Senate Passes Shared Services Mandate

By Mark J. Magyar

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) yesterday scored yet another bipartisan legislative victory when the Senate passed his controversial bill that would force municipalities to share services or face a loss of state aid.

But Sweeney’s bill, which has Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s enthusiastic support, faces an uncertain future in the state Assembly, where Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) is not sold on Sweeney’s “big stick” approach to compel municipal savings.

For Sweeney, who championed shared services on a county level as a Gloucester County freeholder, yesterday’s 25-9 Senate vote was the latest step in his 22-month battle to hold down property taxes forcing municipalities to share services where savings can be proven. “We’ve tried the carrot. We need to try the stick,” Sweeney is fond of saying. “We need to try the stick.”

“If governments don’t wish to run their towns more cost-effectively, there is no reason the taxpayers of New Jersey should have to foot their bill,” Sweeney said yesterday, referring to the provision in his bill that would give voters the option of approving shared services, but take away state aid equivalent to the projected cost savings from any town whose voters reject shared services. “Taxpayers of this state need a break and shared services is one way to give it to them.”

Sweeney’s bill shifts the principal responsibility for initiating shared services from municipalities to New Jersey’s Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization, and Consolidation Commission (LUARCC), which would be empowered not only to study municipal governments to determine where taxpayer dollars could be saved. If the towns involved fail to enact a LUARCC-recommended shared services agreement, the plan would go on the ballot as a referendum question. Voters in any town rejecting such a shared-services ballot question would lose state aid.

For Sweeney, the shared-services bill is just the latest in a series of initiatives in which he has found himself on the same side as Christie and marshaled a bipartisan coalition to pass controversial legislation. In the most prominent case, Sweeney and Christie partnered last year to pass legislation that required teachers, police, and state and local government employees to contribute more toward their pensions and healthcare coverage and stripped public employees of the right to collectively bargain over healthcare issues for four years – a decision that cost Sweeney, an Ironworkers Union leader, the endorsement of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO for his 2011 reelection campaign.

Read more at NJSpotlight.com

Follow Patch on Twitter, Facebook and click to sign up for News Alerts. News tip or photos? E-mail teaneck@patch.com