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Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Jersey Jazzman: Blaming Public Employees For NJ's Fiscal Mess: Today's Dopey Episode

Jersey Jazzman: Blaming Public Employees For NJ's Fiscal Mess: Today's Dopey Episode:

Blaming Public Employees For NJ's Fiscal Mess: Today's Dopey Episode

Whenever I want to read something really ill-informed and contemptuous of public employees, I turn to the always reliable Star-Ledger:

Property taxes in New Jersey are the highest in the nation. Since 2000, they have doubled and have risen at over twice the rate of inflation. No wonder people are forced to move; no wonder we have the highest foreclosure rate in the nation.
That's from guest columnist Tom Byrne, who apparently is so busy with his gig on the State Investment Council that he doesn't have the time to find out that out-migration due to taxes is a totally fabricated myth.

Or the time to read the Star-Ledger itself (the news part, which is still pretty good), which pointed out that New Jersey's high foreclosure rate is due, at least in part, to the state's relatively long foreclosure process.

By the way -- New Jersey is not some sort of wildly high-spending state:



OK, we're top ten (barely), but we're not some sort of outlier -- and that's without accounting for the fact that this is an expensive state in which to live. Funny how stuff like this never made it into Byrne's piece:

The obvious way to control property taxes is to hold the line on expenses, but this is fraught with political consequences, especially for Democrats. Public-sector unions like the NJEA and the two police unions, whose members' salaries and benefits are largely paid by property taxes, wield Jersey Jazzman: Blaming Public Employees For NJ's Fiscal Mess: Today's Dopey Episode: