Municipality advocate challenges latest COAH figures

[Cranbury Conservative]

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 BY RUDY LARINIStar-Ledger Staff

The State League of Municipalities said yesterday it has gone to court to challenge the latest plan for low- and moderate-income housing put forth by the state Council on Affordable Housing.

The challenge claims the new requirements would bring "overwhelming financial burdens on property taxpayers."

The rest of the article can be found...

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1231306531127980.xml&coll=1

[Cranbury Conservative]

Senator Jennifer Beck

Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon

Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande

-12th Legislative District-



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 7, 2009


CORZINE SHOULD ABANDON COAH LEGAL DEFENSE

Governor Should Admit Blunder and Work on Bi-Partisan Solution



Senator Jennifer Beck (R-12) called on the Corzine Administration to abandon its legal defense of its failed subsidized housing policies of the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and work with legislators of both political parties on bi-partisan solution to the escalating COAH debacle.



The New Jersey State League of Municipalities has gone to court to challenge the administration’s COAH housing plans, which would result in “overwhelming financial burdens on property taxpayers.” The league lawsuit also challenges as flawed and inaccurate the underlying assumptions that essentially doubled the projected growth share obligations of municipalities, as well as the methodology used to allocate the obligation to municipalities.



“I applaud the League of Municipalities for standing up to an administration that has tossed out two decades of cooperation on housing issues in favor of inflexible confrontation. It is truly unfortunate that the Governor is in court essentially arguing for his right to destroy New Jersey’s economy,” said Beck. “He needs to abandon his taxpayer-funded legal defense of what is clearly an indefensible and disastrous policy, and instead work with legislators and local officials of both parties to devise new housing policies that do not punish taxpayers in a time when the State faces unprecedented economic challenges.”



Senate Republicans have proposed legislation (S-2292) to overhaul of the byzantine tangle of COAH rules and regulations and encourage job growth, preserve open space and farmland, end overcrowding in our schools and stimulate the construction of more affordable housing.



“The Governor has unleashed a housing policy that is little more than a tangle of expensive, contradictory, unintelligible and unworkable bureaucratic red tape,” said Beck. Our municipalities desperately need relief from this nightmarish mandate before our taxpayers are forced to pay the bill for yet another failed policy choice from this administration.”



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Senator Jennifer Beck

Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande

Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon

[Cranbury Conservative]

Housing Projections are Repudiated by Rutgers Report

Senator Christopher “Kip” Bateman (R-Somerset) called on the Corzine Administration and legislative Democrats to publicly admit that the proposed numbers of housing units to be mandated under their new subsidized housing law are based upon erroneous job projections.

“The Governor and Democrat legislative leaders have based their COAH mandates on job growth numbers that nothing more than a fantasy,” said Bateman, whose call to delay implementation of the COAH law for six months was rebuffed by the Governor. “They have imposed expensive, onerous and unworkable dictates on communities throughout this State using inflated and phony numbers.”

Bateman noted that COAH regulations proposed on October 20, 2008 (40 N.JR. 6116) project that there would be an annual increase in jobs of 58, 943 from 2004 to 2018. Yet actual job production in New Jersey has been much less than COAH’s projections according to a May, 2008 report by the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and the Sitar Company/Oncor International. According to the report, only 20, 300 new jobs were created in 2004, 22, 400 in 2005, 27, 200 in 2006, 3, 700 in 2007, while there was a loss of 10, 200 jobs in the first quarter of 2008.

http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/reports/sitar/sitarmay08.pdf

“The Democrats may think it is good to base their housing mandates on phantom job numbers, but municipalities throughout this State are being compelled to waste taxpayer money to plan for this growth that it will never occur,” said Bateman. “The COAH law and regulations are government bungling at its worst and taxpayers are footing the bill for it.”

“As our State economy reels from six years of unrelenting tax increases and irresponsible government spending, we simply cannot afford an unfunded and ill-conceived housing mandate that uses fantasy figures that have no basis in reality,” said Bateman. “Democrats need to realize that their COAH law is strangling our economy and picking the pockets of our already over-burdened taxpayers.”

Link to Post:
http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/bateman/bateman-corzine-needs-to-get-real-on-phantom-coah-projections/1982