Dear Taxpayers and Local Government Leaders,
Governor Corzine plans to cut state aid to municipalities with less than 10,000 residents in an effort to repair this state’s financial mess that he and his predecessors created. In order to explain the magnitude of this ridiculous plan, let us start by first describing what state aid actually is. The NJ State government collects revenue in the form of taxes, sales tax, and income tax from all residents of NJ; in fact, every time money changes hands, the state takes a cut. As you can imagine, this is an incredible sum of money paid by the residents of our great state. This money of course, goes toward paying the expenses of operating the state and a portion is disbursed back to the municipalities to stabilize costs and control and/or reduce property taxes – it’s your money. Over the decades, the process for returning money back to the municipalities has always been some type of formula using the number of residents from each municipality derived from the census. This number is then plugged into a formula and out comes your state aid.
This is not a hand out, we as residents pay into this system far more than what we are given back; in fact, a large portion of what we contribute goes to bail out other larger municipalities. This has always been the greatest criticism of this system. It has always been the towns that do what they should, such as controlling costs and balancing their budgets that get penalized - the ones that don’t, receive the lion’s share of state aid. The governor’s plan to cut funding to the towns with fewer than 10,000 people will devastate small communities in New Jersey. This will cause an incredible rise in property tax. This message is coming from the same man whose campaign platform was property tax relief.
Governor Corzine's plan will force small towns to carry the burden of all Trenton’s misspending and corruption on our backs, while the large voting blocks will continue to receive the same amount of aid and then some! This is unacceptable! If the state government must cut state aid, then it should be done across the board equally and include the school districts, so the burden is carried equally across New Jersey, not just by the municipalities with the smallest voting blocks.
As taxpayers, we intend to fight this - in fact, we feel this plan may be unconstitutional to select, by municipality’s population, who should have to bail out the state and who shouldn’t. We hope with your help we can ban together with other taxpayers of small communities who are selectively being prosecuted, to fight this. If you agree with our cause click on the link to the left " Sign Our Petition" and join us in sending a message to New Jersey’s State Assembly and the Governor that we are NOT IN FAVOR of his proposed plan and the effects it will have on your local property tax.