The state Senate recently took a big step toward reforming our fragmented system of local government by unanimously approving legislation that would eliminate some of the remaining barriers to town mergers. The bill, S-2465, would give voters new power to initiate consolidations even when local elected officials balk. The law would allow one town’s governing council to partner with a neighboring town’s voters to create a consolidation study commission.

Let’s hope this is just the beginning. For more than a century, state lawmakers have been promoting municipal consolidation as a way to cut waste, reduce inefficiency and lower local property taxes. But none of the policies designed to make consolidation easier ever really worked, and since 1952, only a single pair of towns have merged.

At Courage to Connect New Jersey, a nonpartisan organization that focuses exclusively on encouraging municipal mergers, we have watched numerous towns try to consolidate, only to see them stumble on unexpected obstacles. Now, against the backdrop of a financial crisis and Gov. Chris Christie’s new 2 percent property tax cap, things are finally changing.

Thanks to advocacy of Senate co-sponsors Robert Gordon and James Beach, as well as Senate President Stephen Sweeney, the bill has sailed through the Legislature. This is great news for advocates of a saner, simpler and more streamlined system of local government. This success should be used to build momentum for a package of additional reforms — a consolidation “tool kit.”

Continue reading this article in The Asbury Park Press. 

On Feb. 17, the State Senate took a big step toward reforming our fragmented system of local government. Let’s hope this is the just the beginning.

For more than a century, state lawmakers have been promoting municipal consolidation as a way to cut waste, reduce inefficiency and lower local property taxes. But none of the policies designed to make consolidation easier ever really worked and, since 1952, only a single pair of towns have merged.

At Courage to Connect New Jersey — the only nonpartisan organization that focuses exclusively on encouraging municipal mergers — we have watched numerous towns try to consolidate, only to see them stumble on unexpected obstacles.

Now, against the backdrop of a financial crisis and Gov. Chris Christie’s new 2 percent property tax cap, things are finally changing. Lawmakers realize that consolidation may well be the only way to prevent some communities from declaring bankruptcy. And so policymakers are preparing legislation that eliminates some of the remaining barriers to town mergers.

On Feb. 17, the Senate unanimously passed S-2465, which gives voters new power to initiate consolidations even when local elected officials balk. In those cases, the law would allow one town’s governing council to partner with a neighboring town’s voters to create a consolidation “study commission.” Thanks to the tireless advocacy of Senate co-sponsors Robert Gordon and James Beach, as well as Senate President Stephen Sweeney, the bill has sailed through the Legislature.

For years, New Jersey’s towns have been struggling to stay afloat, and they’re about to get hit with a tidal wave. The real question is whether the state Legislature will throw them a lifeline.

Local officials are starting to prepare their annual budgets — the first since Gov. Chris Christie imposed his 2 percent property tax cap — and it’s clear that dramatic changes are near. Some communities will find the only way to avoid bankruptcy is to eliminate their local administration and merge with neighboring towns.

It is well-documented that the Garden State has too much local government. With 566 municipalities crammed between the Hudson and the Delaware, New Jersey has more towns than California and more towns per capita than any other state in the country. This fractured system leads to redundancy, waste and — ultimately — sky-high property taxes.

For more than a century, state lawmakers have been talking about ways to encourage municipal consolidation. Yet since 1952, just one pair of towns has merged.

At Courage to Connect New Jersey, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on encouraging municipal mergers, we have watched numerous towns try to consolidate, only to see them stumble on unexpected roadblocks.

With the state on the brink of bankruptcy, the Legislature must pass a “consolidation toolkit” to make it easier for towns to join together.

A book has been published through Courage to Connect New Jersey that provides community groups with a step-by-step guide to consolidate municipalities.

The book, authored by Gina Genovese, Andrew Bruck and Jonathan Jaffe, is designed as a resource for residents and grassroots organizations eager to end waste in municipal government.

“Our state is broke, taxes are rising and municipal aid is shrinking,” Genovese said. “We need serious, lasting reforms – the kind of change that comes not from politicians, but from the people.”

Courage to Connect New Jersey has gathered some of the state’s best experts on local government, municipal consolidation, political organizing and media outreach to guide people through the process step-by-step. The book has everything groups need, from sample voter petitions to press releases to talking points.

The book is designed to help correct one of the Garden State’s most pressing problems and to create a more sustainable system of local government. 

Jaffe said the book is being distributed at no cost through Courage to Connect New Jersey, although he recommends donations be made to the non-profit, non-partisan organization.

 

Recently, the state Department of Community of Affairs (DCA) rejected an application by the citizens of Merchantville and the Township of Cherry Hill to study municipal consolidation. The ruling was surprising, disappointing and — most importantly — wrong.

At a time when New Jersey is facing a severe fiscal crisis, we need every cost-saving option at our disposal. It’s remarkable that the DCA would turn its back on a grassroots effort to reduce local expenses and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy. Once again, Trenton is getting in the way of much-needed reform.

The DCA’s decision turned on two clauses of a 2007 law creating a new form of consolidation, called “Local Option Municipal Consolidation.” The law reads: “[I]n order to encourage municipalities to increase efficiency through municipal consolidation for the purpose of reducing expenses borne by their property taxpayers, more flexible options need to be available to the elected municipal officials and voters.” In addition, the law states that its provisions “shall be liberally construed” to encourage municipal consolidation.

When New Jersey was first admitted to the Union in 1787, it had 104 municipalities, far fewer than the 566 towns currently in existence. Gina Genovese, a former mayor of Long Hill Township and advocate of consolidating municipal governments, said that efforts to control local issues such as water management, alcohol prohibition and rural identity led to the spike in municipalities, a trend that eventually subsided with the economic constraints of the Great Depression. But in 1970, Gov. William Cahill started the first state commission to look into consolidating municipalities, beginning a debate that has continued to this day, she said.

But for change to take hold, it can’t start with legislation from Trenton, said Assembly Deputy Speaker John F. McKeon (D-Essex); it must begin with changing the mindset of residents.

“New Jerseyans value the system we’ve grown up under very much,” McKeon said. “Either we recognize that property taxes on some level are going to continue to grow, or we greatly diminish the services that we’ve all become used to.”

RECENTLY, the state Department of Community of Affairs rejected an application by Merchantville and the township of Cherry Hill to study municipal consolidation. The ruling was surprising, disappointing and – most important – wrong.

At a time when New Jersey is facing a severe fiscal crisis, we need every cost-saving option at our disposal. It’s remarkable that the DCA would turn its back on a grass-roots effort to reduce local expenses and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy. Once again, Trenton is getting in the way of much-needed reform.

The DCA’s decision turned on two clauses of a 2007 law creating a new form of consolidation, called “Local Option Municipal Consolidation.” The law reads: “[I]n order to encourage municipalities to increase efficiency through municipal consolidation for the purpose of reducing expenses borne by their property taxpayers, more flexible options need to be available to the elected municipal officials and voters.” In addition, the law states that its provisions “shall be liberally construed” to encourage municipal consolidation.

The state legislators who wrote this bill four years ago wanted to encourage consolidation however possible. They allowed municipalities to initiate the consolidation study process in one of two ways: by governing body resolution or by voter petition. But, in a narrow and technical ruling, the DCA decided that all of the municipalities seeking to create a joint study commission must use the same form of approval – in other words, each must obtain approval by resolution, or each must obtain approval by petition.

For various reasons, Merchantville and Cherry Hill needed to file a “hybrid” or “mix-and-match” application, whereby one municipality obtains approval by resolution and the other by petition. But that wasn’t good enough for the DCA. The department rejected the application, in direct violation of the law’s requirement that it offer “flexible options” to municipalities considering consolidation.

Merchantville and Cherry Hill should get state help in examining potential savings.

Maybe the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, the primary state agency that works with municipal governments, doesn’t want to see any towns merge. Maybe DCA Commissioner Lori Grifa or someone else in the DCA isn’t eager to see towns start merging because if there are fewer towns, there might be less work for the DCA to do, and then the DCA could get downsized.

Perhaps that’s far-fetched, but the DCA’s rigidity in its decision last week to deny an application for Merchantville and Cherry Hill to study the possibility of merging is a head-scratcher.

The idea behind passing a state law in 2007 to encourage municipalities to explore potential mergers and save taxpayers dollars was a sound one. Equally sound was having the DCA provide money for towns interested in researching a merger to conduct a formal study. After all, it would be impossible to ask voters in two or more towns to go the polls and vote on merging their governments into one unless they had detailed data on exactly how much money would be saved. Thus, the need for studies.

So then, we come back to the DCA’s decision regarding Merchantville and Cherry Hill. In tiny Merchantville, which abuts the northwest corner of Cherry Hill, an organized group of citizens fed up with rising property taxes has pushed for a merger with Cherry Hill. There are other motivations at play, as well, not the least of which would be a school district merger and a chance for Merchantville kids to move on eventually to Cherry Hill’s highly rated high schools.

The citizens group, Merchantville Connecting for the Future, met the benchmark of getting signatures from more than 10 percent of the registered voters in the borough who voted in the 2009 election.

“Gina Genovese, a former mayor of Long Hill (population 8,600), said that if you needed to share all sorts of services, “maybe you shouldn’t have a town.”

“We shared a fire inspector, a health officer, a construction officer and police communications, and we had a part-time C.F.O.,” said Ms. Genovese, who founded Courage to Connect NJ to promote consolidation. “We shared services with 14 other towns, and it just took a fractured structure and fractured it even more.”

Ms. Genovese’s group plans to release a guide in January for towns interested in consolidating under the 2007 New Jersey law.

Supporters of consolidation say that so many entities mean too many high-priced town managers, school superintendents and other bosses, and that competition for those talents drives up their salaries. Bob Stocker, one of the organizers of the effort to absorb Merchantville into Cherry Hill, points to another concern: towns that are too small to afford professional managers.

“We did away with the borough manager, and now the school principal is also the superintendent,” Mr. Stocker said. “We’ve already harpooned all the whales. There’s no way to stay independent and maintain services without much higher taxes.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is another one of our “Sunday Conversations,” a question and answer interview with a prominent Morris County person. This week, we feature Gina Genovese, the former mayor of Long Hill Township, who is the executive director of a non-profit group, Courage to Connect N.J., which is trying to reduce the cost of local government in New Jersey by merging municipalities. Genovese, 51, is a lifelong resident of New Jersey and a former professional tennis player.

Q: You have been a mayor and also a candidate for the state Senate in 2007, how did you move on from those activities to what you are doing now?

A: As a local elected official, after about two years, I realized the burden on 3,100 households in Long Hill. They had to pay for a police department a DPW, etc. and I just started to see that Long Hill Township should perhaps not exist by itself, that it would be a better town if we had more economies of scale to capture and if that happened, it would be a way to address the local property tax issue in New Jersey. That’s not to say our police department and DPW were not great; we had 3,100 people paying for it. I started to ask a lot of questions, a lot of questions about municipal aid. I started to inquire about the size of towns and I started to look into it. I discovered that shared services is perhaps a step, but that really wasn’t going to remedy the situation that New Jersey was facing. I said this is not the way to go; the way to go is to strengthen our local government.