Election ’17: Ciattarelli launches campaign opposing gas tax deal, lamenting N.J. “on the brink”

MANVILLE, N.J. — Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-16) was quick to reassure attendees at his Tuesday gubernatorial campaign launch that his health was just fine.

“For those of you accustomed to seeing me with hair, my health is just fine,” he quipped, explaining that he had recently participated in an annual cancer research fundraiser. “And, no, Trenton has not finally caused me to pull my hair out.”

The small businessman-turned-state legislator who hopes to upset Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno and win next year’s Republican nomination to succeed Chris Christie offered a decidedly less positive assessment of New Jersey’s health during his remarks at Manville High School.

ciattarelli“The challenge is, we’ve been heading in the wrong direction for decades. Under both Democratic and Republican Administrations and State Legislatures, we’ve reached the tipping point. We’re on the brink,” Ciattarelli told the gathered supporters and dignitaries. “We are last in economic growth, drowning in debt, unable to fund core priorities like infrastructure and pensions, crippled by rising property taxes and paralyzed by an unfair school funding formula that cheats children, taxpayers and school employees. Instead of real solutions, we’re stuck with commissions and task forces that talk about problems instead of solving them, and special interests that spend tens of millions each election to preserve the failed status quo.”

School funding reform lay at the heart of the Assemblyman’s agenda for a Garden State fiscal reset.

“My five-point plan is focused on school funding, pension and tax reform, streamlined government and bipartisan communication,” said Ciattarelli. “It will generate savings, provide fiscal flexibility, allow us to make underfunded school districts whole, address the property tax crisis and fund the pension system. With the right kind of leadership, courage and bipartisanship, we can tackle these issues in a substantive way. We can revitalize our economy, renew our state, and provide prosperity and opportunity for all New Jerseyans.”

The choice of venue was deliberate for the resident of nearby Hillsborough and father of four; Manville High School receives less than $9 million in state aid, an amount representing only approximately 43% of its budget.

“When an $800,000 home in Jersey City pays less in property taxes than a $300,000 home in Manville . . . When three new schools are opening in Jersey City, paid for not by Jersey City, but 100% by the state . . . When people living in million-dollar townhomes in Hoboken can send their children to free Pre-K, paid for not by Hoboken, but 100% by the state. Manville, by the way, recently had to sacrifice library space for more classrooms and it doesn’t get a dime for free Pre-K,” the candidate added.

It’s a theme that promises to dominate next year’s state-wide contest given its central role in driving property taxes in a state that’s infamous for them.

Never afraid of disagreeing with his party’s incumbent governor (he stopped short of backing the Governor’s ‘fair school funding’ plan, preferring a less rigid formula), the Assemblyman unambiguously and bluntly opposed Trenton’s gas tax increase legislation via social media on the eve of his launch, telling his followers simply that “I will be voting ‘no’ on this. It’s a bad deal for NJ.”

Pensions? He’d put newer state employees in 401(k) plans instead of pensions among other aspired to changes.

Garnering name recognition is a familiar challenge for New Jersey state-wide candidates and Ciattarelli is no exception. Supporters hope his willingness to criticize his own party’s leaders contributes to an outsider appeal. A former member of the Raritan Borough Council and Somerset County Board of Chosen Freeholders before joining the legislature in 2011, Ciattarelli is also owner of Galen Publishing, L.L.C., a medical publishing company based in Somerville, New Jersey.

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Matt Rooney
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MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.