Tell Murphy to Stop Prioritizing Public Employee Unions over Property Taxpayers

Gov. Phil Murphy proposed cutting funding for the Senior Freeze and Homestead Benefit property tax relief programs that make it possible for many elderly residents and middle-class families to own a home in New Jersey.
Rather than adopt bipartisan recommendations from the Legislature to close budget shortfalls resulting from COVID-19, the governor has ignored fiscally responsible solutions and placed the burden of balancing the state budget on the backs of struggling homeowners.
The Murphy administration already eliminated the Homestead Benefit credit from property tax bills that were due May 1, forcing homeowners to pay more. Now, they are threatening to remove the valuable tax credit from bills due in August, November, and 2021.
Under Murphy’s plan, seniors who depend on the Property Tax Reimbursement program, also known as the Senior Freeze, will not receive their July payment to help them stay in their homes.
At the same time that he’s cutting property tax relief, claiming there’s no money for it, the governor shunned real opportunities to achieve budgetary savings and generate new revenues for the state without raising taxes.
For example, a bipartisan proposal approved by the Legislature, in May, would have allowed the state to more easily furlough public employees who were sitting home and collecting their full taxpayer-funded paychecks despite being unable to work, through no fault of their own, while their government offices were closed.
Some of the Democrat lawmakers who joined with us on the legislation said the plan we sent to Murphy’s desk could have saved New Jersey taxpayers $750 million, which would have been more than enough to fund the Senior Freeze and Homestead Benefit programs.
Even better, the Legislature’s furlough plan would have had no negative financial impact on state workers, most of whom would have been paid as much as – if not more than – their regular income, with the extra $600 of federal CARES Act unemployment benefits in effect.
We had the opportunity to shift the cost of those workers to the federal government for months. It would have been a win-win situation for overburdened New Jersey taxpayers and idle state workers who would have been protected financially.
Unfortunately, Murphy failed to listen in time, digging the state’s financial hole even deeper to the detriment of property taxpayers.
Instead, his response was too little and too late. He waited until July to begin furloughing state workers, just as government offices began to reopen, and just three weeks before the extra federal unemployment benefits were set to run out.
That’s the result of a bad deal he negotiated with the CWA, the largest state public employee union, at the end of June. He agreed to give 40,000 of their members ironclad job protections and limit furloughs to 10 days for most workers, which they are now scrambling to take before the extra $600 federal unemployment benefit expires by the end of July.
You could see the result of this ill-conceived furlough plan in the massive lines that plagued MVC agencies during their recent reopening. It was so bad that the governor had to cancel furloughs for MVC workers that had just begun.
That was proof that it made absolutely zero sense for Murphy to begin furloughing employees at state government offices, just as they began to reopen after months of being closed, with a massive backlog of work to do.
While that may seem ridiculous, it may not even be the worst part of the governor’s poorly negotiated CWA deal.
To get a guarantee from Murphy that none of their workers will be laid off due to the fiscal impact of COVID-19, all the CWA had to do was defer one of their pay raises to next year. In a regular year, most employees in civil service get a step increase and a cost of living adjustment usually referred to as a COLA.
The step increase is a 4% raise that the employee receives on the anniversary of their hire. The COLA is another 2% raise that usually happens once a year. Combined, that amounts to 6% in pay raises that the typical state employee gets over a year.
All the CWA had to agree to was pushing back a 2% COLA until next year, when they’ll get two of them. Tens of thousands of state workers will still get 4% pay raises this year and next while Murphy is crying poverty and slashing property tax relief programs.
The simple fact is that Murphy is demonstrating he prioritizes the concerns of the public employee unions that put him in office over those of middle-class New Jersey families and retirees. That’s just wrong.
If you agree, you can send the governor the message that the Homestead Rebate and Senior Freeze must be protected by signing our online petition, at senatenj.com/propertytaxrelief/.
ED. NOTE: Testa (R-1st) represents New Jersey’s 1st Legislative District.