How N.J. tax-overhaul idea sank

It was to have been merely an experiment, an attempt to see if eliminating local school superintendents and merging administrative functions in one county office - maybe in Gloucester, maybe somewhere else - would lead to lower taxes.

But after just two weeks of intense lobbying by local education union officials, and two days after thousands stormed a Washington Township meeting fearing the proposal would gut their children's schools, Gloucester County legislators said they had effectively killed the whole idea.

Other attempts to cut the country's highest property taxes have met a similar fate --snip--

Educators and current and retired public employees are powerful and reliable voting blocs that could make up as much as a third of the likely voters this November, when the entire legislature faces re-election, Rebovich said

I'll believe they are serious about lowering property taxes when politicians are actually held accountable for their misspending.

i.e., daily catered gourmet lunches, little shield pins ($1,200 each) for getting out of traffic inquiries by police, oh, how much did all that new furniture cost? about $3,500 a chair?

Evil is the incapability of empathy. Until they can empathize with our lives, they will never be able to serve us.

Remember where this is coming from...Philly Inquirer!
I live in the county mentioned. I WENT to the meeting where over 3000 parents and teachers met these so-called legislators. The "experiment" they talk about was nothing but a power grab by the state with a bait and switch show. Not ONCE did the state senators say how they were going to save money...what they wanted to do was set up a county-wide district...dissolve all local elected school boards by making them "advisory," politically appoint a 4 member board for the whole county (Corzine of course would be in on that), fire the superintendents (who would then simply bump on down the line of administration and still be paid the same)and the list goes on. They could not even explain the mechanism to be used for lowering taxes because it WOULD'T! Does anyone here think that this new politically appointed superintendent wouldn't hire loads of people? With no vote to fire the school board OR the superintendent, the voters would have no say at all!!!
A democrat in North Jersey put this thing together, it never got press and was going to push it through the same way ALL of New Jersey politics is done...on the sly. They had NO plan for savings....they're just trying to get a quick fix for high property taxes and our senator was trying to accomodate Corzine by throwing up our county as the guinea pig! The plan would mandate TEN YEARS of experimenting before requiring it to work!!!
We ARE the stupid state....BUT not in this case. This was another way to shaft southern New Jersey (probably the most conservative area---and that's not much-- in the state)

Correction please!

Southern New Jersey is not the conservative part. They haven't elected a conservative congresscritter in years. The most conservative part is the northwest: Sussex and Hunterdon and Somerset and Morris counties.

These areas also have opposed the plan which would do away with home rule for local schoolboards.

In other words, taxes won't be reduced in New Jersey any time soon since you're talking of laying off a good many people - those who work for government now make up a third of the state's voters. A reliable Democratic constituency.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

You're right ...they have voted Democrat, but Salem county is the only one that voted for Bush. The problem with South Jersey is that so many Philadelphians moved here to escape Philly and brought the Democratic values with them. We actually HAVE had Republicans in local elections...but the Democratic machine of Camden has grown with each Dem's election. The real problem in ALL of Jersey is that we have too many RINOs...we tried to get Schundler in, and the Republican party shunned him! Since the counties you mentionned have also fought this plan by the Dems, I guess you can agree with me that it was a BAD law, despite the fact that the Teacher's union was against it. The only ones for it were the Dems that want more power in their counties.

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