Robin Hood's merry plan
Hoyt, Michael & Schoonmaker, Mary Ellen
ROBIN HOOD'S MERRY PLAN EDUCATING THE GARDEN STATE Here is a story about the tax revolt that's sup-posedly blowing across New Jersey like a sand storm. The protagonist is John Budzash, the postal...
...Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican candidate for the U.S...
...Now that he and his people have sensed the depth of the tax revolt, they are pushing hard to get their message out...
...So far, that suggestion has raised no echo...
...By assisting the middle-and working-class schools, Florio wants to bridge the political schism between them and the poor of the big cities...
...The political boundaries within the state have been drawn in a way that aggravates the problem, with wealthier communities cut off from the burdens of poorer districts...
...When reporters asked Budzash about these calculations, he brushed them off...
...Florio realized that the redistribution program would take big money, so he marched both the sales-tax increase and the larger income-tax package through the legislature in dramatic all-night sessions...
...In fact, a third of the state's 600 districts will get at least 10 percent more in state aid in the very first year of the program, which is to be phased in over five years...
...To make sure the needy school systems are held accountable for how their money is spent, the governor has appointed an inspector-general within the Education Department to examine charges of local corruption...
...They range from Camden, an old industrial town on the state's southern border with eighty-five thousand people and only ten thousand jobs, which annually spends $4,184 per student, to twenty-one districts in well-to-do Bergen County that spend more than $10,000 per pupil...
...Other critics point out that money alone does not guarantee an improvement in education, and that for years some of New Jersey's worst districts have perfected ways of quietly robbing their students of even the most basic education...
...He had promised an audit that would turn up ways to cut waste, but after the election the taxes came first...
...Compared with the neighboring governor of New York, the one that looks so presidential, he is perhaps less gifted with shining words, but more prone to action...
...Senate who ran a Quixotic campaign against popular incumbent Bill Bradley, says voters tell her it's not the taxes that anger them so much as Florio's modus operandi, and the sense that the size of the tax package was not completely justified or adequately explained...
...Florio contends that one accumulates political capital in order to buy something worthwhile...
...In the wealthier suburbs his massive state-aid redistribution earned Florio the title of Robin Hood...
...Florio would contend that those blue-collar and middle-class working people are also damaged by the inequities of New Jersey's educational system, either with inadequate schools or with unjust property taxes...
...What's interesting about Budzash is that he's among those who will almost certainly benefit from Florio's plan...
...At one point, two very ill Democratic senators were whisked in by state troopers from their sick beds to cast votes...
...Still, gut reactions rule the day...
...Well, the sales tax part is regressive, no way around it...
...Many of the thousands of people who have rallied against Florio, signed petitions against him, or put "Impeach Florio" bumper stickers on their cars could, like Budzash, end up benefiting from the governor's new programs, either through better schools, lower property taxes, or both...
...It already seems to be sputtering somewhat, with diminished rallies and newspaper polls showing that voter discontent so far does not seem likely to translate into Republican gains in local elections, despite the governor's plummeting popularity...
...He has also suggested that the smaller, wealthier districts think about ways they could save money and be more efficient, by merging, for instance, into bigger, more diversified districts that could offer students more variety...
...Elena Scambio, the superintendent brought in by the state last year to straighten out the Jersey City school system, recently reported that the district's health insurance plan had been abused to the tune of several million dollars, even covering many who had long since left the system's employ, including dead people...
...He took on the home-rule tradition, New Jersey's version of states' rights...
...He was not aggressive with the press, failed to challenge misinformation, and lost momentum...
...In New Jersey the idea that suburban districts might possibly be wasting or mismanaging money is about as believable as little green men on Mars...
...It stands to receive almost $7 million more in state school aid than it did pre-Florio...
...That's because under Florio's new laws, Budzash's town-Howell, in the southern part of the state-is one of the winners...
...What will they think of him five years from now...
...He waited until weeks after the measures were rammed through the New Jersey legislature before making his first foray into the community to meet face-to-face with ordinary people and explain his plan...
...What's wrong with that...
...Some even have the added luxury of being so small and exclusive that all sense of economy and efficiency goes out the window...
...The higher rates start after $35,000 for single people and after $70,000 for couples...
...The total number of schools in the three districts is...four...
...That depends in large part on the state of New Jersey's public schools...
...Like everyone else in the state, Budzash is already paying 7 percent sales tax instead of 6, thanks to the governor, and paying on items like paper towels, shampoo, and beer, which had been exempt before the higher sales tax took effect in July...
...Its regional high school should get close to $20 million more...
...In cities as in suburbs, money is what pays decent teachers and buys plaster, computers, library books, trombones, microscopes, baseball bats, and the near-tangible feeling that something important and worthwhile is going on...
...What New Jerseyans think of their governor by the end of next year depends in part on whether they come to understand his complicated message and whether they come to perceive themselves as coming out ahead, all things considered...
...Budzash is in line to get a $500 property-tax rebate from the state, and along with that, his property taxes, around $4,000 a year, should go down...
...the new top rate, for single people making more than $75,000 or couples making more than $150,000, is 7 percent, double the old top rate...
...He's neither liberalism's new hope nor its last gasp, as he's been portrayed in the build-em-up-knock-em-down press...
...For years, New Jersey has relied too heavily on local property taxes to pay for its schools, leading to huge inequities...
...There are far more winning towns than losers...
...While Florio's initial legislative triumphs were masterful, his public relations efforts were weak...
...They see it as pouring money down the drain...
...he asked, adding later, "I think it's ridiculous to try to take money away from people that work and earn then-money and give it to people that don't...
...that flip-flop is a major component of the anger his tax program produced...
...The real news is still Florio, who has until then to rebuild his depleted political capital...
...How do we know we're really going to get that tax relief...
...But he's an unusually gutsy and driven politician...
...That means the Camdens, the Newarks, the Jersey Citys never have enough money, even though they have more needs...
...Yet money clearly does have something to do with a quality education, or the wealthy suburbs would not be yelling so loudly about losing even some of their state aid...
...But since Budzash earns less than $35,000 a year, he won't pay a penny more in the state income taxes he has complained so bitterly about than he has in the past...
...Florio had said in his election campaign that he saw no need for new taxes...
...Other than holding rallies, the anti-tax crowd doesn't have a real opportunity for revenge until state legislative elections November 1991...
...The wealthier districts, on the other hand, can usually raise what they need...
...It's not surprising that a lot of people in New Jersey-a state that's made up mostly of very small suburban towns with very high property taxes and a rather parochial home-rule mentality-are angry about taxes...
...We who are about to pay for it must salute him...
...He's already done so, and despite a few premature obituaries, he probably has enough time left to accumulate some more...
...A political master stroke," wrote a newspaper columnist in Bergen County...
...As John Budzash of Hands Across New Jersey so bluntly put it, some people don't like the idea of bailing out inner-city school systems...
...That alone might have called for some kind of tax increase...
...Florio learned his politics in Camden County, watching generations of schoolchildren slip away and hearing the tiresome chorus that there just weren't the resources to do anything about it, when the real problem was a lack of political will...
...Shortly after Florio took office, he learned that Thomas Kean, his patrician Republican predecessor, had left a budget deficit of about half a billion dollars...
...Certainly, Florio knew when he took office that he would have to address the school funding problem, at least minimally, because the New Jersey Supreme Court was expected to rule-and soon did-that conditions in the state's thirty poorest school districts had to change, and that the inequities were unconstitutional...
...The talk-show host challenged Budzash to do something about the new levies, and he did-he founded Hands Across New Jersey, the voice of the anti-tax movement...
...Florio has promised to guard this new money like "a pit bull...
...Those schools are now among the most segregated and inequitable in the nation...
...The Jersey tax revolt, however, is not the real news...
...Two towns in prosperous Bergen County, for example, have two elementary districts and one regional high school district between them, complete with three superintendents, three school boards, and three support staffs...
...Two of the most prominent tax critics are radio hosts in Trenton who punctuate their commentary with pig squeals and the theme music from Jaws...
...And, statewide, New Jersey will assume county welfare costs now paid by local taxpayers...
...Then there is the governor's campaign suggestion that new taxes seemed to be unnecessary...
...They are forced to raise taxes so high they drive out or scare away business, and thus get poorer...
...Perhaps "The Equalizer" would be more appropriate...
...They have the sense they were lied to," says Whitman...
...The protagonist is John Budzash, the postal worker who called a Trenton radio talk show to complain about Governor Jim Florio's controversial new tax laws...
...The whole country is in the same mood...
...MICHAEL HOYT & MARY ELLEN SCHOONMAKER...
...His opponents argue that he is trying to buy back the Reagan Democrats...
...But Florio decided to use his early momentum to take care of both problems at once, and his educational funding plan, breathtaking in its scope, went much further than the court demanded: while the 30 neediest districts will receive most of the new funding-$1.3 billion over the next five years-some 350 districts will see their state aid increased, while 220 wealthier districts will lose state aid, some almost all of it...
...Part of that message has to do with accountability...
...The middle class, in Jersey as elsewhere, is squeezed a little harder every day...
...One has trouble reaching out to Joe Sixpack as one taxes his beer...
Vol. 117 • November 1990 • No. 19
