State attempts to force consolidation by bankrupting small municipalities

It is extremely disheartening to see the state of New Jersey once again try to balance its budget at the expense of municipal budgets. It is getting extremely tiresome to hear that municipal government is wasting money and should tighten its belt when we can read about state waste every day in the newspapers. The state has no oversight of their own departments, yet it tells us we are wasteful and inefficient. Jamesburg will pay off all debt in 2009 through an aggressive plan to reduce property taxes and plan for the future. Can the state say the same?

A state budget reduction is not property-tax relief when the very appropriations that are cut are those used to offset property taxes.

The citizens of Jamesburg and 329 other smaller municipalities have been robbed. They pay their income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, etc., to the state, but the state is now saying they have no right to be citizens of small towns in the first place. Therefore, they will pay more than citizens in their neighboring larger municipalities.

The state has cut our municipal aid in half because we have a population between 5,000 and 10,000. Those under 5,000 were cut completely. What's next? 20,000? 50,000? Will New Jersey eventually be made up of 20 huge municipalities?

The state is trying to force consolidation by bankrupting small municipalities. Never mind that there is no proof that consolidation saves money. Never mind that the larger municipalities are getting more money, and, therefore, have no incentive whatsoever to consider consolidation or shared services. The smaller municipalities already have numerous costsaving, shared-service agreements in effect and have for many years. We also run extremely efficiently already out of necessity. There have been no reports that show bigger government runs better. To the contrary, the state of New Jersey itself is the largest government we have, and its own fiscal affairs are far from efficient. If it had budgeted properly and paid the constitutional amounts of state-aid funding throughout the years, municipalities would not have a property-tax issue to begin with.

Yet for all the talk of property tax relief, the state continues to enact legislation that is costly to municipalities. Every bill introduced by the Legislature is examined by the borough for fiscal impact. We then petition the state to reconsider those that will raise property taxes. That is what the legislators should be doing before they introduce these bills. Much of the legislation is demanded by specialinterest groups, and the state continues to support those groups at the expense of local governments and their taxpayers.

We need to call on our state representatives to treat all their citizens equally. Citizens who choose to live in a small community should not be penalized and treated as second-class citizens of this state.

Anthony LaMantia

Mayor Jamesburg