Tax cap still a bad idea

The governor spoke before a joint-session of the state Legislature today and reiterated his desire to see a constitutional amendment be placed on the ballot that would limit tax increases to 2.5 percent — or, barring that, a state law that would do the same.

Gov. Chris Christie calls it tax relief, but it really is nothing more than an abrogation of executive and legislative responsibilities and an admission of failure.

Property taxes have been and continue to rise in New Jersey, driven upward by a mix of bad policy and the high cost of health insurance. The bad policy part — a belief that we could avoid making hard decisions without paying the cost of those decisions, cannot be addressed by a cap; rather, it takes one of the decisions out of the hands of the people we’ve elected and sent to Trenton — or that we have sent to town hall.

The problem in New Jersey is not just out-of-control spending. A good chunk of the money the state spends is on programs its citizens want: Good schools, police officers, open space, etc. The problem is that the state government has ignored the revenue side of the ledger for years, preferring to offset rising costs with one-shot gimmicks and magical sleight-of-hands that delayed the day of reckoning.

For 15 years, for instance, governor after governor has shorted the state pension fund, which reduced expenditures in the short-term, but shorted the fund for the longhaul.

We have sold roads from one the state to the Turnpike Authority, borrowed agagainst a settlement with the tobacco industry, and so on until we had run out of shell games to play.

All the while, property taxes continued to rise, angering taxpayers and leaving the state in the lurch.

The governor’s response has not been to put the state on sound fiscal footing, though he has talked as if that is his goal. His budget is balanced using an assortment of tricks — pension shortfall, anyone? — that are no different than those used by his predecessors. And now he wants to enact the biggest gimmick of all, an artificial cap that removes all fiscal flexibility from elected officials. That sounds good now but, as the folks in California and Colorado and elsewhere are finding out, it is going to come back to bite us hard on the ass in the future.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet