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ASSOCIATED PRESS TRENTON -- A key legislator Monday said lawmakers are studying how to make the state pay a huge chunk of a homeowner's property tax bill, but legislative leaders said less relief would be more likely.
Property tax cut is debated
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
TRENTON -- A key legislator Monday said lawmakers are studying how to make the state pay a huge chunk of a homeowner's property tax bill, but legislative leaders said less relief would be more likely.
As lawmakers try to cut New Jersey's notoriously high property taxes, Assemblyman John Burzichelli, co-chairman of a special committee considering whether the state constitution needs to be amended to bring property tax relief, cautioned nothing's been decided and figures are conceptual.
But he said lawmakers are mulling having the state pay from 20 percent to 50 percent of the property taxes on primary homes.
Burzichelli said legislators, who have until Nov. 15 to devise property tax reform recommendations, are trying to finalize how much the plan might cost and where the money to pay for it might be found.
But he said the plan would bring immediate and dramatic relief for taxpayers paying the nation's highest property taxes.
"For us to say this special session is a success, we have to bring an impactful result here," said Burzichelli, D-Gloucester. "The idea is to get the place of principal residency out of the cross hairs."
But Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. and Senate President Richard J. Codey cast doubts. Roberts predicted more "modest relief" and said having the state pay 20 percent to 50 percent of a homeowner's property taxes was "an impossibility."
Codey said he shared the idea's goal of immediate relief, but questioned how much the state could afford. The Essex Democrat said lawmakers are looking to go "as high as we can possibly go," but laughed at suggestions the state could pay as much as Burzichelli suggested.
The average New Jersey homeowner pays about $6,000 per year in property taxes, twice the national average. The tax has risen about 7 percent annually in recent years and has consistently been cited in polls as the leading concern among state residents.
Roberts said the idea of converting the rebate checks into direct payments is "absolutely on the right track" and is among "a number of worthy ideas that are on the table," but emphasized 20 percent to 50 percent was too expensive.
Burzichelli said at the least the state would pay 30 percent of property taxes on a senior citizen's primary home and 20 percent on everyone else's.
He said doing so would cost an estimated $2.7 billion; having the state pay 50 percent of the property taxes on everyone's home would cost an estimated $5.4 billion, an amount Roberts said the state could never afford.
Corzine has proposed taking the $1.1 billion spent on rebates this fiscal year and increasing it to $1.6 billion with money earned from this year's sales tax increase. Corzine spokesman Brendan Gilfillan noted Corzine initially proposed turning the rebates into direct payments but said cutting property taxes will require other reforms.
