By The Staff | The Save Jersey Blog
New Jersey’s 62 non-profit hospitals just earned a reprieve from higher taxes, Save Jerseyans.
On Friday, Governor Chris Christie announced the formation of a Property Tax Exemption Study Commission and a two-year freeze on property tax rates for previously exempt non-profit hospitals operating in the Garden State.
“The bipartisan agreement announced today will end the need for costly litigation between non-profit hospitals and the communities they serve,” explained state Senator Bob Singer (R-30), GOP conference leader and a member of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee. “This agreement will afford us the time we need to conduct a proper review of the tax exemption law to find a solution that is fair to host municipalities without crippling the hospitals that serve them.”
Christie had pocket vetoed S-3299 that would’ve compelled each tax-exempt nonprofit hospital with some for-profit medical providers to pay $2.50 per-bed, per-day community contributions to their respective host towns with five percent of that fee kicked up to the county.
“The subject of property tax exemptions is a complex issue that has not been comprehensively reviewed or legislatively modified in more than seven decades,” said Governor Christie. “While I applaud the Legislature for taking quick action to address the urgent needs of these non-profits, this is a matter that deserves more careful study from everyone who would be impacted and a thoughtful policy discussion. The Property Tax Exemption Study Commission will develop proposals for consideration by the executive branch and the Legislature to resolve the tax-exemption matter in a way that is fair to the hospital, the municipality and local taxpayers. In the meantime, property tax assessments will be frozen for previously exempt hospitals for 2016 and 2017.”
“The pause will ensure the commission can conduct its review and its analysis without the threat of litigation, the cost of litigation, and the uncertainty that that will cause for the nonprofits. Municipalities at the same time would not have to incur those costs as well by participating in litigation and will have a voice for them to be heard in this commission so that we can come up with a determination that’s fair to everyone,” continued Christie. “It gives us time to come up not just with a solution but with the right solution, and that’s what we should be looking to do because 62 hospitals in these communities need to know with certainty what their costs are going to be so that they can in fact make the proper planning if that’s the course it goes, and municipalities need to know as well without having to have the intervention of courts throughout the state, so this is our job.”
________
