In a stunning defeat for Gov. Jon Corzine this past week, the Council on State Mandates declared “null, void and unenforceable” his administration’s plan to make 89 towns across the state pay part of the cost of State Police protection.
In an effort to trim the state budget, the governor wanted the towns to pay $12.6 million of the approximately $87 million the state spends to provide them with State Police coverage. For the most part, these are either tiny boroughs — like Fieldsboro — or sprawling townships — such as Chesterfield or North Hanover — with populations so small that full-time police services are neither warranted nor cost-effective. Since 1921, the state has picked up the full tab for State Police protection in these communities.
The towns, for understandable reasons, did not look kindly on the Corzine initiative. For one thing, contributing to the cost of State Police coverage would mean raising property taxes — the only taxing power most municipalities have in New Jersey. For another, they considered it unfair that larger communities, which have the wherewithal to maintain their own local police forces, weren’t being charged for supplemental State Police coverage while the smaller towns, with more limited resources, were being asked to dip into their residents’ pockets to provide even the most basic law-enforcement services.
So they protested — to the governor’s office, to their legislators, to the newspapers and, finally, to the one place where their protests would lead to direct action: the Council on State Mandates.
To those who have never heard of the Council on State Mandates, take heart. Until last week, practically nobody had heard of the Council on State Mandates, a nearly invisible body that was formed following passage of a 1995 constitutional amendment declaring that the state could not impose mandates on local governments without paying for them.
The council has enormous power. It operates independent of the three branches of government. It has the freedom to review any challenges brought against the state-mandate, state-pay constitutional provision. Its decisions have the power of law.
The immediate reaction to the council’s ruling was predictable. The mayors of the 89 communities hailed it as a great victory, while the governor warned of severe consequences — his primary concern being where the state would be able to find $12 million to resume paying for full State Police coverage. “Is it going to come out of higher ed?” he asked rhetorically. “Is it going to come out of school aid? We have limited choices.”
We have a much deeper concern. It seems to us this decision by the Council on State Mandates has implications that reach far beyond State Police protection in 89 towns. In fact, carried to its logical conclusion, it could turn the entire relationship between the state and all 566 of its constituent municipalities upside down.
Case in point: The state is required, under its constitution, to provide a “thorough and efficient system of free public schools” — yet the cost of this state mandate is largely passed along to local school districts, where the money is collected through municipal property taxes. Likewise, the state is constitutionally obligated to promote the health and general welfare of citizens through the provision of a wide variety of services — police and fire protection, maintenance of streets and sidewalks, public libraries, public health programs, parks and recreation, to name just a few — yet the cost of these services is borne disproportionately by local property taxpayers.
We wonder if the 89 towns now breathing a collective sigh of relief over saving $12 million for State Police protection have contemplated what might lie in store for them — and their 477 municipal brethren — if other mandates they now routinely (and happily) carry out were to be removed from their purview and turned over to the state.
This might just be one of those instances where New Jersey’s aggrieved local officials should be careful what they wish for.

