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Chris Daggett, the independent candidate for governor in New Jersey, said at a meeting with Press editors last week that he didn't think consolidation of the state's 500-plus municipalities and 600-plus school districts would save that much money and that, in any event, voters would never approve it on a significant scale.

We admire his candor. But we're not sure he's right. Our evidence: An agreement in the works for Linwood and Northfield to share a municipal court. And a new poll.

The Quinnipiac University poll - of 1,264 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points - found that New Jerseyans support merging towns and school districts 65 percent to 28 percent. That's a significant margin.

"Policy wonks always favor the idea of merging municipalities and school districts," Maurice Carroll, the poll's director, said. "As property taxes soar, more and more voters agree. The devil, of course, is in the details. Let's see how many New Jersey politicians are willing to vote themselves or their friends out of a job."

Yes, consolidation is a matter of details - and Linwood and Northfield are working on an eminently sensible plan that will save both towns money.

Under the proposed plan, one judge, one prosecutor, one public defender and one court administrator would serve both towns. Northfield, which has a larger court docket, would pay 55 percent of the salaries; Linwood would pay 45 percent. The percentages would be re-evalulated after each fiscal year. The plan is expected to save Northfield $311,824 over six years and save Linwood $386,745 over six years.

Officials of both towns deserve praise for working out the plan. If nothing else, it could be an interesting experiment to test Daggett's theory.

There would seem to be little reason for residents of either town to oppose the plan. Both municipalities will continue to hold courts sessions in their own chambers.

The savings are worthwhile, because any savings are worthwhile. But Daggett isn't completely wrong. The savings amount to $64,457 per year for Linwood and $51,970 per year for Northfield, not amounts that will have a major effect on property taxes.

But any tax relief is welcome - and, besides, it just makes sense for these two adjacent towns to share a court (and perhaps more). Why should they each be paying a judge, a prosecutor, a public defender and an administrator? That's simply not necessary.

So we applaud this proposed court merger, and we encourage other towns to pursue their own shared-services plans. None of us will ever know if Daggett is right or wrong until these experiments in cost-cutting are performed.

2 comments:

• Samurai Warrior (73) posts 10:27 am

  NJ - the "state of distress": "...The outrage has given rise to a predictable ritual: every candidate for governor solemnly vows to tame the property-tax beast, and every governor leaves office having knelt before its awesome power. In 1977, the state enacted its first income tax, every penny of which was, by law, to be used to offset local taxes. As it happened, though, the state spent the vast majority of that money on the kind of grants to local communities — primarily school aid — that it probably would have paid for in any event, and the effect on property taxes was negligible. New Jersey now spends more than half its $30 billion budget on various things that fall under the rubric of “property-tax relief,” including $1.6 billion in direct rebate checks to homeowners, and yet property taxes grow higher by the year — while voters grow ever more restive.// The question of why property taxes keep rising could keep a symposium of budget experts arguing for a week, but at its core, the property-tax problem hints at a deeper, structural flaw in the state, a defect that’s more cultural than it is fiscal. Basically, New Jersey is sliced into so many local fiefs — 21 counties, 566 municipalities, more than 600 school districts — that it’s just about falling apart. Some municipalities are merely dots on the map, maybe a mile wide, surrounded on all sides by a larger township. Some school districts are so small that they actually have no schools. (They pay larger townships to teach their kids.) And yet most little hamlets retain their own officeholders and paramedic squads, just as each tiny school district has its own administrator and school board. It would be far cheaper for everyone, of course, if these small jurisdictions merged into larger ones or agreed to pool their services, but no politician or fire chief actually wants to give up his part-time job, and the taxpayers in these districts — despite moaning endlessly about their taxes — routinely reject any suggestion that they should give up their autonomy. // This duplication of every imaginable service means that New Jersey residents are paying so many different entities, all in a single property-tax bill, that they can’t keep them all straight. (It also, no doubt, adds to the state’s legacy of corruption, since a lot of smaller entities are run by local machines and are subject to little if any public scrutiny.) And because each little jurisdiction cuts its own deal on contracts for teachers and cops, wealthier towns — New Jersey has some of the wealthiest in the nation — tend to drive up the cost of municipal contracts for everyone else, creating a vacuum that is constantly sucking local tax rates higher...." &&&&&& http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25corzine-t.html

• Deedle (22) posts 7:25 pm

  Daggett is right - this article is talking about apples & oranges. They are sharing a court - not the entire town. This makes sense for 2 small towns that are so close together. But these residents would not be willing to lose the identity of their individual towns. What may seam to work on paper doesn't always work in real life. If these towns did merge, what would they call themselves - Northwood or Linfield?

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