71% of mayors tell legislature they want their energy tax receipt money back

Mayors from 401 of New Jersey’s 564 municipalities have signed a letter urging the legislature to fully fund the Energy Tax Receipts Property Tax Relief Act, saying it would increase monies available to local government from $75 million to $350 million.

The issue involves taxes on public land used by gas and electric utilities that were collected by the host municipalities until the state came in and made itself the collection agent.

“The state is supposed to redistribute this funding through, not spend it,” said Bethlehem Mayor Paul Muir, the president of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors.

The mayors complain that they’ve been waiting for than a decade for the funding to be restored.

“Municipal governments currently are facing stark financial challenges and difficulties, including the dramatic hike in healthcare premium costs for our employees, huge pension increases, skyrocketing costs for solid waste and recycling collection and disposal, increased insurance costs, new state environmental mandated costs, and much more — all driving costs that will ultimately be borne by property taxpayers without relief,” said East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov, who spearheaded the bi-partisan campaign to release more of the revenues to municipalities while heading the New Jersey Conference of Mayors.

Millstone Mayor Raymond Heck, the president of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, noted that the mayors are “speaking in a united voice – Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; urban, suburban, and rural; and from every region of the state – north, central, and south.”