With less than three weeks to go to Election Day in New Jersey, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy’s silence on property taxes continues to raise questions for his campaign. Despite being asked about the issue at last week’s gubernatorial debate, Murphy still refuses to say where he stands on keeping the state’s arbitration cap, which could cause property taxes to shoot through the roof if it is not renewed.
But while Murphy desperately tries to avoid giving New Jersey voters a straight answer on property taxes, he’s not fooling anyone about his position on the issue of tax hikes. Murphy has already admitted that he would raise taxes on New Jersey families by billions of dollars while proposing costly new programs without even knowing what they would cost.
Throughout his campaign, Murphy has made it unmistakably clear that he is committed to failed tax-and-spend policies that crippled New Jersey’s economy under fellow Goldman-Sachs executive John Corzine’s tenure. As Murphy continues to dodge giving a straight answer on property taxes heading into tonight’s gubernatorial debate, the people of New Jersey know he can’t be trusted to look after their taxpayer dollars.
The Asbury Park Press has more:
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy on the campaign trail isn’t often at a loss for words — except when it comes to taking a position on whether New Jersey should keep in place a cap on arbitration salary increases for police and fire unions.
Murphy will meet Republican candidate Kim Guadagno in their second and final debate on Wednesday. With the election less than three weeks away, a hot campaign issue is a disputed report that says taxpayers paid $2.9 billion less from 2010 to 2015 than they would have without the arbitration cap and a 2 percent cap on municipal spending increases.
The arbitration cap expires at the end of the year and Guadagno says property taxes will shoot through the roof if it’s not renewed. Murphy refused to say where he stands when he met Guadagno in their first debate last week…
The arbitration cap, passed in 2010 and extended in 2014, requires new legislation to remain in place. The cap applies when municipalities and unions representing police and firefighters cannot agree on new contract terms…
New Jersey’s average property tax bill entering 2017 was $8,549, up 2.35 percent from the previous year, and the effective tax rate (property tax as a percentage of the average estimated market value of homes) is the nation’s highest, according to a survey by Attom Data Solutions.
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