NJ Governor's Race

This is a nice interview with Genovese, if you're interested.

I agree, Genovese's priority is property taxes and I think that's good.  She says the pension crisis can "bring us to our knees."  She also supports real pension reform.

mfpark said:

What do folks know about Gina Genovese?  I know so little about her, other than she is making property tax reduction through muncipality consolidation the core of her program.  Oh, and she ran well against Tom Kean, Jr once, was the first Democratic mayor of some small hamlet, and was the first openly gay mayor in NJ.

The question she was not asked is why she is running as an Independent rather than having run in the Primary as either a Democrat or Republican. As an Independent how does she expect her ideas to get across? Even the politically savvy on MOL hadn't heard of her until now.

South_Mountaineer said:

Guadagno's attempt to distinguish herself from Trump has not been helped by her Willie Horton-esque ad that sounds like it came from Trump's anti-immigrant script. 

I hate that commercial. It's just awful.

mfpark said:

What do folks know about Gina Genovese?  

More than I did an hour ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Genovese

Municipal and school district consolidation will only get us so far.  The entire property tax system needs to be fundamentally changed in New Jersey.

Runner_Guy said:

This is a nice interview with Genovese, if you're interested.

I agree, Genovese's priority is property taxes and I think that's good.  She says the pension crisis can "bring us to our knees."  She also supports real pension reform.

mfpark said:

What do folks know about Gina Genovese?  I know so little about her, other than she is making property tax reduction through muncipality consolidation the core of her program.  Oh, and she ran well against Tom Kean, Jr once, was the first Democratic mayor of some small hamlet, and was the first openly gay mayor in NJ.

Municipal property taxes are actually quite reasonable. Maybe you can save a few shekels by sharing services or consolidating but it is not going to make that big a difference. 

County property taxes are a bigger issue. Why do we have counties. Seems like much of what they do should be done at the state or municipal level. 

But the elephant in the room is school funding. Regionalization might result in a bit more equity in distribution of taxes and would cut some administrative costs. But pretty much all the schools that exist would need to continue to exist. The only solution to more equitable funding is to move largely away from property taxes as the funding method to a state wide progressive income tax.But it is all about funding. Statewide education spending is not really out of line so can not be significantly reduced.

I agree with you that regionalization wouldn't save a lot of money (at least directly), but NJ's school spending really is very high, with NJ at #3 in per student spending, after AK and NY.

http://www.nea.org/home/70716.htm

Many people attribute NJ's high spending to NJ's having high cost of living, and that's partly correct, but NJ's spending is disproportionate to what our cost of living is.  In terms of our resources, we are #2 in spending as a percentage of state GDP (after VT). 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtYmwryVI00VDhjRGlDOUh3VE0/view 

I think that school funding *could* be reduced practically, but not politically.  People want small class sizes, more supports, nicer facilities etc.  

Although I sometimes like to see deep structural reasons for NJ's high taxes or blame NJ's high taxes on the Supreme Court or public sector unions, at a certain level, NJ's high taxes are the result of voter choices.  

I can't prove this, but my theory is the way fragmentation drives property taxes higher is that people accept higher taxes because they know that the taxes will benefit their own children.  Many people, who might not have kids in the system, sincerely believe that having high taxes = having better schools, and that will increase their own property values.  (I subscribe that myself.)

If larger districts existed, people would be less likely to see a personal benefit to higher taxes and even less likely to see a personal real estate appreciation benefit.

I could be wrong about this, but I've known lots of people to justify higher taxes through personal benefit and real estate arguments.

ska said:

Municipal property taxes are actually quite reasonable. Maybe you can save a few shekels by sharing services or consolidating but it is not going to make that big a difference. 

County property taxes are a bigger issue. Why do we have counties. Seems like much of what they do should be done at the state or municipal level. 

But the elephant in the room is school funding. Regionalization might result in a bit more equity in distribution of taxes and would cut some administrative costs. But pretty much all the schools that exist would need to continue to exist. The only solution to more equitable funding is to move largely away from property taxes as the funding method to a state wide progressive income tax.But it is all about funding. Statewide education spending is not really out of line so can not be significantly reduced.