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N.J. deals with nation's highest property taxes

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 11, 2006

MONTGOMERY, N.J. - Barbara Lehman has lived in this central New Jersey community for 30 years, but her time here is nearing an end.

She sent her children through Montgomery's well-regarded schools. And she enjoys the rolling landscape even as housing developments have spread across it in recent years.

But her property taxes have climbed 56 percent since 2000 to a knee-buckling $14,000 a year - a heavy load for a high school French teacher whose salary goes up only about 3 percent a year.

"Oh, it's terrible," Lehman said.

Despite efforts by governors and lawmakers to do something about it, New Jersey has the highest property taxes in America - a burden that is deepening public cynicism in a state with a long history of graft and self-dealing.

The average property owner in the Garden State pays about $6,000 a year in property taxes, twice the national average.

A recent analysis by the New York Times found property taxes increased two to three times faster than personal income from 2000 to 2004 in the suburbs surrounding New York.

The burden is blamed on a number of factors, including New Jersey's inordinately heavy reliance on property taxes. Property taxes are used to cover most county, municipal and school operations. They account for about 50 percent of taxes collected in the state, compared with a national average of about 30 percent.

Many also pin the blame on the way many of New Jersey's 566 cities and towns insist on having their own schools, police departments, public works crews and the like, instead of consolidating services with those of other communities to reduce costs.

Somerset County, for example, has 21 municipalities. Densely populated Bergen County, just across the Hudson River from New York, has 70.

Some lawmakers are looking into merging school systems and municipalities but are likely to run into resistance from local officeholders if they try to force the issue.

But Lehman and others are not convinced help is coming.

Phyllis Beal, a psychiatric social worker who has seen her property taxes in the Somerset County community of Franklin increase 50 percent since 2000, said: "Our legislators are so beholden to special interests in every direction."

[Last modified August 11, 2006, 01:58:17]