Third District candidates argue over taxes

As New Jersey's tense Third District congressional race enters its final laps, each candidate is calling the other a tax hiker.

Taxes are an especially sensitive issue in New Jersey, which has the highest taxes in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Democratic State Sen. John Adler's campaign says that his GOP opponent, Medford Mayor Chris Myers, has "bloated Medford budgets" and that "taxpayers are suffocating from Myers' budgets."

Myers responds that Adler "has a long, troubling history of voting for higher taxes," which have forced residents and businesses to flee the state.

Neither is entirely accurate.

On Myers' watch, Medford's municipal tax bills increased modestly until this year, when they decreased slightly.

During his 16 years as a state senator, Adler has voted for and against taxes, sometimes breaking with his party and offering alternatives to tax hikes.

State and county records of Myers' town show that in 2007, Medford taxpayers spent an average of $1,002 on municipal purposes. This year, taxpayers will spend an average of $998.

Myers said he approached the budget by figuring out where to shave expenses and target discretionary spending "while still maintaining services and finding a way to cut taxes wherever we can."

He creatively curtailed the growth of government spending by contracting out leaf grinding and putting solar panels on a sewage facility. He is considering installing solar panels at a former township landfill and teaming with other townships to negotiate lower health-insurance costs.

Before this year, Medford taxes had climbed gradually. In 2002, Myers' first year on the Township Council, homeowners spent about $766 for municipal purposes. In 2004, the township had its largest tax increase, an average of about $160 per homeowner. That hike came after a flood breached dams and devastated the community, undermining roads and sewers.

It was not quite as high as the 1988 tax hike in Cherry Hill, where residents saw an average $200 jump in their municipal property tax bills. That came after a newly elected mayor and council - including Adler - decided they couldn't maintain basic services with the budget their predecessors had left them.

Adler left the Cherry Hill council in 1990 to run against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. James Saxton for his Third District seat, which covers Cherry Hill in Camden County and runs through Burlington and Ocean Counties. Adler lost that election. Saxton is retiring this year.

A year later, Adler was elected to the state Senate. In Trenton, he has a mixed record, voting for and against budgets and taxes.

In 2006, the nonpartisan New Jersey Taxpayers Association gave Adler a passing grade on taxes even though he voted that year for a controversial state sales-tax increase, in part to give property-tax relief. In 1992, he broke with his party and voted to roll back former Gov. Jim Florio's state sales-tax hike.

Last year, Adler opposed Gov. Corzine's failed plan to raise highway tolls to cover billions in bonds and cochaired a committee that came up with ways to help citizens figure out whether their school boards were wasting money. During the 2006 budget standoff that resulted in a government shutdown, he called for furloughing 2,000 state workers. He also has supported a cut in retirement pension and health benefits for future state workers.

Adler has voted to increase taxes or fees on income, billboards, casinos, cigarettes, rental cars and other items, as well as to create a state watchdog: a controller to review state and local spending. He also has voted to set caps on local spending.

At the same time, along with former State Sen. William Schluter (R., Hunterdon) Adler has called for a constitutional convention on property taxes.

"We need enough taxes to run government, to provide for schools and police service and fire service and to meet basic human needs and to keep society safe," Adler said when asked to explain his tax philosophy. "I think all members of society should share the burden fairly while keeping that burden as low as possible."