Many thanks!

By: centraljersey.com
On behalf of the senior citizens who responded to the recent invitation – offered by the South Hunterdon Regional High School faculty/staff and student body – to provide transportation, if needed, to a luncheon prior to enjoying a well-performed musical comedy, "The Drowsy Chaperone," thanks!
The students at the luncheon served us with enthusiastic friendliness making us feel most comfortable, relaxed and satisfied!
Its also amazing how such a small school, South Hunterdon, can put together such a wonderful stage production as we had the privilege of seeing!
Ed and Doris Vinarski Lambertville
Diversion of property tax relief funding must end in 2011
To the editor:
For over 25 years, the State of New Jersey has balanced its budgets on the backs of local Garden State property taxpayers. New Jersey governors – Democratic and Republican – annually propose spending plans that are balanced with property tax relief revenues. And year after year, New Jersey legislators – Republican and Democrat – enact them. Every year, monies that are collected by the state, with the promise that they will be returned to your hometown for property tax relief, are instead diverted by state officials to balance the state budget.
Here is the issue.
There are two sources for general municipal property tax relief funding – money the state collects, but must return to local governments. These are the "Energy Tax" and the "Consolidated Municipal Property Tax Relief Act (or CMPTRA)" funds. Although it is often referred to as "State Aid," these are actually revenue replacement programs, intended to replace municipal property tax revenue that was, formerly, directly collected by towns.
The Energy Tax is the direct descendant of the Public Utility Gross Receipts and Franchise Tax, which was a tax on regulated public utilities originally assessed and collected at the municipal level. In the early 1980s, at the request and for the convenience of the utilities, the state became the collection agent for this assessment, and the law that made this change promised the proceeds would be distributed back to the municipalities. The state never honored that commitment, immediately and annually diverting large and growing portions of the proceeds to fund state programs. Modernization and deregulation led to a major state legislative reform of utility taxes in the mid-90s, which validated municipal entitlement to these monies and, supposedly, capped the state’s annual portion of the tax proceeds.
Around the same time, for its own convenience, the State decided to ‘consolidate’ a number of previously discrete municipal property tax relief programs. Among its many components, CMPTRA includes the Financial Business Tax, the Business Personal Property Tax Replacement, the Railroad Class II Property Tax, the Insurance Franchise Tax, the Corporation Business Tax on Banking Corporations and State Payments In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) payments, that had been under-funded for many years, prior to being folded into CMPTRA. These were all municipal revenue replacement programs – not "aid from the state" in that they were not meant to make things better for municipal property taxpayers; they were only intended to maintain stable local funding.
In the late-90s, a law was passed that required both the Energy Tax and CMPTRA distributions to be annually increased by the rate of inflation. Thereafter, state policy makers skirted the law by annually reducing the CPMTRA payments by the same amount that it increased the Energy Tax payments. The state, then, strayed even farther from original legislative intent, when, in 2008, CMPTRA was reduced by about $62 million more than the Energy Tax was increased, and in 2009, the net loss equaled about $32 million. Then last year, the state, in a dramatic increased funding grab, used over $271 million of these, clearly "dedicated," local property tax relief revenue dollars for other purposes. This did not occur because there was less Energy Tax revenue available for property tax relief. It occurred to augment the State’s Energy Tax skim, which had totaled $403 million in 1998, and had more than doubled to $829 million by 2008.
Obviously, this diversion of municipal property tax relief funding for state use has poked gaping holes in local budgets and had a major impact on local purposes tax levies, throughout the state for longer, now, than the past decade. Towns which host energy producing utilities have lost the use of the land occupied by the utilities and still must provide services, such as police, fire, sewer and nearby public road repairs, to those properties.
New Jersey property taxpayers will see real property tax relief if the state can be convinced to comply with its own revenue replacement funding statutes. The taxes were put in place and have always been collected in order to relieve the burdens heaped upon New Jersey property taxpayers.
Understanding the fiscal problems the governor inherited last year, we tempered our objections to the state’s use of municipal revenues to balance the FY 2011 budget. This diversion of property tax revenues to the state has been practiced for over 25 years; but never to the dramatic levels of 2010.
Now, New Jersey property taxpayers must draw a line in the sand. Faced with unprecedented fiscal challenges and new stringent budget caps, we cannot carry the state any longer. Local governments should no longer be considered the "scapegoat" of the state’s systemic property tax problems when the state government has simply taken more of the towns’ revenues.
The Energy Tax revenues owed to local governments must begin to be restored. We want to see a state commitment this year and we will work with the Administration and the Legislature on a phased plan to wean the state off of its dependence on Energy Tax (and CMPTRA) funds, and to rededicate the dollars to municipal property tax relief.
Giving municipal property taxpayers all the relief they are promised needs to be a part of "the new normal."
Mayor Janice Mironov, East Windsor, chairwoman, NJ League of Municipalities Statutory Funding Compliance Committee, Mayor John Bencivengo, Hamilton, vice chairman