County Government Effectiveness Needs to be Examined, Summit Officials Say

Summit Common Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday night supporting Assemblywoman Nancy Muñoz's bill to establish a commission to study the effectiveness of county government.

Councilman Dave Bomgaars read from the resolution, stating that 26 percent of Summit’s annual tax bill goes to Union County, taxes have increased 5 percent annually and the county is not being fiscally responsible.  

“We represent 4 percent of the population and we’re paying 11 percent of their budget,” Bomgaars said.

Council members say this assembly bill was originally introduced by Assemblyman Eric Muñoz, M. D., the Assemblywoman's late husband.

Councilman Patrick Hurley said he thinks this resolution is a good start and he respects Munoz’s efforts. However, he wishes it had “more teeth to it” and says Summit needs to get more aggressive with this issue.

“No one is willing to tackle it and I think now we really need to tackle it because the county taxes are strangling us. We’ve done our job and kept things flat. The Board of Education has done their job. The county basically is sticking it in our face time and time again in two ways,” Hurley said. “One is excessive spending on stuff that is just ridiculous and then we have this re-distribution formula, which isn’t right for Summit.”

To put things into perspective, Hurley used Elizabeth as an example, which has 125,000 people and pays around 33 million in taxes to the county each year. Summit has about 22,000 residents and pays 36 million to the county annually. 

“County government does work in some areas, but it doesn’t work for us,” Hurley said. “Union county doesn’t work for us.” 

Hurley said Berkeley Heights Council recently passed a resolution that will place a referendum question on the November ballot, asking residents if the town should try to secede from Union County, and Hurley thinks Summit should do the same.

“We’ve got to get a heck of a lot more aggressive on this or some council 10 years from now is going to be debating the same thing,” he said.

Summit resident Michael McTernan, who is a Republican Candidate for Summit Common Council, complimented Bomgaars for bringing up the resolution and agreed with Hurley that more needs to be done.

“I think it really starts with educating people of Summit. I’ve talked to a lot of people in the past couple of months around this and I’m amazed at how people don’t understand where the money goes. They don’t understand what portion we pay to Union County,” McTernan said. “This is not a partisan issue. This is a fairness issue, and it goes to the ability for people to live, raise a family and retire in this town. We need people to understand so they can have their voices heard, talk to our representatives and make changes in Trenton.” 

McTernan compared this situation to the game Whack-A-Mole — municipal government spending increases have been capped at 2 percent and spending is being controlled on the state level, but county spending is exploding.

“I would encourage you to really look at more radical options like supporting a secession resolution only because when you do that, people start to listen and try to understand. Studying county government is great but this bill went nowhere several years ago and I guarantee it’s not going to go anywhere now. It’s not going to raise awareness for the people who ultimately will have a way to change it, which are voters.”