Towns Take Their Cut of the Real-Estate Boom

Seeming ever on the watch for reasons to bemoan the fate of the suburbs, The New York Times prospected a story from property-tax data showing that taxes have outpaced incomes for most of the decade, nowhere more than in the Times own tri-state region. The story explains that income and property taxes are related issues, since one or the other must provide revenues to pay for schools and other local costs. In the financial capital of New York, the stock market slowdown of 2000 robbed brokers and other traders of income taxed by the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Without those revenues, the states cuts school aid, leaving local municipalities no choice but to raise taxes. The biggest tax bulge was 41 percent in Somerset County, N.J., where income went up only 5 percent from 2000 to 2004.


There are some subtleties the Times misses. School costs, whether paid by the state or towns, have been rising precipitously during the period the story examines, due to higher healthcare costs for teachers, unpolled immigrants and the price of special education. Politics have also played a part: during a 40-year reign by Republicans in Long Island's Nassau County, where the story cites a 29 percent jump in property taxes from 2000 to 2004, tax hikes were blasphemy. Only when the state stepped in to end the county's financial crisis did legislators finally order a new property-tax assessment, which raised taxes countywide.

Accompanying the Times tax story was this tale of a poor little rich rapper.