Recently Assemblyman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr. (D- 18) and Assemblyman Peter J. Barnes III (D-18) cowrote a letter to the editor that dealt with Gov. Chris Christie’s executive order mandating that New Jersey school boards use their excess funds for education budgets (“Christie’s Action Raids School Funds, Raises Taxes,” Sentinel, Feb. 25).
They claim the governor is causing property taxes to rise in locales such as East Brunswick, South Plainfield and Spotswood. They state that taxes in East Brunswick will rise by $5.4 million. How disingenuous of them to take a figure, label it a propertytax increase and think that we will swallow such claims whole.
Assemblymen Diegnan and Barnes do the taxpayers of Middlesex County a great disservice when they recklessly and with great inaccuracy toss figures out while speaking ill of Gov. Christie’s efforts to rein in spending in New Jersey.
Where did the $5.4 million figure come from? What document do they have that details and identifies this $5.4 million figure as a tax increase? Better, since budgets have not been presented in East Brunswick, much less voted upon, where have these mythical figures been created? I propose that they are a figment of the assemblymen’s overactive imaginations.
If school boards have surplus funds, it is due to the fact that these boards over-levied taxes in earlier years; they collected taxpayer monies under false pretenses of having to use the money and then sat on these funds. And here’s a news flash for the assemblymen: All money in any government account is generated by taxes of one form or another. To label some monies “taxpayer money” and other “state funds,” as if there is a difference between them, is sophistry at its best.
As a member of the Township Council in East Brunswick, I read their letter with great interest and took the time to inquire as to the accuracy of their figures. Their numbers don’t come close to the truth. The truth is yet to be disclosed— any tax increase will be identified once a budget is finalized and presented to the taxpayers. Until this is done, no figures can definitely be stated or identified as increase.
One thing on which I do agree with the assemblymen — it is imperative to contact Gov. Christie’s office, but not for the reason that Assemblymen Diegnan and Barnes state, to berate the governor. Contact the governor and thank him for carrying out his campaign promises, which were to make government leaner and to cut spending. Thank the governor for his courage to make the hard decisions, the unpopular choices and look, not to his political future, not to his future re-election chances but to the future of the state of New Jersey, to the future of us, of our children, and of the well-being of all of the state.
Camille R. Ferraro
Member East Brunswick Township Council