The two front-runners in this year’s gubernatorial race don’t have many overlapping proposals, but their main pledge is the same: to make New Jersey, a state with some of the highest taxes in the country, more affordable.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s plans range from revamping how state aid is distributed to schools to promising to veto pet projects in the state budget if he’s elected governor in November. Ciattarelli on the campaign trail has reminisced about days when he said more people would come to New Jersey to start a family, open a business, and retire here.
“Those are the things that people feel terribly insecure, if not fearful of, today, and I refuse to be the governor of a state in which people live with insecurity and fear,” he said at a recent campaign stop in Elizabeth.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat hoping to keep the governorship in her party’s hands for the third term in a row, has also made lowering costs a chief plank of her campaign for the state’s top job.
“I’m going to be fiscally responsible with your money, I’m going to drive down your costs at every level, and I’m going to make sure your kids have great opportunities here in the state of New Jersey,” she said earlier this month when the two candidates met for their first debate at Rider University in Lawrenceville.
The two are vying to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy, a term-limited Democrat. Here are five ways Ciattarelli and Sherrill say they would reduce costs if elected on Nov. 4.
JACK CIATTARELLI
Property taxes
Ciattarelli wants to cap property taxes by linking them to a percentage of a home’s assessed value, a move he said would help make home ownership a reality for more young people.
“We want people to own a home again. In this country, you build equity with home ownership,” he said.
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Utilities
Ratepayers in New Jersey were socked with 20% increases starting in June (rates are expected to rise again next year after a price-setting auction held in July).
Ciattarelli blames Murphy and Trenton Democrats for the increase, citing the Murphy administration’s push for offshore wind farms that failed to become a reality and its reliance on out-of-state power generation.
“As governor, I’ll ban offshore wind and diversify our energy sources in New Jersey to once again include natural gas and nuclear,” he says in a campaign ad.
Small business
Ciattarelli has called for the first $100,000 of income for small businesses to be tax-free and for the first $100,000 of their payroll to be exempt from employer payroll taxes.
“Watch entrepreneurship take off in New Jersey,” Ciattarelli told reporters after the Rider debate.
Corporate business tax
Ciattarelli has vowed to slash the state’s corporate business tax over six years. Currently, businesses are taxed between 6.5% and 9%, and businesses with a taxable income greater than $10 million face an additional, non-marginal 2.5% surcharge. He has proposed reducing the top tax rate by 1% annually for six years.
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Income taxes
New Jersey’s income tax is paid under a series of marginal rates that increase along with the filer’s income, starting at 1.4% and topping out at 10.75% for income that exceeds $1 million. There are five tax brackets in between.
Ciattarelli has called for three tax brackets that top out at 5%.
“We’re going to restructure and simplify our income tax rates. Pennsylvania has a 3% flat tax for everybody … We’re going to simplify it. I’m in favor, at the very least, of three brackets. 3%, 4%, 5%.”
Sherrill supporter Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) echoed her campaign-trail threat that Ciattarelli will raise taxes if elected, noting that Ciattarelli voted to raise taxes when he held local elected positions. Sherrill, Gopal said, is focused on lowering property taxes, increasing shared services, and addressing skyrocketing utility costs.
“You look at Jack’s six years in the Assembly with Chris Christie, they raised taxes those years. So I’m not sure there’s anything to say that any voters I’ve talked to have any confidence Jack is going to make things more affordable,” he said.
Ciattarelli has said he will lower property and income taxes.
MIKIE SHERRILL
Property taxes
Sherrill has said shared municipal and school services could drive down property taxes, and supports mandatory consolidation of certain school districts.
“We have some school districts who have the whole administrative cost, all of the buildings, and yet they’re not even running a K-12 school system, so we do need to merge some of these school districts,” she said at the Rider debate.
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Utilities
Sherrill’s response to rising electricity prices is to propose a state of emergency on her first day as governor, one she claims will allow her to freeze utility rates.
“When I take office, the average New Jersey family won’t see an increase in utility rates for an entire year,” she said at an event in August.
Health care
Sherrill’s health care plan includes driving down prescription drug costs by requiring pharmacy benefit managers — middlemen who negotiate drug prices with manufacturers on behalf of insurers — to pass discounts directly to patients. She said she’d also remove incentives that allow them to pick expensive drugs for coverage.
“I’ll hold PBMs accountable for achieving cost savings for consumers, not lining their own pockets, making sure they’re not directing consumers towards those more expensive drugs that are driving up their costs,” she said in a May campaign video.
Small business
Sherrill has proposed removing “red tape” for small businesses and making the permit-approval process more transparent so residents aren’t wasting time and money on redundant forms. She said it’s too hard for new business owners to obtain permits, and they often find themselves lost in paperwork.
“But a lot of this is going to be a culture change in Trenton, as we have a ‘get to yes’ culture, instead of a ‘gotcha’ culture,” she said.
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Food
Sherrill wants to lower the rising cost of groceries by offering incentives to local grocers to open more stores, which she said will create more competition, lower prices, and address food deserts.
“My affordability agenda is about making New Jersey work for the working people,” she said.
Jeanette Hoffman, a Republican strategist, praised Ciattarelli’s tax reduction plans and called it “a big red flag” that Sherrill, at the Rider debate, declined to commit to not raising the state’s 6.65% sales tax (Sherrill’s campaign later said she would not raise the sales tax).
“Jack has a place to address every single problem, they’re very specific, and he can talk about them in detail and in a reasonable way. He has a better command of the issues,” she said.
This story first appeared on the New Jersey Monitor.
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