N.J. Assembly debates 2.9 percent property tax cap proposed by Democrats

TRENTON — The Assembly Budget Committee has taken up debating a 2.9 percent cap on property tax growth – a Democratic alternative to Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed 2.5 percent constitutional cap. The bill’s sponsor in the lower house, Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), is also the outgoing mayor of West Orange. He said exemptions written into his bill for utility,...

Mel Evans/The Associated PressThe New Jersey Statehouse in this December file photo.

TRENTON — The Assembly Budget Committee has taken up debating a 2.9 percent cap on property tax growth – a Democratic alternative to Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed 2.5 percent constitutional cap.

The bill’s sponsor in the lower house, Assemblyman John McKeon (D-Essex), is also the outgoing mayor of West Orange. He said exemptions written into his bill for utility, health care and pension costs, which would not be provided by the constitutional cap, are needed to avert disaster in his own town. The bill reduces the cap from its current 4 percent.

“If the hard cap at two-and-a-half percent was allowed to take effect, within one year, close to one-third of municipal workforces and the board of education would have to be terminated,” he said. “This isn’t rhetoric. This is mathematics.”

The Senate version of the cap, which is sponsored by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), sailed through the upper house’s Budget Committee Thursday. If it clears the Assembly panel today, both houses of the Legislature are expected to take it up for a vote Monday.

Christie’s hard cap would have to be put on the ballot by the Legislature and then approved by voters, who would only be able to override the cap

But Republican Haddon Heights Mayor Rob Alexander said his town had already kept property tax growth below 2.5 percent. He said a constitutional cap will make it easier to continue to do so, while a legislative cap with exemptions will make keeping various agencies that levy taxes below 2.9 percent growth “almost like herding cats with a lasso.”

“Knowing it’s going to be the ability to use a big net and catch everybody at one time is very comforting,” said Alexander.

Meanwhile, New Jersey Policy Perspective President Deborah Howlett said focusing just on capping property taxes misses the need to examine a fundamental overhaul of the state’s tax structure.

“If you want to lower property taxes, you have to increase state aid. It’s just simple math. Or you have to find other funding sources,” she said. “Property taxes are high because that burden of funding local government falls almost entirely on them.”

Assembly Budget Officer Joe Malone (R-Burlington) countered that Howlett’s argument wouldn’t fly with his overtaxed constituents.

“I think they’d probably stone you,” he said. “I just don’t think that argument in small town New Jersey would be well received.”