13,000+ sign tax petition; most lawmakers say ‘No!’ to change

• Update: The Assembly is 40-38 for tax reform

More than 13,000 people and counting have signed the Asbury Park Press petition fighting back against New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes. But there are scant signs from Gov. Chris Christie and other political leaders that reforms are on the way.

The online and printed petitions asks Christie, Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto for a property tax cut. Property taxes statewide rise $540 million every year, even with a 2 percent cap in place, and polls show it’s been the top issue in the Garden State for nine years.

Christie could call a special session on property taxes, but he hasn’t, and lawmakers aren’t rushing to the Statehouse on their own to act. The Senate and Assembly have two work days apiece scheduled for November.

READ NOW: Our Tax Crisis investigation series 

The good news is that 56 lawmakers pledge to make a 10 percent property tax cut a priority – 43 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Among those to sign on are Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald, D-Camden. Likely gubernatorial candidate Sen. Ray Lesniak, D-Union, said he would sign but changed his mind Oct. 30 and said he would not join the pledge. More than half of state lawmakers — 62 of 118 — didn’t take the pledge. And leadership is sticking to old positions and saying there are other priorities, such as finding a way to pay for transportation construction projects.

FIGHT BACK: Sign the Tax Crisis petition

“The problem is, we can’t do it on our own. We need Democratic leadership to agree,” said Assemblyman Anthony Bucco, R-Morris. “At some point the media has to call out the Democrats and start asking why these bills aren’t heard. You can’t have it both ways.”

The Trenton blame game

Democrats, despite controlling both houses, say it’s Republicans standing in the way. Sen. Linda Greenstein, D-Middlesex, said her party has “made every attempt” to introduce middle-class tax relief, including through a millionaires’ tax that has been opposed by Christie and the GOP.

“If it were easy to fix, we would fix it. We have tried,” Greenstein said. “The million-pound gorilla in the room is completely changing the funding of our schools, if we didn’t fund schools from the property taxes. That idea hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Christie insists he wants to cut taxes.

“Gov. Christie has repeatedly pressed the Legislature to reduce the tax and cost-of-living burdens on New Jersey residents and employers, yet Democrats in the Legislature refuse to even consider cutting taxes and instead use every opportunity to propose new tax increases. Increases the governor has repeatedly vetoed,’’ said Christie spokesman Brian Murray.

Petitioners express anger, frustration with taxes

He added in an email Friday: “The Legislature needs to do its job and take up common-sense reforms that are years overdue, such as ending cash payouts for unused public employee sick days, and they need to move forward on civil service and shared services reform.”

Meanwhile, Prieto says attention must be paid to the Transportation Trust Fund, which runs out of money in a few months. Democrats have called for doubling local aid as part of a $2 billion a year plan, likely to be funded in part through higher gasoline taxes.

If the fund isn’t replenished, any roadwork would have to be funded locally instead, Prieto said.

“Eventually that infrastructure would then have to be on the backs of the local taxpayers. That would be a big problem,” Prieto said. “Then focus on property taxes.”

Plenty of ideas, zero fixes

There is no lack of ideas for lessening tax burdens. Around 190 pieces of legislation have been introduced this session on the topic of property taxes, some with sweeping goals and others more incremental. These measures come from a body that, for each $1 in proposed spending cuts, has proposed $2,800 in new spending, based upon a Press review.

Some promising concepts have been ignored for years. Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer, first introduced “Proposition NJ’’ in 2007. He says it would slash property tax bills on average by 25 percent.

EDITORIAL: Keep foot on legislators’ necks

There was an Assembly committee hearing on the bill five years ago but nothing has happened with the legislation since then.

Gusciora says Trenton has been especially quiet on reforms, with Christie frequently out of state on the presidential campaign trail.

“That’s why you need a full-time governor. You really need that adult in the room to challenge the Legislature. That’s just not happening,’’ Gusciora said. “We’re pretty stagnant. We’re not holding enough sessions, not doing enougish hearings.’’

Gusicora’s proposal would give the state two years to come up with an alternative revenue source to make up for the property tax reduction.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean Jr., R-Union, said fixes can’t involve raising other taxes.

APP sparks call for tax investigation

Kean said the answer may be different in different parts of the state, with some areas consolidating government at the county level and others cutting county services and allowing municipalities to handle more: “That would be a way to slough off some of the excess burdens people are feeling from extra layers of government.”

“We need to do more, clearly,” Kean said.

Just one property tax-related bill has become law so far this session, authorizing tax lien holders other than municipalities to institute in rem tax foreclosure actions against abandoned properties.

Work off tax debt?

Meanwhile, this is what passed for action last week on property taxes: A proposal that would let senior citizens work off some of their tax bills by doing unpaid labor for their towns was passed 35-1 by the Senate.

The proposal is part of a plan to help the elderly afford to stay in New Jersey, not specifically a property tax strategy, said Sen. Nia Gill, D-Essex. Towns that are willing could set up a program in which people 60 years or older who have lived in a town for at least 15 years could do volunteer work for a municipality to earn up to $1,000 a year in property tax vouchers.

The program couldn’t reduce local costs, as the bill specifically says the volunteer work couldn’t replace budgeted positions. It was recommended by a seniors’ advisory committee in Montclair and is modeled after a program used in Massachusetts.

Taxed Out: 5 ideas to solve NJ tax crisis

“It allows seniors to help age in place,” Gill said. “For seniors who have lived in a community for most of their life, they want to be able to stay in their community and at the same time be a positive force in the community, so this does that.”

“In a place like Montclair, you can be property-rich but cash-poor, so this helps,” Gill said. “There’s an overriding policy issue about maintaining inter-generational, diverse populations. There are some towns actually because they are so expensive and have no senior-citizen housing that they have very few senior citizens who live there.”

Democrats control agenda

When might other ideas see action? That’s a decision made mostly by Democratic legislative leaders, who lead majorities in both houses.

“You’re going to have to ask the Senate president, because Republicans have at least 80 bills that involve reforms, and most of them would assist the average taxpayer with his property taxes,” said Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, R-Union.

Bramnick advocates further reforms to public workers’ pensions and health benefits, which he says would generate savings for the state that could be redirected to property tax relief. He said the state should reduce school aid to gentrifying cities, such as Jersey City, and end further payouts for unpaid sick leave to public employees.

Finally, he says, a cap on arbitration awards must extend beyond 2017.

INTERACTIVES: How much are taxes in your neighborhood?

“We started doing these bipartisan reforms, and there’s no doubt now that based on the gubernatorial election in 2017 that you’ve seen no further cooperation on any of these issues,” Bramnick said.

Sweeney said the first priority on property taxes must be his proposal to encourage shared services by local governments. The bill passed the Senate in 2012 only to stall in an Assembly committee and hasn’t seen action since.

Find your legislator: New Jersey Legislature - Districts by Number

“That forces the shared services, kind of speeds up the shared services. If you look at younger states, they have more regional services, more county, more this, more that. Older states have much more government and normally have higher tax burdens,” Sweeney said.

“It just doesn’t require as much government as we have right now,” Sweeney said. “People are more willing to do shared services now than ever before. Before it was like a dirty word. It’s getting much further along because it’s affordability.”

Prieto hasn’t committed specifically to Sweeney’s bill, but says the property tax solution lies in reducing local government costs.

“You have to figure out how we can do some consolidation, some shared services and things like that – and a lot of municipalities are doing it and trying to get at this,” Prieto said.

Sweeney said the bill will be part of his discussions with the Assembly in November.

“I’m pretty persistent and I don’t wear down, so eventually we’ll get there,” Sweeney said.

Text of the Gannett New Jersey pledge:

As a lawmaker, will you pledge today to introduce and/or support legislation by the end of 2015 that will reduce local property taxes by at least 10 percent by the time new tax bills are mailed out by August 2016? 

Update: Assemblymen Scott T. Rumana, R-40th district, with an office in Wayne; Chris A. Brown, R-2nd district, with an office in Linwood; Robert J. Auth, R-39th district, with an office in Haskell; Daniel Benson, D-14th district with an office in Hamilton Square; and Sam Fiocchi, R-1st District, with an office in Vineland, have signed the tax pledge.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-20th district, with an office in Union, said last week he would sign, but then said Oct. 30 he would not.

Download the Excel list of lawmakers who signed, and who didn't sign.

Contributing: Todd B. Bates, William Westhoven, Sergio Bichao

Bob Jordan: (609) 984-4343; bjordan@gannettnj.com

Michael Symons: (609) 984-4336; msymons@gannettnj.com