Here are the three columns recognized by the Suburban Newspaper Association with a first-place in Best Opinion Column. All three ran in the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press, as well as some other Packet papers.
A cure for ‘Borough-itis’
At least one elected official in New Jersey thinks there are too many municipal governments in the state.
Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney, in his state of the county address last week, called on the state to develop financial and other incentives to encourage the merger of smaller towns — a plan that could break down historical resistance in towns like Jamesburg and Helmetta.
”The surest way to significantly lower homeowners’ property taxes is to merge small towns and reduce administrative overhead,” he said during his Feb. 7 speech in
Paramus.Mr. McNerney wants Bergen County — a 239-square-mile county with 70 towns and about 900,000 residents — to be a guinea pig for a state merger effort. He is proposing that “two or more contiguous” Bergen towns be part of a “state-financed pilot program” in which the municipalities — which he did not identify — “agree to merge all services and create, in effect, a new municipality.”
The pilot would feature a five-year transition period during which property tax rates in the merging towns would be frozen and the state would provide supplemental funding. He also proposes that homeowners in the merged towns “be entitled to a 100 percent increase in their Homestead Property Tax rebates for the entire five-year transition period.”
”These financial incentives,” he said, “should entice the local voters to authorize
mergers when they make sense.”In effect, Mr. McNerney is proposing a reversal of what is sometimes referred to as “boroughitis,” the massive expansion in the number of boroughs that followed the passage of the Borough Act of 1878. The legislation allowed smaller sections of existing municipalities or groups of small towns to become independent boroughs without state approval, according to various historical sources. Many chose to do so to create their own school districts independent of the larger, neighboring towns from which they’d split.
At the time, the proliferation of boroughs made some financial sense, especially because the state allowed the new boroughs to forego school debt that may have been owed to the larger municipality.
But in New Jersey’s current fiscal climate, it seems foolish for local officials to cling to what has become an inefficient and outmoded form of independence. There are too many towns in New Jersey — 566 for a state with about 8.5 million residents — and way too many independent taxing entities (another 750-800 school districts, county governments, fire districts, etc.). This creates layers upon layers of unnecessary overhead that leaves residents of smaller towns like Jamesburg, Hightstown, Helmetta and others paying way more in taxes than they should for the slim set of services they receive.
Jamesburg is a case in point. It has a small recreation program staffed by volunteers who do a tremendous job, but it pales in comparison to the programs offered in Monroe and South Brunswick, where an economy of scale allows recreation programs to offer a greater array of sports.
And then there is the small Jamesburg Library. The borough spends just $22 per person on its library — about a third of what is spent per person in Monroe and South Brunswick. Despite this meager allowance, the library was nearly stripped of municipal status last year in an effort to alleviate a municipal budget squeeze.
The nominal reasons were a change in the state’s budget cap law, which now limits tax levy growth to 4 percent, and skyrocketing housing values that pushed the borough’s equalized assessed value up and mandated a 15 percent increase in library spending. (Library funding is tied to this equalized figure under state law).
A town like Monroe, which completely surrounds Jamesburg, likely could provide expanded services to a what is now Jamesburg were the two towns to merge without much of an impact on current Monroe residents. That is, providing the state was to help out.
Local officials have been critical of any effort by the state to put municipal consolidation on the table. They say they are willing to look at the numbers, but don’t want to be told what to do. And they are adamant that they provide the best possible services under the circumstances.
That’s where Mr. McNerney’s proposal comes in.
”I’m not naive to believe that this can occur without political squabbles,” he said during his speech last week. “That is why the state must provide significant financial incentives for any proposed merger to work.”
A pilot merger program, he says, would offer a tangible example of what works and what doesn’t, providing a road map for other towns to follow.
Basically, it would take away the excuse used by too many mayors that consolidation is an unproven commodity.
Efficiency v. ecology
I’m feeling a sense of déjì vu.
The Corzine administration announced Monday it was creating a new task force charged with streamlining environmental regulations with the goal of encouraging sustainable development in the state.
On the surface, such a panel might seem a way to make state government more effective. But surface appearances can be deceptive and, in this case, it is what’s below the surface that matters.
State Environmental Commissioner Lisa Jackson announced the formation of the DEP Permit Efficiency Review Task Force on Mon´day, nearly a week after it was created by administrative order.
The 19-member task force will have 120 days to “conduct a comprehensive review of the DEP’s permitting programs” and then prepare a report that outlines its findings and makes “recommendations for im´provements.”
The commissioner told the Record of Hackensack that the task force is designed to create a better DEP.
“This is about trying to find a way to have a discussion about how to incentivize the growth we want to see in the places we want to see it,” Commissioner Jackson told the paper. “It’s also a discussion about how we do our jobs here at the DEP, about how permitting gets done.”
Environmentalists are not so sure. They contend – rightly, I believe – that the task force will do little more than weaken the state’s environmental rules and make things easier for business in a state beset by overpopulation, traffic and pollution.
The key to understanding the order is in its focus on efficiency and the need to “provide incentives for and advance sustainable development projects that contribute to achieving statewide greenhouse gas limits, economic growth opportunities in urban areas and meaningful affordable housing” – or, in plain English, to make building easier.
The task force is weighted heavily toward the development community. Both the Matrix Development Group and K. Hovnanian are members, as are smaller development firms like Community Investment Strategies and several consulting firms with ties to the Whitman and Kean administrations. The environmental activist community – aside from two nonprofit law firms that represent environmental groups – has been excluded.
Bill Wolfe, state field director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, says the new task force is part of a repeating pattern in which the business community and governors of both parties work together to make environmental regulation the scapegoat for a variety of economic woes.
Mr. Wolfe, a former DEP staffer who also has worked for the Sierra Club, says cyclical economic downturns and structural changes in the economic environment, such as the movement of factories out of the state, have been used as cover for anti-environmental action.
The Florio administration, for instance, extended expiring permits for developers in the 1990s, while the Whitman administration created a program for “regulatory relief” that included a business ombudsman and the slashing of the DEP’s budget and staff. And Gov. Jim McGreevey ordered the fast-tracking of permits – a process tabled by Gov. Richard Codey after Gov. McGreevey resigned.
“Now, fast-forwarding, there are financial issues dealing with the sub-prime mortgage mess,” Mr. Wolfe says. “Housing starts are down and, opportunistically, the business community is coming in for another shot at the apple.”
He said that the new DEP task force is just another in a string of sops to the business community to keep its members happy.
“All of this is exactly the same thing,” he said. “It’s just that this administration is putting a happy face on it” by tying it to sustainability.
The proof, he says, is the timing. The DEP announcement came just two weeks after word got out about a state Department of Community Affairs report that called for weakening environmental rules to make it easier to build affordable housing.
Commissioner Jackson was critical of the DCA report at the time, but now is “embracing the change” in attitude in the administration, Mr. Wolfe said. The governor, he says, ran as an environmentalist and won the endorsement of the Sierra Club, but has governed in a pro-business manner.
“The governor has no clothes on in this one,” he says about the DEP task force. “He got caught with the DCA commissioner on his report and now he is having his DEP commissioner fall on her sword.”
The task force could be improved, though only nominally, by altering its membership to include members of the environmental community and by altering its charge.
“If urban redevelopment is the goal,” Mr. Wolfe said, “then why isn’t the Environmental Justice Advisory Task Force a part of the process? Why aren’t the community groups at the table? Why are Hovnanian and Matrix at the table, when the community groups aren’t?”
He adds: “Permit efficiency is not consistent with environmental protection. The task force should not emphasize streamlining. It should promote environmental protection.”
Saving clean elections
Reports that the state’s clean elections law is on life support may be premature.
The political Web site PolitickerNJ.com reported earlier this week that the program “is in serious jeopardy” because of a legal opinion offered last month by the state Office of Legislative Services on the impact of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Davis v. Federal Election Commission, on federal campaign-finance rules.
Legislation renewing the program for the 2009 Assembly election, which would include the primaries, has been pulled from consideration and a five-member “working group” will begin meeting later this month to review the OLS opinion and other questions raised about clean elections. Working group members will include Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein and Sens. Loretta Weinberg and Lou Greenwald and Republican Assemblywoman Amy Handlin and Sen. Bill Baroni.
“Our intention is to do all we can to save clean elections,” said Sen. Baroni, who represents Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick. “In light of Davis, very clearly there has been some real pushback on this. We’ll do what we can to save this.”
In Davis, the court ruled on the so-called “millionaire’s amendment,” which increased contribution limits for candidates who were running against self-financed opponents.
The court said that the provision, which increased the contribution limit from $2,300 to $6,900 and lifted a $40,900 limit on “coordinated party expenditures,” violated a self-financed candidate’s free speech rights because it imposed different rules on candidates without a compelling state interest.
The OLS, the nonpartisan research arm of the Legislature, said that the court ruling made it likely that the so-called “rescue money” provision of the state’s Clean and Fair Elections program would be found by a “reviewing court” to “violate the First Amendment.”
Opponents of public financing see the OLS opinion as another arrow in their quiver.
“I think that the Supreme Court decision confirms what I’ve been saying all along: that this program was flawed from the beginning,” Assemblywoman Allison Littell-McHose (R-Sussex), told PolitickerNJ. Ms. Littell-McHose participated in the program in 2007.
The OLS, however, appears to have misread the opinion, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law.
Laura McCleery, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said Tuesday that the Davis decision “didn’t concern public funding at all.”
She said that the court objected to the “millionaire’s amendment” because it was asymmetrical. Wealthy, self-funded candidates are “penalized because they are not playing by the same rules as their opponents,” she said.
“The court was upset by the fairness of the structure,” she said.
The clean elections program, in contrast, is voluntary.
“Opting in to the program involves more constraints,” she said. “There is no unfair constraint on someone who opts out. The OLS analysis didn’t understand that fundamental point.”
Public financing laws are justified under Buckley v. Valeo, the 1975 Supreme Court case that provides the foundation for most current campaign-finance laws, because they address corruption, which is a compelling state interest, she said.
“Because (the `millionaire’s amendment’) relaxes contribution limits, it can’t be for the purpose of preventing corruption,” she said. “The court said that there is no reason for there to be a situation like this.”
NJ Citizen Action, a liberal interest group advocating for clean elections, also criticized the OLS opinion.
“Most states have rescue money or a matching-fund system in their clean-elections laws,” Marilyn Carpinteyro, legislative director, for NJ Citizen Action. “New Jersey’s law is different because New Jersey places the burden on the clean candidate as opposed to what the `millionaire’s amendment’ focused on.”
Ms. McCleery said the Brennan Center has won federal district court defenses of clean elections programs in Arizona, Connecticut and North Carolina and plans to issue a legal response to the OLS opinion and be involved in the debate in New Jersey because “this memorandum is sadly misleading.”
Sen. Baroni, who participated in the clean elections program in the 14th District in 2007, called the Brennan Center’s intervention “good news,” because the “rescue fund” provision of clean elections is too important to exclude from the program.
The potential that a candidate might qualify for rescue money is key to convincing candidates to participate, he said.
Locking clean candidates in at a set level of funding without rescue money leaves clean candidates vulnerable to late attacks by well-funded or self-funded candidates who do not participate in clean elections program, or third-party groups running targeted issue ads, as happened in 2007 in the 14th District. Ms. Greenstein qualified for $100,000 in rescue money – in addition to the $526,375 that each of the six 14th District candidates qualified for as part of the clean elections program – after a out-of-state group called Common Sense America began running radio advertisements against her.
Ms. Greenstein said late attacks like that can leave publicly financed candidates at a disadvantage, because they do not have the ability to raise money to respond. Rescue funding provides a necessary defense mechanism, she says.
Sen. Baroni agrees. If candidates think they are vulnerable, they won’t participate, dooming the system.
And no one benefits if that happens.
Hank Kalet 