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Corzine’s big lie about small towns

Posted by Paul Mulshine March 03, 2008 10:02PM
Categories: Politics

With his new budget, Gov. Jon Corzine is trying to pull the same stunt on
residents of small towns that he tried to pull on drivers using toll
roads.

The governor’s gimmick is to make a class of people, preferably those with

minimal political clout, bear the financial burden for the rest of the
state.

In the case of drivers using the toll roads, they already pay tolls to
cover the cost of the roads they’re driving on. They also pay a gas tax to

cover the cost of other roads. Corzine wants to soak them even further by
raising their tolls to offset debt resulting from out-of-control state
spending.

We saw a variation on that theme in the governor’s new budget, which cuts
state aid to small towns. The residents of small towns already pay
property taxes to support their local government. They also pay income
tax, most of which goes to support urban schools. And they pay sales tax
as well. When Corzine raised that tax last year, he promised property tax
relief would follow.

We now know how much that promise is worth. Instead of increasing state
aid in the suburbs, Corzine last week announced that he will eliminate it
for towns under 5,000 in population. He’ll cut it in half for towns under
10,000.00

The theory behind this is that those small towns are inefficient and
should merge. That sounds logical — until you look at the numbers.

Consider Bergen County. Bergen is often used as the poster boy for
consolidation because it is divided into 70 municipalities. But how many
of those towns have a higher per-capita cost of government than the
largest city in the state, Newark?

One. And that’s Teterboro, which is really an airport, not a town. As for
the other 69 towns in Bergen, they’re all run more efficiently than
Newark, which has a per-capita cost of $5,197 per person. Paterson and
Elizabeth aren’t far behind Newark, and all are far above the state
average of about $3,200 a year.

As for the small towns Corzine wants to eliminate, their per-capita costs
are about average. Star-Ledger reporter Robert Gebeloff has assembled an
excellent database of all 566 municipalities that you can peruse at
www.nj.com. Look up your town and see where it ranks, especially in the
area of state aid.

State aid — or the lack of it — is a major reason for high property
taxes. Newark gets so much aid that homeowners there pay a mere 5 percent
of the cost of government. But if you live in the typical town in Morris
County, for example, you’re probably paying 60, 70 or 80 percent of the
cost of government in your property taxes. The reason property taxes are
high in Morris is not that the cost of local government is high. It’s that

state aid is low — and getting lower if Corzine has his way.

“We usually pay more than a billion a year in income taxes, yet we get
back less than $150 million in school aid,” says Assemblyman Rick Merkt, a

Republican who represents Morris. “Fifteen percent is a bad return.”

Indeed it is. School aid is the primary form of property tax relief funded

by the income tax. But thanks to the state Supreme Court’s Abbott
decision, more than half of that aid goes to 31 “special needs” school
districts. Yet the lion’s share of the state’s proposed $1.8 billion in
municipal aid also goes to the cities.

Don’t worry, small-town residents, the guv’s got a plan. No, he’s not
going to give you an equal share of school aid. Instead he’s going to cut
your municipal aid. The theory is that the loss of that aid will cause
your town to merge with the next town.

This is not likely, for a simple reason: Most small towns get so little
state aid that there’s not much Corzine can do to hurt them. The 323 towns

under 10,000 population would lose a total of just $37 million, a blip in
the state budget. Steve Lonegan, the one-time Republican gubernatorial
contender who has been the prime force in opposing the toll plan, said he
sees the attack on small towns as just another effort by Corzine to push
unionization.

“His motto is ‘Workers of the world, unite!’” Lonegan said of Corzine.
Lonegan notes that if his hometown of Bogota in Bergen County were to be
absorbed into neighboring Teaneck, the volunteer fire company would be
replaced by unionized firefighters. And that cost alone would offset any
savings.

“One lieutenant in Teaneck’s fire department costs more than the entire
operation of my entire volunteer fire department,” said Lonegan, who was
mayor of Bogota until this year.

If Corzine were sincere about cutting costs, he’d be targeting the big
spenders in the cities. Instead he’s targeting the people in small towns
who pay the bills. But like those toll-road users, small-town residents
have cars. No wonder they’re fleeing the state.

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