PACKET EDITORIAL, Aug. 14
Back when the state Legislature was making a big show of researching and recommending ways to reduce property taxes, one of the more popular notions kicking around was reducing the extraordinary number of local governments in the state.
No other state comes close to matching the number of local governments New Jersey has — 566 municipalities, 21 counties and more than 600 school districts — each with its own governing body, administration, employees and revenue-raising ability. Combine a few municipalities, regionalize a bunch of school districts and start sharing services across county lines, one of the Legislature’s task forces suggested, and pretty soon you might actually see New Jersey taxpayers’ dollars spread more efficiently and effectively.
Nothing has come of this suggestion, of course — just as very little came out of the entire property-tax reform exercise. But it got us to thinking of another problem connected with the large number of governmental entities in New Jersey. It isn’t just that there are so many of them; it’s also that there are so many different kinds of them.
Take municipal government. It would be one thing if every municipality, or even most municipalities, had essentially the same form of government. But they don’t. They have wildly different forms. That’s because there are five different classifications of municipalities in New Jersey: cities, towns, townships, boroughs and villages. And they have a choice of 12 different forms of government.
Some have a traditional mayor-council form, with the mayor serving as the chief executive and the council as the legislative body. But even within the mayor-council form, there are various categories. There’s a “strong mayor” with a five-member council, and a “weak mayor” with a six-member council. There’s a mayor-council-administrator category and a mayor-council-manager category — which, in turn, may be broken down into a couple of subcategories, depending on whether the mayor is directly elected or appointed by the council.
Then there’s the township committee form, which allows the members of the governing body to choose the mayor, who functions more as figurehead than chief executive. And the commission form, which vests power entirely in a board of commissioners, whose members serve not only as legislators, but also as department heads.
We won’t even begin to describe all the mayor-council-committee-manager-administrator combinations available under the state’s Optional Municipal Charter Law, other than to note that the size of the governing body can be as small as three or as large as nine; the form may be partisan (with elections in November) or nonpartisan (with elections in May); the terms of the elected officials may be concurrent or staggered; and, if none of the available options suits a particular municipality, it may receive a “special charter” under the law.
It’s little wonder people are confused when they go to the ballot box in New Jersey. Couple all these municipal permutations together with county offices — some counties elect a county executive, others don’t; some appoint a county administrator, supervisor or manager, others don’t; candidates for county sheriff, clerk and surrogate are on the ballot, although few voters know what they actually do — and Election Day can become pretty mind-boggling for even the most diligent New Jersey voter.
As much as we’d love to see some reduction in the number of local governments, maybe a good first step would be reducing their many and varied forms. We’re not suggesting they all have to be the same. But given how many there are, it would be helpful if they weren’t all so different.