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O’Scanlon turns up heat on arbitration cap debate, releases report calling for permanancy

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Source: NJSpotlight – An already politically charged debate over the fate of one of Gov. Chris Christie’s pet property-tax reforms took a new turn yesterday after a Christie ally released new figures from a special task force review of the reform’s effectiveness well before a final report is due.

The new data indicates that the property-tax reform commonly referred to as the interest-arbitration cap has helped to curb salary

Declan O’Scanlon

growth for police officers and paid firefighters in New Jersey. It was immediately used as ammunition by the Republican governor and others who have been calling for the cap to be renewed before it is due to expire at the end of the year…

Democratic legislative leaders were unmoved yesterday, and their own appointees on the task force suggested a fair analysis of the arbitration-cap issue may now be impossible to conduct in the current political atmosphere. And among the candidates who are vying this year to replace the term-limited Christie, a spokesman for Democrat Phil Murphy called the release of the new figures a “political stunt,” while Republican Kim Guadagno said they back up her ongoing call for the cap to be extended…

The version of the task force’s findings that was made public yesterday was endorsed by all four of Christie’s task-force appointees, including Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), who was the one who released it to reporters in the morning. The findings include the results of an analysis of the effectiveness of the arbitration cap that found it has saved New Jersey property owners a combined $530 million by curbing salary growth among police officers and paid firefighters.

The new figures also showed the total savings for taxpayers when the impact of other reforms is factored in, including the broader, 2 percent cap on property-tax increases, is close to $3 billion. And despite those controls being in place, the findings indicated New Jersey’s police officers and sheriff’s officers have been earning the second-highest mean wages in the country — $87,490 — for their occupation, and that the state’s paid firefighters have been earning the highest mean wages in the country for their occupation — $81,730.

“This is definitive,” O’Scanlon said in an interview yesterday. “The policy is both essential and effective. You don’t need any further study on this…”

O’Scanlon, who is running as a candidate for state Senate this year, dismissed concerns that releasing the data without all of the task-force members’ endorsement could bog the issue down in politics and undermine the effort to renew the cap.

“They don’t want this information in the public’s hands,” O’Scanlon said of the legislative appointees. “There is no way to taint these facts.”


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