If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
For months, Gov. Christie has been trumpeting a plan to sharply reduce property tax growth by imposing a 2.5 percent limit on property tax increases, while promising that schools and municipalities will not be hurt. Recently, legislative leaders jumped into the fray with their own 2.9% property tax cap proposal.
Anyone who doubts that such caps will have real, harmful consequences for our schools and communities should look at what has happened where they’ve been tried.
In 1978, when California enacted its property tax cap, its public schools ranked first in the nation. For three decades, California’s public schools have suffered severe consequences. Class sizes have exploded, programs have been slashed, and teachers and school staff have been laid off as funding for schools dried up. Similar caps in Colorado and Illinois have also led to deep cuts in educational resources.
That is the path that Gov. Christie is pushing for New Jersey. And he’s not above fudging a few facts along the way to press his agenda. He regularly compares New Jersey to Massachusetts, another state that tried to deal with high property taxes by imposing caps. But comparing the Garden State to Massachusetts is an apples-and-oranges deception.
Some of the comparisons are apt. Back in 1980, Massachusetts had the third-highest property taxes in the nation, and entirely inadequate state support for its public schools. Today, New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation, and we ranked 45th in the nation in state support for public schools even before the Christie administration cut state school aid by another $1.3 billion.
That is where the similarities end.
When Massachusetts enacted Proposition 2½ in 1980, the impact was immediate and devastating. By 1981, one in six teachers in Massachusetts had been laid off, and class sizes in some communities were as high as 50.
Fortunately for the good people of the Bay State, the Massachusetts economy was white hot in the 1980s, fueled by a high-tech boom that brought hundreds of thousands of highly skilled, highly paid workers to the state. With increased tax revenue from that boom, the Massachusetts Legislature was able to put massive amounts of new state aid into education and municipal services to offset the property tax cuts.
But Gov. Christie has no plan to offset the loss of revenue to schools and municipalities. In New Jersey, he is cutting state aid to education while trying to stop local communities from making up the difference for their own children.
Whether in California, Massachusetts or New Jersey, property tax caps are bad policy. There is no connection between an arbitrary cap – whether it is 2.5 or 2.9 percent – and the actual cost of providing an education. Either cap would put a stranglehold on our classrooms, and shortchange at least a generation of students.
The solution we need in New Jersey is a reasonable level of state aid so that local communities don’t have to shoulder the burden alone. The solution we are being offered is simply another blow to the schools our children attend and the communities we all live in.