Writing about NJ taxes won’t get me an installanche or a TV guest appearance
but write I do, along with others.

Enlighten NJ has a post on how a NJ Democrat Discovers ‘Soak The Rich’ Tax Policy Is Bad For New Jersey. Enlighten also has several posts on Corzine’s ‘Fundamental Reorganization of Health Care’ For New Jersey. New Jersey Thorugh A Pinhole has a list of posts on Corzine.

Along with Enlighten, SmadaNek’s Ken Adams did some simple arithmetic and realizes that Corzine Care comes at a price — a huge price. In the billions. In the comments section, Enlighten NJ asks, “Do you ever get the idea we’re the only ones that care?”. Trust me, I do.

NJ property taxes are a national scandal. Take a look at this graph from the NY Times:

The local newspaper tells us more increases are in the works: Princeton Township Committee OKs budgetSpending reduced; tax rate increased about 10 percent. In addtion to its $29.8 million budget, the Township continues to approve bond issues for what would otherwise be routine infrastructure maintenance, such as $1 million bond for rebuilding 1.5 miles of road on Snowden Lane. Now here comes the punch line:

Debt service consumes 22 percent of the total budget

Expect that number to increase: The Town Topics says the tax hike is 6.5 cents over last year’s total. Debt service itself may be 22% of the total budget for now, but it’s increasing at a much larger rate:

Ms. Shaddow said one of the largest increases in this year’s budget is debt service, which contributed about three cents to the increase.

3 divided by 6.5 = 46%, folks.

If you want to fool yourself into believing that the Township is the exception, I refer you to one sentence in both the Packet’s and Town Topic’s articles: The six-and-a-half-cent hike is commensurate with increases in other Mercer County municipalities.