No action on property taxes. Where do we go from here?

Richard Dougherty (aka The Mogambo Guru) over at The Daily Reckoning has this sarcastic comment on why the city of New London needs to upgrade its tax ratables and it could apply to nearly every city in New Jersey and to the Sate as well.

“They have provided for legions of city workers who are, like all government workers everywhere, grossly overpaid and under-worked, and who have benefit packages so outrageously generous that they are not even available anywhere in the private sector, and they are under-funded. They have promised lifetime pensions to everybody that ever sat on the City Council, or worked for the government, or even merely walked by City Hall one day when they were handing out generous pensions to everybody in sight. They have continuously built parks and playgrounds and recreational facilities and gymnasiums and nature trails and museums and swimming pools and erected a multitude of public buildings, and staffed all of them to the max. They have responded to the egregiously bad performance of their educational system by paying the bad teachers and administrators more and more and more, instead of firing them. They have created local entitlement programs and welfare programs and before-school breakfast programs and after-school latch-key programs and school-crossing guard programs and assistance programs of every stripe. They have whole fleets of new cars and trucks for city employees. They have issued general obligation bonds and revenue-anticipation bonds by the truck full. “

The Legislature has left town without addressing the property tax issue on any level whether through the convention or by special session. This issue is going to be fought in a bruising gubernatorial election this year where property taxes are going to be the single largest issue. Both candidates have put forward plans that, to me, don’t seem to offer any long lasting relief from the non-stop growth of spending on both a State and Municipal level. What are we to do?

As citizens we need to be fighting for initiative and referendum. It is only by this device will we be able to stop the over-heated spending of our elected representatives. Four times there has been an effort in New Jersey to allow residents initiative and referendum power. Four times it has failed. Now is the time to resurrect this idea. Our elected leaders are incapable legislating any spending cuts. Let the people do it for them!