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Are pensions the issue? I keep hearing people talk about it for years now and nothing gets done. This seems the be the problem in NYC as well.
How does this get fixed as to not burden tax payers any further?
For starters maybe they need to push back on union contracts that allow people to retire as young as 39 such as my brother in NJ was eligible to do from his county job, and then pay pensions large enough that he didn't need to get another job when he finally retired at age 45. NJ's problem are not bandaid type adjustments but rather the State needs major surgery to revamp their approach to things.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Biker53
The problem in NJ is the State is riddled with geographically tiny towns, each with their own school system, town hall staffing, highway depts etc. Throw in geographically small counties that carry their own full governance bureaucracies, and a bloated State govt. and the result is waste and duplication almost beyond comprehension. The unions and vested interests in maintaining this status quo have an ironclad lock on the situation.
Sounds like the business model for most of New York, who copied whom?
There are towns in NJ that might be a square mile or half a square mile, or even smaller than that, and they've got their own school system, police depts, road crews etc. I have a brother down there who worked for the county and was eligible to retire at age 39 with family health care for life and a pension, though the pension would have been reduced for retiring that young. He waited until he was 45 to retire so that he wouldn't have to get another job. While working he was paying $25 per month for family health coverage and his wife, a school teacher, was being paid an extra $4,000 to be on his insurance instead of her's.
NJ is out of control. At a national level, the public should be wary of any politician of either party coming out of that State.
There are school districts with 200 students and these are not rural communities.
Having lived there twice, my sense was that the voters tended to prefer small communities and local governments, regardless of the cost of administrative redundancies. This was my perception in both left and right leaning communities.
For starters maybe they need to push back on union contracts that allow people to retire as young as 39 such as my brother in NJ was eligible to do from his county job, and then pay pensions large enough that he didn't need to get another job when he finally retired at age 45. NJ's problem are not bandaid type adjustments but rather the State needs major surgery to revamp their approach to things.
Cop?
Almost everyone in NJ is afraid of the cops. No politician will touch them.
Many other pensions have been pruned by Christie who would not go near that one.
I have to preform audits on companies that win overhaul contracts for the Army, and we continually go to CT and NY, they are common for us. We are there any where from a week to 2 weeks...and we have to get the mechanics to be calm around us, so we engage in general conversations the entire time, and taxes are always brought up...These guys are pay $5k - $15k on house that are 40 - 70 years old and barley on 1/2 acre....
Then I talk about where I live, North Alabama about 9 miles south of the TN state line....I have a 2400sqft all brick house (built in 2004) with a 28/38 2 story detached garage sitting on just under an acre and I pay $600 a year in property taxes.....they damn near stroke out on us....
Now, bring the Alabama jokes...., just remember, I did say North Alabama....
In Illinois, who also has a sizable pension deficit, they want to RAISE spending and tax more. The pensions...they are just going to kick the can down the road even longer.
What galls me are the NJ police chiefs and fire chiefs with their "sweetheart contracts" who end up with a $150,000 to $250,000 pay day when they retire, for their unused sick time and comp time. Who writes these "golden parachute" contracts ...former NFL agents? In my NC town, the Chief of Police makes $120K. That's what a patrolman in Rochelle Park NJ makes after 5 years on the force. In the year I hit 65 in NC, my property taxes were cut in half. Maybe NJ should try doing the same for their retirees if they expect to keep any living there!
My NJ residential property taxes are around $30K, but I dont mind because it is a very good school system and the good private schools around here are $35K for elementary school. So for my three kids, instead of paying over $100K for private school, I am sending them to a public school that is just as good for $30K. This may be controversial, but I like home rule. It keeps the kids economically segregated, so most of the kids in my children’s school are academically oriented, as are the parents.
They have not seen anything yet in New Jersey as they will have to raise taxes significantly to chip away at the 202 billion unfunded pension liabilities.
Wonder how much they will have to increase the property tax to eliminate the 202 billion unfunded pension liabilities.
No wonder they want the SALT deduction cap to be eliminated. They basically can deduct property taxes and a tiny bit of income tax and not much else.
So, a little bit of backround for those of you who don't live here and I will make this short.
In the early 1980s, a non-profit organization filed a lawsuit that argued that the state of New Jersey was not adequately funding schools in lower-income areas as these schools were not performing well. The state supreme court agreed. Since then, the state has funneled money away from suburban and rural districts and into urban districts. Under our current school funding formula, last updated in 2008 by a Democratic legislature and Governor, approximately 60% of all state educational aid goes to just 5% of districts. So suburban and rural communities are forced to make up the difference between what they send to our state government and the cost of educating students in the form of higher property taxes.
Since the court ruling in 1985, most of the urban districts that received the most state aid still are not performing well, with a few exceptions. Two of the districts, Jersey City and Hoboken, are now home to many millionaires as they've experienced a renaissance most of our urban areas have not. With the extra aid they are given, they provide full-day kindergarten. So quite literally, middle and working class families in rural and suburban municipalities are helping to send millionaire's kids to full day kindergarten.
Our current Governor, Phil Murphy, is now increasing funding for K-12 public education within the existing school funding formula. That is going to continue to drive up our property taxes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ottomobeale
Cop?
Almost everyone in NJ is afraid of the cops. No politician will touch them.
Many other pensions have been pruned by Christie who would not go near that one.
Chris Christie's 2011 pension reform was a huge step in the right direction, it's going to save over $130 billion in the next 30 years. The problem is he later skipped partial pension payments which only added more debt.
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, just remember, I did say North Alabama....
