An enormous amount of chatter has been emanating from Trenton on the need for municipalities to review the fiscal savings available through the regionalization of services. It is not a new subject of debate. March of 1962 saw GOP mayors from the Bergen County area meeting to discuss the issue of regionalization. Speaking in favor of consolidation was a reporter from the Bergen Record, Edward J. Flynn, who had written a series of articles on the subject the previous December.
Regionalization, and shared services, are topics of discussion across America. A township in Massachusetts recently sent out invitations to bordering towns inviting elected officials and administrators to join together for an informal discussion on issues the towns are all facing. With financial pressures similar to those in NJ, they hoped to discuss the potential for shared services. The mailed invitations included a tea bag in reference to the famous Boston Tea Party which also was about taxes.
The Bay State also offers a view as to how a state can force municipalities to participate in regionalization efforts. A new 911 surcharge on all cell phone users will be used to reward municipalities that buy into a regionalized 911 system. Those that maintain an independent system will not share in the additional taxes being levied by the state.
The New Jersey towns of Rumson, Fair Haven and Little Silver recently had a public meeting concerning a proposal to merge the three police departments. Although exhibiting a strong attachment to “home rule”, residents were open to considering the plan that would rely on attrition to bringing down the number of officers required for a regionalized force. Residents voicing their opinions publicly also believed the planning needed to be transparent, open to public discussion, and possibly put up for referendum before any commitments were made. ( on a side note, Fair Haven was one of the few towns in New Jersey this year to offer residents a lower tax rate than last year.)
This past Spring local municipalities struggled with town budgets in response to Trenton’s cut backs of “state aid”, although the term used is misleading. The state aid being cut is basically a redistribution of taxes and fees collected by the state. Towns throughout New Jersey have limited avenues for raising substantial revenue outside of property taxes, and the State is supposed to alleviate this tax by providing “property tax relief” through the collection of income tax–that was the purpose of instituting a state income tax.
The State is now calling on municipalities to be more efficient, and are even drafting legislation which will force the merger of small towns in the state. Numerous scholarly studies note that New Jersey has more municipalities than most other states, and identify this as the cause of the State’s financial woes. New Jersey does has over 550 individual municipalities, which is a very high number compared to many states, but it is a very small number compared to others like Pennsylvania. Although Trenton is unfairly looking to blame the small municipalities that cover New Jersey for a fiscal crisis that originated with the State, it will be up to the small municipalities to correct the State’s finances.
There will not be any tax relief from Trenton in the future, near or far. With a thirty three billion dollar debt, the State has no choice but to look towards municipalities to become more independent. This will be accomplished by offering “incentives” to towns that begin to share services; or, in the case of small towns the option of merging. Out of the 566 municipalities in NJ, there are 100 towns with populations under 2600 people.
Like New England, there is a strong averseness towards the concept of regionalization. Organizations such as volunteer fire departments are heavily reliant on a communal identity, and openly disrupting that tradition might end up costing taxpayers more. Other points of communal pride such as schools might also fail to benefit from a regional approach as it may only add another expensive layer of bureaucracy. Also, schools often involve heavy civic involvement which might be hindered should a community sense its identity being diluted. Many towns are seeking to share services that do not necessarily impact the characteristics or social fabric of a community, and are researching collective purchasing of fuel, insurance pools, and shared services such as waste removal and recycling.
This is a sobering article. Yes, the difficulties associated with “Home Rule” have been known and discussed for many years by those of us interested in our local political process. Too often “Home Rule” has been used as an excuse for our inefficient delivery of government services and resulting high local tax burden. It seems one can not discuss the topic without also providing the magic cure: regionalization. As with most elixirs, I fear the curative is more psychological than tangible. The original concept a hundred years ago of towns providing their own governmental services was, in part, based on a belief that taxes could be held in check so long as the power to tax was kept as local as possible. It was an outgrowth of the same movement that saw the great growth in the formation of local towns. Oakland, for example, had very different needs than Ridgewood, although both were governed as Franklin Township. Over the years the differences among localities were homogenized and the commuter population became less concerned with local matters. The result being that residents no longer recognized the unique attributes of their home town and increasingly withdrew from an active interest in managing it. The vacuum this created was filled with a select few that were wed to special interests. Home Rule morphed into something very different than its original intent of providing immediate taxpayer overview. We can not easily undo the complicated
relationships that have now developed over the years by simply “regionalizing” services, as the root causes of our fiscal problems will still remain largely unaddressed. The primary problem is our collective lack of involvement in the way our towns are run. We don’t participate, we don’t know the issues and we don’t vote in particularly large numbers. Regionalization will simply remove accountability further from the source. Alienation by the very taxpayer Home Rule was intended to protect continues to our biggest obstacle to reform..