Dear Mayor:

Yesterday, Governor Codey met with officers of the New Jersey League of Municipalities to discuss prospects for property tax relief. The municipal delegation was headed by League President, Mayor Peter A Cantu of Plainsboro Township, who was joined by League Executive Board Members, Mayor Jo-Anne B. Schubert of South Bound Brook and Mayor Gary Passanante of Somerdale, and Maplewood Township Vice Mayor David Huemer.

The local leaders expressed their disappointment with the Senate's failure to tackle New Jersey's property tax crisis and asked Acting Governor and Senate President Codey to take the lead in efforts to address our over-reliance on property taxes and its effects on low and moderate income citizens.

Senator Codey said that he could not move the citizens' convention proposal through the Senate, due to a lack of support for the bill, as drafted. Senators opposed the bill, according to the Senate President, because it called for the election of delegates in the Spring, rather than at the November elections, and because the convention would not be able to address spending issues and because the likely outcome of any property tax reform process would be an increase in income taxes.

While the issue is dead for this year, there is a strong likelihood that he, as Senate President, will have the Senate meet in a special session to address this crisis in April, 2006. He also indicated that the failure of the legislature to enact meaningful property tax reform at that time would create a more favorable climate for consideration of and action on a special citizens' property tax reform initiative, such as that which passed the Assembly, earlier this year.

We are frustrated that the people of New Jersey will have to wait at least another year for progress towards property tax relief, but we hope that a special session will produce meaningful, measurable and sustainable reform. Toward that end, we are in the process of developing standards by which to measure the special session's success or failure.

We will do what we can to make the special session a success, should it, in fact, occur. But if it is not a success, then we want the same legislators who forced the people of New Jersey to wait for reform to delay no more in acting on the citizens' convention initiative.

We started this year with high hopes for real progress on this issue, thanks to the work of the Governor's Property Tax Convention Task Force. We will end it with renewed determination to break the political logjam that continues to block efforts to relieve the citizens who suffer from a property tax burden that bears no relationship to their ability to pay.

The objective standards that we will develop will provide a critical measurement of the Senate's appreciation for the depth and breadth of the problems caused by our State's chronic over-reliance on regressive property taxes. Failure to meet the standards would only confirm our conviction that the convention is the only way to go.

For more information, contact Jon Moran at 609-695-3481, ext. 21.