New Jersey property taxes are up — again. The Asbury Park Press calculates 2015’s increase is the highest in four years. It’s up by an average 2.4 percent, although the hike in Seaside Heights is a stunning 12.5 percent. How is that even possible given there’s a legal cap on tax hikes of 2 percent? Michael Symons is a reporter for the Asbury Park Press. He spoke with NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams.
Williams: The years following the 2010 2 percent property tax cap law saw a huge decline in taxes so why are we seeing an uptick now?
Symons: The cap that was put into effect had some exceptions to it. They were things like pensions, and health benefits if they’re emergencies, there are some costs that can go above the 2 percent cap. There was a separate law that was passed in conjunction with the cap that was very controversial about health benefits and pensions and pushing more of those costs over to public workers, so for a few years as that law was ramping up and going into effect the towns and the school districts were able to push more of their costs over to the public workers. That law is mostly fazed in at this point so all the increases are falling on them.
Williams: South Jersey seems to be hit harder than North Jersey. Some towns like Seaside Heights have huge tax increases. What accounts for such a huge increase this year, particularly down there?
Symons: It’s interesting, a lot of it is town by town, though as you said a lot of South Jersey counties seem to have larger hikes. In part, places with growing populations can have a harder time keeping up. They’re also about half the towns in the state where the rateable base actually has declined from year to year, so if the amount in taxes that they’re able to levy goes up, but the rateable base goes down then that’s also going to help push things beyond 2 percent which is part of why some of the increases at the shore get really confusing over the past couple of years as places try to recover from Sandy.
Williams: I understand that this is not the final final numbers, but your calculations. How did you crunch the numbers for 2015?
Symons: A lot of public records requests and records downloads. I basically input it into the same type of spreadsheets that the state Department of Community Affairs produces each year. I tried to do the same thing. Their information will come out, I’m not exactly sure when, sometimes it’s as early as February, other times it’s not until the spring. We were trying to get an earlier start on that in an effort to see if there was a possible way of getting property taxes more in the forefront and on people’s minds as the State of the State was starting, as the legislative session was starting. Very often by the time the numbers come out all those priorities have been set for the year so hopefully that can have some sort of impact in influencing what gets debated.
Williams: Is there any indication that this is going to be mentioned in the State of the State or that lawmakers are looking to tinker with this any time soon? And where does the responsibility lie: on the state or the municipalities to reign in taxes?
Symons: On the second part of that, that becomes part of why I suppose it’s difficult to resolve is that it’s fairly easy for either side to point to the other one. Yes, the state doesn’t levy property taxes although its decisions have a lot to do with how much state aid the towns get and whether they’ll have that as an option for how to spend on things, any laws that get passed that influence what they’re going to have to spend. I don’t know that Gov. Christie will directly discuss property taxes in the State of the State but he seems likely to again talk about his frequent call for pensions and health benefit reforms and if additional changes were made in that area it could conceivably have an impact on property taxes although they were talking about using the savings from the health benefits as a way for the state to make its pension payments so it may not have the same impact locally that the first benefit reforms had for 2011.
Williams: Gov. Christie’s touted his success in capping property taxes on the campaign trail. Does this have the potential to harm his presidential run based on this year’s increase?
Symons: I think a lot of people know that New Jersey’s a high tax state and other Republicans throw that out at him already. The property tax increase in 2015 was 2.4, the year before I think it was 2.1, the year before that was below 2 percent. So, I think it’s certainly trending in the wrong direction. But even at 2.4 percent this isn’t like the tax increases that we were seeing before the cap when it was frequently 5, 6, 7 percent a year, so it’s kind of sliding in an unfortunate direction, but it doesn’t appear to be the bad old days.