NJRC on the Issues
After research was completed by task forces established by the organization and meetings that were held with various legislators, the following issues were adopted by the leadership of NJRC:
Property Tax and School Funding Reform
The current tax structure is unfair. It allows a very small handful of towns to control huge tax revenues that are generated regionally through retail and business centers yet disproportionately benefit only the towns and school districts they are built in.
On the other end of the spectrum, billions of dollars are being spent to support school districts in the most distressed and poverty impacted towns, while the most economically diverse school districts suffering from rising costs and increasing tax rates.
Everyone agrees that the current system is broken and the people are demanding solutions. But real structural reform is not currently being proposed by most state decision makers. Consolidation, spending cuts, rebates and a convention are not solutions.
The legislature has the authority to make policy now, through the special session. We are proposing that the legislature and the governor support fundamental tax reform that reduces our dependence on local property taxes for schools and includes tax base sharing that allows the growth of our region to stay in the region. We are recommending these strategies but welcome others as long as they provide real relief for towns, homeowners, by:
- reducing the tax disparities between towns,
- reducing the amount we pay for schools out of property taxes, and
- lowering taxes for middle class and working families. In other words, we want fundamental and lasting change in the system. Not a quick fix or an unpredictable scheme!
Regional tax-base sharing is independent of the state budget and it responds directly to the economic pattern in each region. Since we are recommending only a portion of the growth of revenues to be pooled to share with other communities, no tax increases would be needed.
In addition, special funding that is currently dedicated to the 30 most distressed districts should be expanded to include all districts that fall below the state average of per pupil funding capacity. This means older built out towns such as West Orange, Cherry Hill and Woodbridge as well as poorer towns that are not Abbott districts yet have significant low income populations. School funding should support diversity not encourage segregation as it does today.
The new recently imposed state sales tax could be dedicated to this as well as any new growth in special funding for education.
Because of the Abbott decision, the most distressed districts are funded by state aid while many built out towns are seeing a decline. However, because of this, the infrastructure now exists for large scale state funding of local schools. The formula simply needs to be expanded and adjusted to promote more equity, diversity and opportunity.
And because of the Meadowlands District, New Jersey already has a successful tax base sharing system administered by the state that has benefited its member towns and has made that region one of New Jersey''s most competitive.
We know that a convention to deal with tax reform is again being proposed as a solution to our high property taxes. But we all know that a convention is by no means guaranteed to succeed. If a convention again fails to pass the senate, another year will have gone by without taxes being addressed. And even if a bill authorizing a convention does pass the senate, a convention wouldn''t happen for at least another year, and any proposed changes won''t take place until 2009 - at the earliest! All without any guarantee that a convention will solve any of the fundamental problems of high property taxes. We would be taking a huge gamble to put all of our tax reform eggs in the basket of a convention.
A convention is not property tax relief.
And rebates are not property tax reform.
And attacking waste and calling for consolidation may be the right thing to do but it will not address our over reliance on property taxes for schools and the deep disparities that continue cause more sprawl and a general race to the bottom here in New Jersey.
Affordable Housing
But because our fair housing rules in this state are so unfair, poor people have no place else to go except where there already too many poor people. And because we are so overburdened with property taxes nobody wants more poor families in their towns or schools. Yet because the richest towns in the state like Medford, Franklin Lakes and West Windsor can sell off their share of affordable housing; it is diverse towns like Maplewood, Montclair, Pennsauken and Ewing that get caught in the squeeze.
Our state leaders are not supporting stability and diversity if they keep allowing our state housing laws to put the low income housing burden on the built-out and already diverse towns of the New Jersey while letting towns that are the least diverse use RCAs and other tricks to keep out affordable housing.
Pockets of poverty dot New Jersey, and limit opportunities for the people forced to live in them. We will not reach our potential as a region until this situation is eliminated by the construction of low-income, affordable housing throughout our communities, including and especially the wealthier ones.
Over the last thirty years, housing policy in New Jersey has been based upon the historic Mt. Laurel decision rendered by the NJ Supreme Court. The State Legislature has failed to truly implement this ruling by allowing gaping loopholes for municipalities to escape their responsibility to construct affordable housing within their town borders. Through the creation of Regional Contribution Agreements (RCA''s), wealthy towns have legally "sold" their responsibility to poorer communities. NJRC believes this is wrong and should be ended. Furthermore, the income guidelines that have been established to identify exactly who should obtain affordable housing are greatly skewed.
Therefore, NJRC call for the State Legislature to eliminate RCA''s. Until that action is taken, we call on the administration of Governor Jon Corzine to implement an immediate moratorium on the use of RCAS''s while the legislature has time to act on this issue. In addition, the administration should increase the income guidelines to allow those in greatest need to obtain affordable housing.
Immigrant Rights
Immigration is major concern expressed by many people today. Like all issues, there is a great deal of emotion and lack of understanding attached to this issue. New Jersey has the fifth largest immigrant population in the nation, they include people from countries in Africa like Liberia and Ghana, from Central and South America like Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Columbia and from Mexico, this is just to mention a few. Immigrants pay taxes, work hard, send their kids to school and like the rest of us are seeking a better life for their families and especially their children as all immigrants have done in the past.
Unfortunately, in much of New Jersey, new immigrants are becoming a permanent, low wage, exploitable servant class. Immigrants, as long as they have fewer rights than the rest of us, will be unable to move out of poverty and will continue to be used and exploited as low wage labor.
When the children of immigrants grow up in our communities, we invest thousand of dollars in their primary school education all the way though high school. We teach them all about the American Dream and tell them they can become anything they want to become in America. Like other children, many excel academically; they have ambitions, dreams and potential for greatness, creativity and productivity. Yet they are refused the same level of in state tuition to go to colleges that any other New Jersey schooled child is offered and therefore, college is out of their reach. With Rutgers new rates, it would cost $38,000 a year to attend - at the out of state rate, compared to the instate rate of $19,000. That is prohibitive for most immigrant children.
As long as their children are unable to attend college, the cycle of poverty will continue from generation to generation. It is in no one''s interest that children of immigrants remain poor and exploitable. Low wages for immigrants drive down wages for everyone else.
A bill has been introduced in the Assembly and the Senate that would change this rule and allow these children the same rights as everyone else to go on to college.
