newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ALISON LITTELL McHOSE AND DONNA SIMON 

COMMENTARY

On Monday, July 2, a Special Session of the New Jersey Legislature was convened by Governor Chris Christie to receive remarks and his official veto of legislation in an effort to provide much needed tax relief to the citizens of New Jersey.

It is with the same spirit that we, along with Assemblyman Gary Chiusano and Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick are sponsoring ACR-131, which provides for a special session of the Legislature to consider property tax relief and reform.

Poll after poll in the great Garden State reflect that property taxes are always at the top of our constituents’ minds as being one of the most important issues needing to be addressed by their elected officials.

In 2006, the Legislature embarked on a noble experiment on property taxes by creating four joint legislative committees to recommend proposals to bring about property tax reform. Some of the recommendations by those committees were enacted; many were shelved.

Fast forward to now, we have accomplished even more reform under the leadership of Governor Christie and our Republican legislative leadership team. We capped property tax increases to 2 percent, binding arbitration reform for police and fire contracts, and monumental pension and health benefit reform.

But we all know that more needs to be done. The unelected State Supreme Court has created the most unequal and least democratic school funding in the country through their Abbott decisions. Our towns are strangled with low income housing requirements because of continued meddling by our courts; no municipal official can tell you if they are really compliant with COAH mandates or not. Unfunded mandates and civil service issues still put a stranglehold on our officials who are trying to share services and cut costs. And sick and vacation leave abuse is still rampant and has not been corrected.

You get the picture. That is why an updated version of this resolution for a special session to deal with property tax reform has been introduced. The heart of ACR-131 is one paragraph long:

The presiding officer of each House of the Legislature shall convene a special session of that house, within seven days of final passage of this concurrent resolution, which shall be devoted solely to consideration of the issue of property tax relief and reform in this State and which shall devise and consider ways of implementing that relief and reform. The presiding officer and the minority leader of each house shall each present bills to be considered by that house at the special session and each such bill shall be voted on by the members of that house.