Few of Chris Christie’s “accomplishments” had much lasting impact for New Jersey taxpayers, but his 2010 2% property tax cap undeniably slowed the growth of our state’s worst-in-the-country property taxes.
Now the cap is close to being effectively dead.
This week, the Democrat-controlled Assembly overwhelmingly passed (by a 52-20 margin) a bill which would permit school districts that experienced a decrease in state aid in any year over the past five years (226 districts, or about 40% of all school districts in the state) to raise property taxes up to 9.9% WITHOUT prior voter approval.
It gets worse from there. The increase, baked into the existing levy, now because the new base carrying forward. Schools would also be barred from staff layoffs except in instances of declining enrollment AND the pre-approval of Depart of Education Commissioner (which, given the Murphy Administration’s NJEA ties, will never, ever come).
Did I say dead? It’s really an evisceration of the 2% cap, Save Jerseyans.
Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-26) – one of the 20 votes against this thing – stood up and denounced the affront to taxpayers represented by this bill…
Watch:
