governor – Hank Kalet

Placing a cap on sanity

Property tax caps do not work. Ask the people in Colorado Springs who are doing without street lights. Hell, ask the people right here in New Jersey what happens when a cap is imposed, even when it is a rather loose 4 percent.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, sums up the problem pretty straightforwardly: Caps. CBPP says, “may hold down property taxes,” but “they are likely to impair local governments’ ability to provide education, public safety, and other services residents demand and need. They also are likely to make the local revenue system more regressive.”

Property tax caps do nothing to change the main drivers behind higher property taxes. They cannot slow the increase in the cost of health care or fuel, for example, which reflects forces outside of the control of local officials. Nor do they change the demand for local public services, such as quality K-12 education, public safety, and good roads.

There are ways of mitigating these problems — replacing property taxes with state funding, giving citizens a right to override caps at the ballot box, shifting revenue from property taxes to other sources — but they rarely are invoked and when they are tend to exacerbate the impact of the cap. (Richer communities can afford to override, while lower-income communities cannot; sales tax and use fees tend to hit lower-income residents hardest.)

Academic studies have found that in most cases, property tax limits have led not to a shrinkage in the public sector but instead to a shift to other revenue sources, such as state aid and fees. In places where the caps have had an effect, however, the outcome has been negative.

And yet, Gov. Chris Christie is still pushing this dubious notion, telling New Jersey mayors to expect his proposed 2.5 percent tax levy cap to gain passage (it has to be approved by the state Legislature and then by voters in November).

Christie said he will propose legislation next week to put a constitutional amendment instituting the cap on the November ballot. If legislators pass the ballot question and it’s approved by voters, municipalities will have to hold their property tax growth 2.5 percent a year unless voters overrule it by referendum. Under Christie’s proposal, if a town raises property taxes less than the capped level one year, it will be able to bank those savings and exceed the cap in future years if necessary.

New Jersey residents already have dysfunctional government, including too many different government entities and too great a reliance on property taxes. But there remains some flexibility in the system, unlike the travesty that California and Colorado governments have become. Do we really want to fix our problems by making them worse?

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Penny wise, pound foolish

We have too long been in an emergency situation, as far as the state’s budget, but the flare up over providing money to the state’s food banks so they can fill their nearly empty shelves, seems — as the cliche goes — penny wise and pound foolish.

Gov. Jon Corzine wants to provide the money, Gov.-elect Chris Christie doesn’t. The dispute illustrates the kinds of problems that crop up when a state — or the federal government — fails to manage the public’s money wisely during good times: When bad times hit, it is left without money to do what absolutely must be done.

In this case, the state has what I think is a moral obligation to help the food banks out — given the skyrocketing increase in the number of people who have been forced by the economy to make use of food banks and soup kitchens.

Define mandate

I’m not a big Mulshine fan, but this column pretty much covers it — at least as far as Christie is concerned.

Christie wins, but appears to lack coattails

AP has called it for Chris Christie and the TV news is trumpeting it, but it appears that he has few coattails. Democrats look like they are going to keep their seats in the Assembly, Republicans theirs and, of the handful of local results I’ve seen, only South Brunswick flipped, so we’ll see.

And yet we’re starting to hear the nonsense about how this shows a groundswell for the GOP, something I guess was inevitable.

Painting the Christie win as startling is startling in and of itself, given that Christie was ahead by 20 or so points early, saw the poll-lead evaporate and hung on. By rights, it shouldn’t have been as close as it was.

I suspect the New Jersey vote has little to say what will happen nationally. Consider these numbers from the exit polling:

Obama made himself a major factor in the race by campaigning for Corzine twice in the final weeks of the race — including at two rallies on Sunday. The majority of voters said that their feelings about Obama were not a factor in their vote in the race for governor.

But voters’ feelings about Obama were in sync with the what they did in the voting booths Tuesday. Christie voters strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance; Corzine voters overwhelmingly approve of the president.

Two-thirds of Daggett voters said they approved of the president — perhaps a hint that Daggett’s presence on the ballot hurt Corzine more than Christie.

The New Jersey Republican revolt of the early 1990s didn’t prevent Bill Clinton from winning in New Jersey. And I suspect that the anti-Corzine revolt — which is what this was, an anti-property tax, anti-Corzine vote — will have little impact on the congressional races, as little as they appear to have had on the Legislature.

Eric Idle for governor?

I love this story, especially because it’s not clear if it is anything more than a prank.

Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for Governor of New Jersey in Tuesday’s knife-edge gubernatorial election, has been called out as a copyright thief. The 47-year-old lawyer, who was controversially appointed by George W. Bush as a U.S. Attorney in 2001 on Karl Rove’s recommendation after being a top Bush fund-raiser in the 2000 election, has created an election commercial that steals copyright-protected material from British comedy troupe Monty Python — without permission or credit.

The official campaign advert — titled “Deja Vu” — attacks incumbent New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine by using scenes from a famous skit on the “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” TV show that features Michael Palin. The ad is on Christie’s official YouTube campaign site, and has already aired on national TV.

But neither Christie — a lawyer for 22 years — nor anyone in his campaign bothered to seek any permission for using the copyrighted material in his election spot.

Alerted to the theft of their copyright, members of Monty Python are most unhappy. Michael Palin, who appears in the clip pirated for the advert, is especially displeased that his likeness is being used by the Republican candidate without permission.

“I’m surprised that a former U.S. Attorney isn’t aware of his copyright infringement when he uses our material without permission. He’s clearly made a terrible mistake. It was the endorsement of Sarah Palin he was after — not that of Michael Palin.”

Monty Python’s Terry Jones says that the troupe is strongly considering suing the Republican for his copyright infringement:

“It is totally outrageous that a former US Attorney knows so little about the law that he thinks he can rip off people. On the other hand — another of Bush’s legal appointees was Alberto Gonzales and he didn’t seem to know much about the law either…,” Jones said.

The New Jersey race already was surreal, but introducing Monty Python takes it to a whole new level.