I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Monday, July 5, 2010

2% Cap for Schools - How Is This Any Different?

After going through all of the exercise below, I just realized something:

As far as schools go, is this 2% cap really going to change anything?

I mean, we already vote on school budgets anyway. We vote on them no matter what the local tax levy is - above cap, below, it doesn't matter.

OK, there's now an arbitrary target of 2%, but that's just optics. What's really different for schools about a cap if the voters vote on the budget anyway?

The S-L reports that there is an exemption for spikes in school population. So what? The town is still voting on the budget, right? No matter how many kids there are, the voters still need to approve the tax levy.

So I really don't get this now. Other than putting a 2% figure out there, what does this legislation fundamentally change?

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