Dear Mayor:

Earlier today, we sent the enclosed letter to all Members of the Legislature's four new Joint Special Session Committees

The letter cites numerous studies and statistics that illustrate New Jersey's over-dependence on property taxes. It, further, pledges the League's assistance to the Legislators, as they begin this historic process. (CLICK HERE TO READ LETTER TO LEGISLATORS.)

In the letter, we remind the Committee Members, "We at the local level have been dealing with the property tax crisis on a daily basis for many years. Our fellow citizens rely on us to deliver vital life enhancing and life sustaining services. Yet the only reliable revenue source allowed to us by the Constitution and the Legislature of the State of New Jersey is the property tax. We have known that we have needed reform for a long time. And we have appealed for action, time and time again, to a long series of State Administrations and Legislatures."

We have been seeing a lot of attacks on Home Rule and local decision making, in both the Press and elsewhere. You can see our responses at our website. We encourage you to respond with, for example, letters to editors to any and all unfair and unbalanced attacks on local government and local elected officials. Please feel free to use information from our website to assist you.

The letter states, "This Special Session will allow you and your colleagues to examine how, in the past, all three branches of State Government have contributed to the crisis. It will give you the opportunity to re-evaluate the impact of past actions and omissions on our beleaguered property tax payers, and to help both them and local elected officials find a way out. And if, by the end of the year, real and sustainable reforms still elude us, it will permit you and your colleagues to turn the problem over to the people who elected you - to the people who pay the bills - to a Citizens Convention for Property Tax Reform."

We specifically ask the Special Joint Committees to consider the effects of: the under-funding of municipal property tax relief programs; the imposition of unfunded mandated costs; and the inability of local officials to consider revenue sources other than the property tax, as major factors contributing to the property tax crisis.

Governor Corzine has given the Legislature an impressive blue-print. They have a great opportunity to do something of great and lasting value for all of our fellow citizens. We have offered them our assistance. And we urged them to accept the offer.