Senator Christopher “Kip” Bateman (R-Somerset) called on Trenton Democrats to relieve New Jersey’s municipalities of their onerous subsidized housing mandates in light of the State’s unemployment rate, which has soared to its highest rate in 15 years.
“New Jersey’s economy is hemorrhaging jobs thanks to the Trenton Democrat legacy of high taxes, reckless spending and bonding and unfunded mandates on local communities. We need to decisive action to reverse these trends, and the first place to start is the expensive, unfunded and illogical COAH mandate that has been placed on our municipalities,” said Bateman.
“The Democrats have based their COAH law on job growth numbers that are nothing more than a flight of the imagination,” noted Bateman.
COAH regulations proposed on October 20, 2008 (40 N.JR. 6116) projected that the State would see 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.
“It has been reported that the State lost 59,800 private-sector jobs in of 2008, the largest loss since the early 1990s. The Department of Labor and Workforce Development has stated that employment was lower in December by 15, 200 jobs and the State’s unemployment rate rose
to 7.1%. Yet, the Democrats are demanding that taxpayers take up the burden for the construction of COAH housing based upon job numbers that are completely divorced from the economic reality that the State is facing,” said Bateman.
“The Legislature must enact comprehensive COAH reform that is fair to taxpayers and can be implemented without aggravating an already serious economic downturn,” Bateman concluded.
Link to Post:
http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/bateman/ui-numbers-prove-need-to-reform-coah/2111
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August 21, 2009
