More on NJ's Municipal Welfare

Trenton crowd's constitutionally incapable of property-tax reform, by Paul Mulshine

In this article Paul Mulshine discusses the idea of a property tax cap in NJ, and touches on the nature of Trenton's redistributionist state aid scheme.

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zemack June 23, 2010 at 8:53PM
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The core issue is much bigger than quibbling over which towns get how much state aid. The issue is the validity of state aid to municipalities as such, or what I call municipal welfare. On the face of it, it makes no sense to send income tax dollars to Trenton, in order to get it back in state aid checks. Of course, the real purpose is wealth redistribution.

Municipal welfare is wrong for the same reason any government-imposed redistributionist scheme is wrong. It is immoral, unconstitutional, and a violation of individual rights and the proper function of government. In addition, like all socialist schemes, it doesn’t work. The current incarnation of the municipal state aid scheme started in the 1970s with the court-pressured imposition of the income tax. Since then, income tax rates have soared, state budgets sank increasingly into the red, aid-fed municipal budgets swelled, and all the while, property taxes soared. And what are we left with? – Abbott districts that are so bad that even many liberals support letting parents get their kids out of Abbott schools via vouchers under the Opportunity Scholarship Act. Only socialism could pull that off.

"It’s not fair," [Assemblywoman Allison Littell McHose of Sussex County] said. "I think people finally understand that they are paying for their own school and they are paying for these Abbott districts on top of it."

No, it is not fair. The whole purpose of municipal welfare is just that. So, why not see that the Emperor has no clothes? Why not adopt a GOP platform plank to repeal municipal state aid, which now consumes more than half the state budget, along with the income tax that funds it? Come to think of it, if forcing people in one town to pay for the education of children in the next town is unfair, then why isn’t it just as unfair to force them to pay for the education of children on the next block?

But that would be another topic – free market capitalism. Republicans and conservatives just can’t seem to let go of socialism when it comes to education.