Legislature needn’t delay some reforms

PACKET EDITORIAL, Nov. 17

By: Packet Editorial
   It’s going to take everyone — even the lobbying groups and special interests that are already denouncing it — a very long time to read, much less absorb, the Legislature’s long-awaited blueprint for property-tax reform.
   The specifics (and a great many non-specifics) are contained in four weighty committee reports, a total of 561 pages in length, offering 98 recommendations for reducing New Jersey’s excessive reliance on property taxes to fund everything from local police and fire protection to public elementary and secondary education.
   Some of these recommendations, which were made public Wednesday, are purposely vague: Providing state tax credits to property owners, limiting how much property taxes can increase each year, increasing state aid to "efficient" local governments, creating a new formula for state aid to public schools. How these credits, limits and state aid increases will be funded is yet to be determined. What separates "efficient" local governments from "inefficient" ones is not defined. What the new school-aid formula would look like is not yet known.
   So the devil will be in the details of these big-ticket reforms — the ones that will truly determine whether New Jersey ultimately succeeds in its attempt to relieve its homeowners of their highest-in-the-nation property-tax burden.
   Other recommendations, however, are quite specific and noteworthy — not because they will necessarily have any measurable impact on property taxes (many of them, in fact, will not), but because they are long-overdue reforms that should be adopted in their own right.
   First and foremost among these reforms is a ban on public officials holding more than one elected office.
   As a tax-saving measure, barring elected officials from double-dipping in the public employees’ pension system would remove a relatively small drop from a very large bucket. But in terms of the ethical standards to which the Legislature holds itself, it would represent a sea change.
   In New Jersey, it is an all-too-common practice for part-time legislators to serve simultaneously as salaried mayors, council members or county freeholders. (In fact, 22 of the 120 members of the current Legislature hold other elected offices — and many more hold appointed positions in county and/or local government.) In many other states, this practice is not only uncommon it is illegal. These states recognize that there is a clear conflict of interest implicit in this kind of arrangement, that one elected official can’t fairly and responsibly serve two constituencies when the interests of those constituencies collide. They also recognize that allowing the same individual to hold office in two or more jurisdictions simultaneously concentrates far too much power in far too few hands. For these reasons, far more than any monetary considerations, it is high time New Jersey outlawed this iniquitous practice.
   Other reforms that merit immediate adoption include moving school and fire district elections from the spring to November; eliminating annual school budget elections in districts that do not exceed spending caps; requiring local governments and school districts to provide "user-friendly" budgets to the public; and transferring responsibility for property-tax assessment from municipal to county government. Again, none of these actions will greatly ease the property-tax burden borne by beleaguered New Jersey homeowners — but each represents a step toward better, more efficient and more responsive government. The Legislature need not wait for a comprehensive package of bills aimed at property-tax relief to enact these worthy reforms.
   As for the big-ticket items, stay tuned. The great debate over meaningful tax reform is just beginning.