disappointed in you!
We are stuffed in our city with more and more buildings and people. We have no room to breath in this city. These bike rack things are a joke too! News flash folks! Not everyone can ride a bike! Not everyone has the cash to pay the rental fees!
Many of us want to keep our cars! Yet, you make this city into a yuppie sardine can!
Things like this surgery, and anything else for that matter, should be out up for a vote because the council is not voting the way of all citizens but their way,
Mr. Mayor! Why do you show so much concern for LGBT people and so little for the senior citizens in this city?
Will the be paying for all other elective surgery? Face lifts, boob jobs, pec implants?