PACKET EDITORIAL, Oct. 27
By: Packet Editorial
In addition to choosing candidates for federal, county and municipal offices in the Nov. 7 election, New Jersey voters are being asked to approve two statewide public questions, and voters in Princeton Borough, Princeton Township, West Windsor and Plainsboro must decide local questions as well.
The Packet recommends a vote against both state questions, and urges approval of all four local questions.
We oppose Public Question No. 1 – a constitutional amendment that would authorize the legislature to replenish the state Transportation Trust Fund with dedicated revenues from the sales tax and the gross receipts tax on petroleum products – for two reasons. First, we agree with the New Jersey League of Women Voters that the question itself is procedurally flawed. It deals with the dedication of two separate and distinct taxes, despite the state Constitution’s clear mandate that no proposed amendment may deal with more than one issue.
More important, we believe Public Question No. 1 represents bad policy. When it was created, the Transportation Trust Fund was capitalized by revenue from the state gasoline tax – in essence, a user fee for motorists. But now, after the legislature has allowed this fund to be spent down without taking steps to fill it back up again, it wants to take money from two other taxes – money that is presently being used to pay for other state programs and services – and use it to bail out the Transportation Trust Fund.
We have a better idea: If the legislature wants to make the Transportation Trust Fund solvent, it should stop playing a shell game with general tax revenues and do what it should have done all along – raise the gasoline tax.
Public Question No. 2 is far more insidious. This constitutional amendment, if approved by the voters, would permit the legislature to pass a law authorizing the disclosure of information about the identity, whereabouts, physical characteristics and criminal history of convicted sex offenders, thus paving the way for Megan’s Law warnings to be posted on the internet.
We have serious questions about the effectiveness of Megan’s Law in reducing the incidence of sex crimes. And we are concerned – as we think most reasonable people are – that the public’s right to know that a convicted sex offender is living nearby must be properly balanced against that individual’s right to a certain amount of privacy, especially in light of the fact that he already has been deemed to have paid enough of his debt to society to warrant his release into the community.
So we start off with some deep philosophical reservations about the prospect of posting the names of convicted sex offenders on the internet. But what disturbs us – indeed, what frightens us – about Public Question No. 2 is the provision, as described in the interpretive statement accompanying the question, that "the disclosure of this information as authorized by the Legislature would not be constrained by any other provision of the Constitution or any other right or interest in maintaining confidentiality."
In other words, if this amendment is approved, forget about any other article of the state Constitution that might protect the privacy of a convicted sex offender. It will be superseded by this provision. In our judgment, such meddling with the Constitution is worse than offensive; it is an attack on the very concept of civil liberty that is the foundation of that document.
At the local level, Princeton Borough is seeking approval to adopt an open-space tax of one cent per $100 of assessed value, and Princeton Township is asking voters to increase the already existing open-space tax from one cent to two. West Windsor and Plainsboro want to establish a Length of Service Award Program that would provide pension benefits for volunteer fire, first aid and emergency personnel at age 59½. All of these initiatives offer good value – worthy public benefits, in the form of land preservation and maintenance of important emergency services, at very modest cost. We recommend approval of all four local ballot questions.