From the Home News Tribune:
During a three-hour public hearing yesterday on the property tax, there was a point of unanimous agreement among about two dozen speakers: The New Jersey property tax is an onerous burden.
What to do about it, is another story.At the Joint Legislative Committee on Constitutional Reform and Citizens Property Tax Convention, hosted here by six legislators, members of advocacy groups and private citizens, were invited to offer suggestions on how to tackle the problem.
Many speakers came to support the Smart Bill, legislation proposed by Assemblyman Louis Manzo, D-Hudson, to shift more of the burden of paying for public schools from the local property tax to the income tax.
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Representatives of several business groups cautioned against shifting a higher burden onto business properties.
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“Any significant increase in their New Jersey specific business costs due to a property-tax differential, makes New Jersey a less competitive place,” said Seneca.Seneca’s remarks came after Hughes cited numbers reflecting slow job growth. The state’s private sector job-growth rate of 4 percent in 2006, trails the national growth rate of 9 percent. It ranks 43rd in the country, trailing, among others, West Virginia and Alabama, whom Hughes dismissively described as “powerhouses.”
While the nation added 1.4 million jobs in the high-tech sector this year, only 8,400 of those jobs were added in New Jersey, compared to 166,000 in Texas, 130,000 in Virginia and 75,000 in Georgia.
Hughes blamed the slow growth on the state’s “reputation as a high-cost place of doing businesses.”
