By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
New Jerseyans justifiably resent their worst-in-the-nation tax burden despite the fact that they typically don’t vote like it.
‘Frustrating’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop is running for governor next year as a progressive who’s also a responsible steward of his constituents’ money. He claims — and will continue to claim — that he can do better because he HAS done better in Jersey City.
What’s so exceptionally obnoxious about this act? And frustrating for those of us know better?
How he continues to run with tax dollars that aren’t OF Jersey City.
It’s your money. Not his or his city’s.
“This week, we will pass the Jersey City budget, and for the third year in a row, residents will see no tax increase,” Fulop crowed in press release from last Wednesday. “During the past few years, we have worked hard to prove that if we implement programs efficiently and effectively, we can make government work, and in the case of Jersey City, we can make government work well.”
The actual increase for residents in the $571 million budget is 2.9% but the municipal levy is staying flat.
“Jersey City has shown that cities do not have to choose between creating important social programs or remaining economically efficient. We have continued, and will continue, to lead the state in almost every economic category, while maintaining a strong focus on important social and progressive issues throughout our city,” Fulop added, citing 150 new police officers and increases in open space, sick leave and minimum wage expenditures among other items.
What Fulop isn’t telling you?
He doesn’t “have to choose” because Jersey City is heavily subsidized.
More than perhaps any other prominent N.J. Democrat, Steven Fulop’s city benefits from a wildly unfair school funding formula and an urban property tax PILOT scam. The recent reassessment scandal is telling.
Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-16) said it best.
“What the mayor never boasts, despite Jersey City’s economic fortunes, is weaning his school district off a state subsidy paid for the taxpayers of New Jersey,” the Central Jersey legislator explained in a release of his own. “Of Jersey City’s annual $665 million school budget, $420 million or 63 percent is paid for by citizens around the state – citizens who pay exorbitantly high property taxes because they’re subsidizing Jersey City’s school system. After all subsidies, Jersey City pays less than 20 cents on the dollar for its schools.”
“The mayor’s boasts, which only add insult to injury to taxpayers across the state, call attention to just how terribly flawed and blatantly unfair the current distribution of state school aid is. And it is exactly the reason we desperately need school funding reforms that are fair to taxpayers across the state,” he added.
If Fulop truly wanted to test his mettle as a chief executive? He’d support Chris Christie’s fair school funding plan and give back what he’s taken from the rest of us in the current budget.
But he won’t, so Steven Fulop doesn’t deserve your vote next year.
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