The COST of Property Taxes!

Today I made it over to Blanton's and Ashton's and found me some fine, important reading about an important issue to NJ residents - property taxes, and why a governor can't lower them: (the post)

Mind you, I try to be accurate whenever I can in talking about issues. That's why I try to remember not to say, "lowering property taxes", but "lowering the cost of property taxes". The state does not levy your property taxes. In my area, the township assesses the value of the property and decides how much money to tax and the county sets the costs that have to be met with those taxes. The state can only provide rebates, which is what Senator Corzine has been saying all along, while Forrester has been pretty much making stuff up, talking about how he'll "cut your property taxes" by ten percent a year for four years. Well, he can't. The governor doesn't get to cut your taxes. The issue is property tax rebates.

That's exactly what was pointed out to me by a friend last week, and it's exactly right. Your local municipality levies the property taxes, and the state government doesn't make them up, or collect them. You can argue that by increasing local funding that state government could make the high property taxes unnecessary, but is anyone saying that they're going to increase local funding? I don't think so. Frogsdong is right, the issue has to be to rebate or not to rebate, and committing to lowering property taxes state-wide is a smoke screen at best.