The Princeton Packet
Whenever New Jersey finds itself in financial difficulty — which is to say virtually every minute of every day of every year — some task force legislative panel comes up with the brilliant idea of having government at all levels share or consolidate services to reduce expenses.
Last year, it was the special legislative session on property-tax reform that identified as one of the principal causes of New Jersey’s ongoing fiscal crisis the sheer number of counties (21), municipalities (566) and school districts (618) in the state, each with its own purchasing power — and its own way of doing things.
The lawmakers found that neighboring towns paid wildly different rates for everything from garbage collection to street cleaning; that school districts spent more money to purchase items separately than they would have if they had purchased them jointly; that counties were wasting opportunities to share or combine efforts to provide more efficient and cost-effective services.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Government Consolidation and Shared Services produced a voluminous report in December, offering 18 specific recommendations aimed at reducing what it called “redundancy and inefficiency, which are major contributing factors to high property taxes.” Those recommendations ranged from the specific (“Move school board elections to November and eliminate the April budget vote except for budgets that exceed the cap”) to the general and vague (“Streamline the existing process for sharing services and municipal consolidation, remove barriers and introduce flexibility for municipalities to design their own procedure”).
At the heart of the committee’s report was the observation that it was time for state government to take the lead in promoting shared municipal and school services — and to do so in a way that would ensure results. “The State largely has employed a ‘carrot’ approach to incentivizing consolidation and service sharing for over 30 years,” the committee noted, “and it may be that for real progress to occur, the ‘stick’ approach must be considered.”
It is now almost exactly one year since that report was issued — and precious few “sticks” have been considered, much less employed, to get counties, municipalities and school districts to consolidate and/or share services. The school board elections have not been moved, the process for sharing services and consolidation has not been streamlined, the barriers have not been removed and flexibility for municipalities to design their own procedure has not been introduced.
In fact, a study by the Rutgers Institute on Education and Law has concluded that conflicting state rules and red tape may actually be impeding, rather than promoting, shared services and consolidation. “There is not a lot of direction coming from the state in terms of sharing services,” said Brenda Liss, former director of the institute.””
One example: A state law governing shared services provides grants only when school districts share services with towns, not with each other. Moreover, Ms. Liss declared, neither the state Department of Education, which is in charge of local school districts, nor the Department of Community Affairs, which oversees local governments, is taking responsibility for encouraging or managing efforts to promote shared services and consolidation.
Last year’s legislative exercise fell far short of producing real property-tax reform — but there was reason to hope that at least one initiative, promoting shared services and consolidation at the local level, might be undertaken without undue difficulty. It’s discouraging to learn that even baby steps in this direction appear to be too challenging for the state’s leaders to take.
