Info Relating To Ballot Question #2

Vote for Open Space this Election Day Nov 4th

Vote Yes on Public Question 2 to Provide for Preservation Efforts in New Jersey!

Please email this message onto family and friends. We need everyone who can vote to vote for Public Question #2 on Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

On November 4, New Jersey voters have the opportunity to dedicate state funds to ensure the future of parks, open spaces, farmlands and historic treasures. All funds from the statewide bond measure that voters approved in 2009 are allocated, and nothing remains to provide for future preservation efforts. Public Question 2 will ensure dedicated long-term funding for the now-depleted Green Acres, Blue Acres, farmland and historic preservation programs.

By dedicating a percentage of existing Corporate Business Tax revenues, Public Question 2 would ensure reliable long-term funding for critical preservation efforts to continue. The state currently dedicates 4% of the money collected from the Corporate Business Tax to help pay for some environmental programs, and Public Question 2 changes the way some of those programs are funded and raises the amount from 4% to 6% beginning in July 2019. Public Question 2, Green Acres, Blue Acres and farmland and historic preservation programs will receive approximately $71 million annually for the first five years and then $117 million annually thereafter. Public Question 2 only changes the dedication of existing tax dollars and does not increase taxes.

Again, there is no state funding left for preservation programs in New Jersey, but tremendous needs remain. According to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, more than 650,000 acres still need to be preserved to protect water and natural resources and to provide recreational opportunities to a growing population. The New Jersey Department of Agriculture reports that 350,000 acres of additional farmland must be preserved to maintain a viable agriculture industry.

This November 4th, please ensure New Jersey continues its preservation legacy by voting YES on Public Question 2!
To learn more or volunteer, visit njkeepitgreen.org.

There's No doubt About It, You Can Expect Your Property Taxes To Go Up - WAY UP!

If you live in the northern Monmouth County Bayshore region or other coastal area in or around our state, you better start preparing yourself for the next big hit from Hurricane Sandy.

It doesn't matter whether or not you or your home were directly impacted by the storm or not. What matters is that if you happen to live in a town that was impacted by Sandy, you can expect your local property taxes to go up, WAY UP, this year as municipalities start putting together their budgets.

Due to the damage inflict on local residences and business as a result of Hurricane Sandy, many have lost a significant portion of their value while others will never be rebuilt. As a result, revenue generated by local property taxes will be significantly down for the foreseeable future, which means you will pay more to your town hall.

In Middletown, hundreds of properties in North Middletown, Port Monmouth, Belford and Leonardo were damaged and rendered uninhabitable (and may never be habitable again). Middletown still needs to generate roughly $45 million worth of revenues through local property tax assessments even though home values are no longer as high as they once were. Therefore, you can expect a huge increase in the tax rate to offset the loss of revenues created by the aftermath of Sandy.

So don't expect to hear much about trying to maintain that 2% cap on property  taxes this year because it aint gonna happen.

 The New York Times has an article on this today: Towns’ Next Hit From Hurricane Is to Tax Revenue  

OLS Revises Revenue Numbers Down … Again; Will Leaders Step Up to Stop the Tax Cut Madness?

by David Rousseau  |  Published in NJPP Blog: As a Matter of Fact ...


The news on the income side of the state’s bank ledger got even worse yesterday, with the Office of Legislative Services (OLS) notifying budget committee members that FY 2012 revenue is $50 million to $100 million below its estimates of just two weeks ago. As New Jersey’s potential shortfall reaches $1.5 billion, will the growing chorus calling to reject any tax cut grow louder?
 
May revenue collections from the major taxes came in “somewhat” below OLS’s expectations – expectations that were already more than $600 million below the Christie administration’s most recent projections.

The biggest surprise to OLS was the sales tax, which was actually 2.3 percent lower than last May, bringing the year-to-date growth in sales tax to 2.4 percent. In order to reach the administration’s target, sales tax would now have to grow by 8.3 percent in June; to reach OLS’s target, collections would have to increase by 7.2 percent. That’s asking a lot of any month.

Likewise, income and corporate business taxes are showing slow year-to-date growth (2.4 percent and 1.8 percent) and would have to increase at a much quicker pace in June (4.3 percent and 15 percent) if this year’s revenue targets are to be hit.

With the poor May numbers now in hand, OLS says revenue for the current year will be $50 million to $100 million below its forecast from just two weeks ago. If you adjust next year’s revenue for the new projected shortfall, the overall gap could increase between $100 million to $200 million. This could bring the shortfall to a total of $1.5 billion more than the governor originally estimated, and $800 million more than what the treasurer suggested it would be two weeks ago.

To their credit, Senators Codey and Lesniak have already gone on record saying that now is not the time to reduce state revenues. In addition, Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Prieto has repeatedly raised concerns about the validity of the “New Jersey Comeback” and cited the need to be cautious about any revenue reductions.

The politics among Democratic legislators is getting trickier as Senate President Sweeney continues to push a Christie-Sweeney tax cut. What might have made sense in February, when the projected two-year deficit was a more manageable $500 million or so looks increasingly dangerous to the state’s financial health. In March, no one expected that we would have to borrow the money from our kids to pay for our tax cut. Now, the treasurer says that we must.

A true fiscal conservative would never support more borrowing for less revenue in a state still in the throes of the Great Recession. The latest numbers should make fiscal conservatives of Democrats and Republicans alike.

One Month to Go: What Updated Budget Information Means for Deliberations

 by David Rousseau  |  Published in NJPP Blog: As a Matter of Fact ...

Last week’s presentations to the budget committees by the treasurer and the Office of Legislative Services (OLS) complete the legislature’s public review of the governor’s proposed FY 2013 budget, and they will provide the framework for negotiations between the administration and legislators leading up to the June 30 budget deadline.

So what do the new revenue projections and spending updates mean for next year’s budget? The answer to that lies in the answer to a number of key questions:

What is the significance of the more than $600 million revenue difference between OLS ($1.3 billion shortfall) and the Christie Administration ($676 million shortfall)?

Based on the history of revenue estimating, it is safe to assume that both updated revenue estimates will be wrong. The questions will be by how far and in what direction.

In periods of economic recovery, the administration and OLS generally both underestimate actual revenue. This year, however, with the difference being so large, the actual collections could fall in between the two estimates.

While the more than $600 million difference in projected revenue represents only a 1 percent difference in revenue over a two-year period, it does represent the largest difference since 2001 when OLS was nearly $1.6 billion below the DiFrancesco administration’s estimates. The 1 percent differential is also similar to 2009, when OLS was $574 million below the estimates of the Corzine administration.

Despite its statistically small size, the difference is significant since it represents more than double the amount of the surplus estimated in the budget.

What are the potential consequences of using the OLS estimates?

If legislative leaders decided to adopt the non-partisan revenue estimates that are $628 million lower than the administration’s revised estimates, they would have to a similar amount in additional spending reductions and/or revenue to offset the loss. Due to the cuts that have been made by the Corzine and Christie administrations there are not many – if any – additional spending reductions that would not have substantial impact on state programs and residents.

An easy way to make up some of that money would be to nix the tax cut plans, at least for this year. But even doing that would only save the state $183 million next year – or less than 30 percent of the overall shortfall. The legislature would still need to find an additional $444 million in budget reductions or new revenues. This would not be an easy task.

Using the OLS numbers would severely impact the legislature’s ability to deal with other concerns in the governor’s budget. In fact, addressing some of the major concerns in the governor’s budget would likely be improbable since the legislature would first have to find the $627 million to cover the OLS shortfall, and then find additional reductions or revenue to fund any policy changes they may want to make to the budget.

It is interesting to note that the FY 2013 impact of the “millionaires’ tax” that was vetoed by the governor last year is about $800 million. If Democrats wanted to cover the shortfall this year, a similar proposal could easily do so, while providing an extra $180 million to address other policy concerns. But don’t hold your breath; even if the measure didn’t face a certain veto, Democrats would want any “fair share” tax to help fund popular programs like property tax relief or education, not to cover a revenue shortfall.

If the legislature adopts the OLS revenue estimates, and actual revenue collections during the year are closer or even above the administration estimates, the governor would then have this additional revenue to use in the FY 2014 budget (the possible reelection budget). In other words, the legislature would take the heat for any cuts or other actions they took to offset the shortfall, and the governor might get extra revenue for politically driven election-year proposals.

And if the legislature adopts the OLS estimates and they turn out to be on point, there is still no major downside for the administration, as it won’t have to make any cuts or adjustments – that dirty work will have already been done by legislators.

What are the potential consequences of using the administration’s estimates?

There are relatively no short-term negative consequences to using the administration’s revenue numbers, even though they are $628 million more optimistic than OLS’s. The administration is willing to risk that its numbers will be correct; if they aren’t, it won’t likely have to be dealt with – or even acknowledged – until the governor prepares his FY 2014 budget next February.

Politically, using the higher revenue estimates allows the administration to keep the same growth rates it had assumed in February, thus maintaining the illusion of stronger economic growth as part of the “New Jersey Comeback.” It also allows the administration to continue to push for its tax cuts, since it has already covered the shortfall in its revised plan.

If the actual collections are lower than the estimates, the administration will need to make adjustments to the budget to address the additional shortfall. Unless there is a major negative change in the economy in the next six months, any shortfall will likely not materialize until the second half of the year, and would be dealt with as part of the FY 2014 budget.

In the short term, the administration will have to defend these revenue projections to the rating agencies as they prepare their annual review of the state budget and make pronouncements on the state’s fiscal health. It should be noted that Moody’s recently stated that they expect revenue growth for FY 2014 would be similar to the growth in the current year. If that pans out, OLS says, there could be a total revenue shortfall of over $2 billion.

What estimates are likely to be used for the budget?

Even though the Democratic leadership jumped to the estimates of OLS last June you should not bet the mortgage on the Democrats being consistent. Last year OLS had projected more revenue than the administration, so the use of those estimates allowed the Democrats to propose additional spending.

But “consistency” is not an adjective that can be used to describe decision-making by legislators. It is highly likely that this year, they will defer to the governor and use the estimates presented by the state treasurer.

Unless the administration reduces its estimates further based on collections over the next few weeks, the budget will likely be based on the administration’s numbers. With more money to play with, legislators can move forward with their own tax-cut plans, and possibly address other minor concerns that have bubbled up during the budget hearings.

Christie's Rosy Revenue Projections Are A Fraud

For Immediate Release:
Thursday,May 24, 2012

Still Pushing Tax Cuts to Multi-Millionaires While Lying About Revenue Projections Will Only Delay A Genuine Jersey Comeback

(NEW JERSEY) - The non-partisan Office of Legislative Services is warning that New Jersey is facing a whopping $1.3 billion tax revenue shortfall. These bleak numbers show the rosy revenue numbers Governor Chris Christie has been touting for the past several months have been self-serving, delusional and completely wrong.

Christie's administration now claims the revenue shortfall will "only" be a mere $676 million - which is akin to saying Snooki is just a little bit tan. Even with this newly-crafted, best-case scenario, Christie continues pushing income tax cuts for the wealthy in spite of the bad news. In fact, yesterday, the OLS's budget chief said an additional $900 million shortage could be tacked onto the already-stark numbers if revenue growth rate continues at its current clip.

Just as his "Jersey Comeback" has been undercut by reality and cold hard facts, Christie's revenue projections are inflated and unrealistic. Since the non-partisan OLS numbers don't match his stubborn attempts to cut taxes for the super-wealthy, Christie has once again resorted to name-calling and mean-spirited attacks. He's referred to OLS staff as "Dr. Kevorkian" and "hand maidens." Hopefully, his salty language won't fool anyone into ignoring the real issue. Namely, that Christie's rosy rhetoric fails to match reality.

Just as there is one set of rules for Chris Christie and one set of rules for everyone else, it seems there is also one set of revenue projections for Chris Christie and another for everyone else. Christie's delusional fairy tale flies in the face of facts that consistently prove tax cuts to the super-wealthy fail to create jobs, but instead merely create more wealth for the One Percent - many of whom are his campaign donors - to sit on.

Christie likes to say the debate now isn't whether to cut taxes or not, but which taxes to cut. Well... the question now isn't whether Christie's rosy revenue projections are off, but whether they are only insanely off by hundreds of millions like he now admits, or obscenely off by $1.3 billion, as OLS projects.

Christie wants to claim more money on the books, so he can bankroll unfair and unsustainable tax cuts benefiting the One Percent, while leaving the middle-class out in the cold. Yet, it is painfully clear that the state does not have the money needed to fund this scheme. And it is New Jersey's middle-class and municipalities who will be harmed if it comes to pass. By continuing to foolishly and blindly charge ahead and push tax cuts to multi-millionaires while lying about the numbers, Christie is simply delaying a genuine Jersey Comeback.

* * * *

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Middletown residents: Oppose excessive taxation

Also published online today over at the Asbury Park Press is the following letter by Gerry Deceglia, a resident of Middletown. I don't know Mr. Deceglia but he makes a valid point pertaining to tax revenues and spending cuts as they pertain to the Township budget. While I don't think he wrote is 100% accurate, it does show a level of frustration that residents have towards those that have been running Middletown for the past 30 years:

Words cannot describe how deeply upset I am that not even a full year has passed since Middletown officials last raised property taxes, and now they are at it again.

Politicians do not seem to care one bit how impossible it is becoming for citizens to even breathe under all this excessive taxation.

 People are struggling to find and/or hold on to their jobs, keep their homes, keep food on the table, deal with $4-a-gallon gasoline, and Middletown officials want to raise our taxes again? All in order to pay for higher health care costs for township employees that they themselves should be paying for?

 We residents simply do not have any more money. Along with having township employees pay more into their own health care plans, just as private-sector workers are being forced to do, what about township officials making some real spending cuts across the board to fall in line with current tax revenues?

 This excessive taxation is no longer just simply unfair. It is downright diabolical. It is also unsustainable.

The definition of tyranny is oppressive government. How many other Middletown residents feel that government has become oppressive? If you feel as I do, please come to the meeting on April 30 at the town hall in Middletown and speak up.

Do not allow these politicians to force us out of our homes, our town, and our state. Enough is enough!

 Gerry Deceglia 

 Middletown

Media Myth That Cutting Taxes Boosts Revenue Revived For 2012

Media Matters has a terrific post about the myth that tax cuts generate revenues and that bigger tax cuts generate larger revenues.

Media Matters shows how these claims are debunked by not only by those on the Left, like Paul Krugman but also by those on the Right, who actually proposed the claim and sold it to Ronald Reagan and George w. Bush.

Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist who was the first chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers estimated that a 10 percent tax cut would in fact reduce tax revenue -- but only by 3 to 5 percent.

"It is not that you get more revenue by lowering tax rates, it is that you don't lose as much," he said. [The New York Times, 3/26/08]


Read ... Here

This post I think ties in nicely with the last post from NJPP about what our tax dollars actually pay for.

Cut And Grow Fail: CBO Schools Tea Party Freshman In Basic Economics

This little ditty was posted Friday on Talking Points Memo. It should be a wake-up call to all those TEA partiers and other right-wingers out there that think that all will be fine in the world if we only cut spending and do nothing to increase revenue.

Unfortunately though, regardless of economic schooling provided by the CBO, there will those that continue to burry their heads in the sand and refuse to believe anything a socialist government agency has to say:

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), a Tea Party-backed freshman who voted against the final debt limit bill, recently asked to hear from the Congressional Budget Office about the impact of government spending on economic growth. It's an article of faith on the right that vastly shrinking government will unleash the forces of private enterprise, and faced with CBO's opposing view, Huelskamp wanted to know the answer to two questions:

1). What current federal departments, agencies, programs, or portions thereof do not contribute to economic growth?

2). In the programs that CBO believes do contribute to economic growth, what level of spending cuts would amount to a level you believe would be significant enough to "probably slow the economic recovery"?

But if the newly elected member of the Budget Committee was hoping the non-partisan CBO would buy into his premise, he'll be sorely disappointed.

In a response letter Thursday, CBO-chief Doug Elmendorf gives Huelskamp a layman's lesson in Keynesian economics: Under current economic circumstances, new federal spending would help economic growth, and current and future cuts could stymie it, particularly if they hit key government investment.

"When demand for goods and services falls short of the economy's ability to produce them, as is the case currently, increasing government spending can increase aggregate demand and thereby narrow the gap between the economy's actual and potential levels of output," Elmendorf writes.

The precise details matter. The more robust the economy, the lower the impact. But, according to Elmendorf, "when the Federal Reserve's ability to lower short-run interest rates is constrained because those rates are already near zero, as they are currently, the short-run effects of changes in government spending on output tend to be larger than usual."

To illustrate the point, Elmendorf notes that deficit reduction measures that cut spending by $100 billion next fiscal year, and hundreds of billions more over the coming decade "would decrease real (inflation-adjusted) gross national product (GNP) in 2012, 2013, and 2014 by amounts ranging from roughly 0.1 percent to 0.6 percent depending on the year and the assumptions used." In other words, the GOP's current governing theory is damaging the economy and, by implication, costing jobs. And for those Republicans who want to cut more, " a reduction in primary deficits that followed the same gradual time path but was twice as large would produce macroeconomic effects that were roughly twice as large."


Talking Points Memo on Facebook
There are important growth-related reasons to reduce deficits if and when the economy improves -- it reduces the extent to which government spending "crowds out" private investment, by undertaking functions the private sector can do more efficiently. But we're not there yet and, according to CBO, won't be until the end of the decade. Spending cuts like the ones describe above, "[a]t the turn of the decade, from 2019 through 2021...would increase [GNP] by roughly 0.5 percent to 1.4 percent."

But again the specifics matter, and if the GOP wants to slash across the board, they'll do damage anyhow.

"Some types of spending, such as funding for improvements to roads and highways, may add to the economy's potential output in much the same way that private capital investment does," Elmendorf writes. "Other policies, such as funding for grants to increase access to college education may raise long-term productivity by enhancing people's skills. The positive longer-term impact of deficit reduction on GNP would be smaller if the policies that reduced deficits included cuts in productive government investments."

Huelskamp's original letter is here. Read Elmendorf's response here.

The letters stem from the below exchange between Huelskamp and Elmendorf at a recent Budget committee hearing. Elmendorf and Huelskamp are arguing two different points. Huelskamp would like to see big cuts to federal safety net programs and other spending. Elmendorf argues that while the macroeconomic consequences of slashing some of those programs might be minimal in the long run, the near-term impact would be significant, given the current downturn.

Jon Stewart: Dealageddon! - A Compromise Without Revenues

The debt ceiling debate ends in a budget deal that raises the debt limit and includes trillions in spending cuts but has no revenue increases.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Dealageddon! - A Compromise Without Revenues
www.thedailyshow.com
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As A Matter Of Fact...New Jersey revenue projections

May 17th, 2011 | Published in NJPP Blog: As a Matter of Fact …

New Jersey Policy Perspective president Deborah Howlett made the following statement about revenue projections presented today to the Assembly Budget Committee by the Office of Legislative Services:

While it’s great to hear that New Jersey tax revenues seem to have bottomed out and are beginning to climb, the state remains stuck in a very deep hole.

The Office of Legislative Services projects that revenues will approach $29.9 billion next year, an increase of $1.17billion over its current year estimates. However, even with that growth, the state’s revenue collections would still be $3.4 billion less than was collected in FY2008, the year prior to the recession. Almost all of the increase is driven by higher income tax collections fueled by the rebound on Wall Street. Revenues from sales, corporate business and other taxes are still below estimates.

The state must choose to invest these revenues wisely, using the money to restore the devastating cuts made to services and to pay into the state pension system. The money should not be used, as the governor suggested was his goal during his budget address in February, to fuel $2.5 billion in corporate tax breaks over the next five years. He’s already used $1 billion in future tax revenues to subsidize corporations and business since taking office. Those efforts have contributed to the state’s lackluster corporate tax revenue collections and have failed to create quality jobs. It’s time to abandon old, tired trickle down economic theory and embrace the reality that creating a strong, vibrant economy and attracting good, solid middle class jobs requires great schools, safe streets and the high quality of living New Jersey attained before the recession.

While the increase in revenue is welcome news, New Jersey still has far to go before it is made whole again.

Hold Onto Your Wallets, Middletown To Introduce Budget That Includes a 12.2% Tax Increase

Hold onto your purse strings and wallets ladies and gentleman, I got my hands on the proposed 2010 Middletown Municipal Budget before its introduction and as we have been saying for a long time now, it isn't pretty!

The budget that will be introduced during the Special Budget Introduction Meeting tonight at 7pm will total nearly $65M and will reflect a spending increase over last years budget of 4.9%, it calls for a 12.2% tax increase that will raise $5.55M to fund it!

As I said it isn't pretty, I spent a few hours reviewing it after I requested a copy of it from Committeeman Sean Byrnes, who was nice enough to forward it to me in advance of the budget meeting. In the email that accompanied the budget Byrnes wrote:

"...much of this was foreseeable, pension increase $1.8M, payback $800k from 2009, salary increases $1.5M, health care increase $1.6M, these total over $6.0M. No surprise. We knew this in 2009 and yet they refused all my recommendations including fixed fee legal retainer, bidding out engineering work, cutting Middletown matters, cutting Middletown day, contracting out leaf and brush, consolidating maintenance and refusing finance cmte. Even now we should be assuming the governors tool chest will pass and we should be planning accordingly..."

Why the big increase, what are the driving forces behind the budget? In addition to what Sean Byrnes stated, nearly every appropriation line item in the budget saw an increase of some kind even though most revenues streams dried up.

Not surprisingly, after the mayor took such a public stance against the MTEA after April's defeat of the school budget, taking his lead from Governor Christie and insisting that the teachers accept a wage freeze and contribute to their health benefits, the largest overall increase in the budget after the increase to the health and pension funds were Salaries and Wages paid out to employees who will enjoy an 8.9% increase over last year!

If you doubt what I say, you can print out a copy for yourself >>> Here and see for yourself.

If you plan on attending the budget introduction meeting bring a copy of the budget with you, along with your questions in order to ask the mayor why he and others on the Township Committee have done such a poor job in preparing for and planning this budget. If they would have heeded Sean Byrnes and former Committeeman Patrick Short's advice over the past year and leading up to the introduction of this budget, the situation we find ourselves in today may not have been so costly to residents.

Video:Roberts, Watson Coleman & Greenwald on Better-Than-Expected Tax Amnesty Revenue Figures

In this video press release, Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr. (D-Camden), Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Mercer) and Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Louis D. Greenwald (D-Camden) discuss Governor Jon S. Corzine's announcement that the state's tax amnesty program has exceeded revenue projections.

According to numbers from the state Department of Treasury, the program has collected more than $600 million - $400 million over initial projections - and represents the largest single tax amnesty program executed by any state.

The Democratic leaders said they are committed to using the money for property tax relief.