This tax cap law looks like a good deal, but …

CODA GREG BEAN

Before we start popping the champagne corks over the fact that the New Jersey Senate passed a bill last week limiting property tax increases to 2 percent a year — with certain exceptions — we ought to remember that old Latin admonition Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware).

On first blush, the bill, which the Assembly will vote on July 12 (after this is being written) and was expected to pass, looks like a good deal for everyone concerned.

Something had to be done, after all. New Jersey has the highest property tax burden in the nation, and spending in Trenton has been so profligate that we’re still facing a shortfall for the year predicted at $10.7 billion. And taxpayers— whose average property tax burden last year was $7,281 — were on the edge of outand out revolution.

Everyone in Trenton knew something had to be done, but Gov. Chris Christie’s proposal to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall limiting tax increases to 2 percent a year gave our lawmakers a case of the heebie jeebies.

Lawmakers don’t like constitutional amendments because they take ultimate control away from the assemblymen and senators who live for that control. And once passed and become part of the state constitution, they’re difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of.

Still, they knew if the matter was put before voters, it would pass by an overwhelming margin. So they made the best deal possible.

The bill will indeed limit property tax increases to 2 percent a year, but local governments can go over the cap for things like rising health insurance costs, natural disasters and pensions. Individual communities can raise taxes above the cap if voters say it’s OK in a referendum.

So, in the short term, nearly all of us overburdened taxpayers win.

Call me cynical, but it’s the long term I’m worried about, and here’s why:

What the Legislature grants, the Legislature can take away. A bill like this, lacking the weight of the state Constitution behind it, will only stand as long as our lawmakers say it can stand. And if the economy improves, and taxpayers take their eyes off the ball, and we get a new administration that isn’t so committed to making us live within our means, that law will have the life expectancy of a mackerel gasping on the sidewalk in a heat wave.

Speaking of champagne corks, my friend Al sent me a newspaper article a while back, and it was so funny, I tucked it away so I could write about it later.

Then I promptly lost track of it until I found it yesterday, pinned to the bulletin board in the kitchen under the take-out menu for my favorite Chinese restaurant.

The article, headlined “Fire crews dodge flying wine corks,” was datelined Wamsutter, Wyo., a town so small they put a photograph of a stoplight outside the gas station in the hope it will trick some tourist to stop and spend a few bucks on microwave pizza.

(To set the scene, I’ll tell you that we used to call Wamsutter, population 261 in the 2000 census, Wamsucker because it was so dreary. It’s a place that the “Dead End” sign you saw as you drove into town pretty much said it all. A few years back, an itinerant roughneck working in Wamsutter described the place to CBS news correspondent Jim Axelrod as “A little hole in the ground that I hate.”)

And now those exploding wine corks. The news story I was cackling about said, in part:

“Battling an intensely hot fire after a semi trailer crashed on Interstate 80, emergency crews were surprised to find themselves suddenly fired upon — by corks from exploding wine bottles inside.

“‘Corks were popping out of the bottles like the old Jiffy Pop we grew up with,’” Lt. Scott Keane (of the Wyoming Highway Patrol) said. “‘My trooper got hit in the arm with one.’”

Luckily, Keane said, no one was seriously injured. There was no word on whether the troopers were able to procure enough orange juice at the gas station to make proper mimosas.

After my column of two weeks ago wherein I described my wife’s negative reaction to the voice of the sexy British lady who tells me how to get where I’m going on my GPS (I think she was just a tad jealous), I heard from several readers who offered solutions to my dilemma. My favorite came from Alan, who said:

“How about if the other woman is your wife? Garmin has the perfect solution.”

Garmin, which makes GPS devices, apparently has an option where you can have yourself or a loved one record the voice it will use for giving directions.

“Now, you can not only have your wife’s voice accompany you wherever you go by car, but depending upon how she records her voice, she can be sweet or a harpy,” Alan wrote. “When you miss a turn, the standard voice says, ‘recalculating.’ Instead, she can say, ‘Greg, honey, you screwed up again!’ ”

Alan, you know that just sounds wonderful, so I checked out the site you mentioned. And it would indeed be possible to record my lovely bride’s voice to use on a GPS.

Alas, the Garmin system works only on PCs, and is not compatible with my Mac.

I think that’s just a darned shame. Seriously.

Who’s the person with one of the hardest jobs in America these days? Well, one candidate is the person who is running Linda McMahon’s campaign for the Senate in neighboring Connecticut.

McMahon, you probably know, is the wife of Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment fame, who took his soap operatic “stories” to the point that he once even faked his own death.

Linda McMahon was featured in some of those stories, and is now in the unenviable position of asking voters to forget her past. But even the $50 million the former CEO of the WWE intends to spend on her campaign might not be enough to make Connecticut voters suffer a bout of amnesia.

As I see it, the person running her campaign ought to take a deep seat and a short rein, because this bronco is gonna be a sun-fishin’ stinker.

Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].