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BY MARGARET McHUGH
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
Towns can make builders pay to replace trees they cut down for developments, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, overturning an appellate ruling.
By a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court validated Jackson Township’s 2003 ordinance that requires property owners to either replace trees they remove or pay into a fund to plant trees and shrubs on public property.
The New Jersey Shore Builders Association, a chapter of the New Jersey Builders Association, had sued, claiming the local law amounted to an illegal tax.
“At the risk of oversimplifying this case, it seems to us that NJSBA cannot see the forest for the trees,’’ Justice Virginia Long wrote in the 30-page decision.More than 100 towns have tree ordinances very similar to Jackson’s and another 100 have different versions, said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
“If the ordinance was struck down, so would all the trees across New Jersey,’’ Tittel said. “This is a big environmental win.’’ The Sierra Club joined Jackson Township’s legal bid to uphold the ordinance.
The New Jersey State League of Municipalities also cheered the ruling.
“Towns need some leeway to achieve their environmental goals,’’ said Deborah Kole, the league’s staff attorney.
The Supreme Court said the judge who ruled the law invalid “took a wrong turn when he placed the burden on the township to justify the ordinance and when he adopted a narrow and crabbed interpretation of the ordinance that focused on a single goal and elided consideration of the broader aims underlying it.’’
The appellate court had found no connection between making builders pay into a fund and the town’s stated goal of protecting land.
The builders association claimed the ordinance was a money-maker for Jackson, which charged property owners between $200 and $800 per cut-down tree if they didn’t plant replacements on their land. The money went into a fund to plant trees on public property.
“I am very disappointed. That’s all I have to say,’’ said attorney Paul H. Schneider, who represented the builders’ association since it filed suit in 2004.
Margaret McHugh may be reached at
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