Middle class, suburban families are in desperate need of tax relief and the best way to provide it is to develop a fair school funding formula that doesn’t place so heavy a burden for school costs on suburban homeowners and renters, says former state Assemblywoman Betty Lou DeCroce.
DeCroce points to the recent release of information on local school funding by municipality and it shows that suburban taxpayers are paying and outsize share of education costs compared to urban taxpayers.
In Morris County, school funding figures show that a majority of municipalities are paying at least 68 percent of the cost of local education, with Boonton Township, Mount Arlington, Riverdale and Morris Plains each paying more than 80 percent of their local school costs.
Taxpayers living Parsippany, Lincoln Park, East Hanover and Hanover are all financing 78 percent of their local school costs.
Meanwhile Newark residents are paying just 11.1 percent toward the district’s $1.12 billion school budget. Paterson taxpayer are funding only 8.1 percent of the city’s $663.6 million school budget.
Passaic City taxpayers are paying only 3.9 percent of their school costs and while Trenton and Asbury Park taxpayers are contributing just 6.4 percent and 13.2 percent respectively toward their school costs.
“Gov. Murphy talks repeatedly about bringing economic fairness to New Jersey, but he’s failed the state’s middle class,” said DeCroce, who, as an Assemblywoman, repeatedly pushed for a statewide audit of education funding, which the Murphy administration ignored.
“There is nothing fair about forcing hard working people to fund 60 percent, 70 percent or 80 percent of their local education costs while they also pay the lion’s share of school costs for other municipalities,” said DeCroce, who served nine years in the legislature representing the former 26th Legislative District.
DeCroce, who is considering a run for the Assembly next year, said an Education Tax Justice will be one of her top priorities. “The state cannot continue to place such a tremendous financial burden on working people especially at a time when they are struggling with the Biden Inflation tax.
“Under Gov. Murphy and the state Democratic leaders, “fairness” has become a very selective term. There is no fairness for middle class people paying the highest property taxes in the nation,” said DeCroce.
“The governor has had more than four years to address the number one culprit in our state’s crushing suburban property taxes– and he’s failed to do it,” added DeCroce.