Town of Secaucus v. Hudson County Bd. of Taxation
| Citation | 133 N.J. 482,628 A.2d 288 |
| Parties | , 84 Ed. Law Rep. 725 TOWN OF SECAUCUS, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. HUDSON COUNTY BOARD OF TAXATION and City of Bayonne, Defendants-Appellants, and County of Hudson, Borough of East Newark, Town of Guttenberg, Town of Harrison, City of Hoboken, City of Jersey City, Town of Kearny, Township of North Bergen, City of Union City, Township of Weehawken and Town of West New York, Defendants. |
| Decision Date | 04 August 1993 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey) |
Margaret A. Holland, Deputy Atty. Gen., for defendant-appellant Hudson County Bd. of Taxation (Robert J. Del Tufo, Atty. Gen. of New Jersey, attorney; Joseph L. Yannotti, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Mary C. Jacobson, Deputy Atty. Gen., of counsel).
Eric Martin Bernstein, Roseland, for defendant-appellant City of Bayonne (Weiner Lesniak, attorneys; Mr. Bernstein, Roseland, Beth Jaffe, and Nicholas A. Panepinto, Bayonne, of counsel).
Frances C. Holland, Secaucus, for plaintiff-respondent (Holland & Holland, attorneys).
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
This case asks the Court to resolve the question whether a statute enacted under the education laws that exempts the City of Bayonne from paying its share of taxes committed to the operation of the Hudson County Vocational School violates the State Constitution. In implementing the tax exemption, Hudson County established a two-tier tax system under which Bayonne paid a county tax rate lower than that of all other municipalities in Hudson County. The Town of Secaucus challenged that two-tier system as violating both the prohibition on special legislation, article IV, section 7, paragraph 9(6), and the uniformity clause, article VIII, section 1, paragraph 1, of the New Jersey Constitution. The trial court found for Secaucus on both those grounds. The Appellate Division affirmed that decision on uniformity clause grounds, but failed to reach the question of whether N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 constituted special legislation. Secaucus v. Hudson County, 255 N.J.Super. 665, 605 A.2d 1151 (1992).
The Hudson County Board of Taxation petitioned this Court from that decision and we granted certification, 130 N.J. 396, 614 A.2d 618 (1993), to decide whether the exemption statute is constitutionally invalid.
The City of Bayonne, located in Hudson County, has operated a vocational-educational program since 1931. Originally, Bayonne implemented that program through a separate vocational high school. In the 1960s, however, Bayonne created a comprehensive high school that fully integrated the vocational program into its general high school curriculum. Bayonne's vocational-education program, which has been widely praised, allows vocational students to participate fully in school activities and attend many classes with general education high school students.
In 1972, the Board of Education of the Hudson County Vocational School (hereafter "HCVS" or "county vocational school") passed a resolution authorizing the acquisition of a building for a new county vocational school. The following year, a $2 million budget was proposed for the operation of HCVS, and in 1974 HCVS began operating from its own facility. Realizing that the Bayonne vocational program, by that time in existence more than forty years, would not be discontinued, and wanting to spare Bayonne the double expense of supporting its own and the county's vocational programs, State legislators from Hudson County proposed legislation exempting Bayonne from contributing to the maintenance of the county vocational school.
The terms of the original legislation, proposed as Senate Bill 74 in the 1972 Legislative Session, were quite broad. Those terms provided that
each municipality included within a school district maintaining a system of vocational education approved for the purposes of Federal or State Allotment of vocational funds by the Commissioner of Education under the regulations of the State Board of Education shall be exempt from assessment, levy or collection of taxes based on any apportionment of amounts appropriated for the use of a county vocational school district.
The effect of the original legislation would have exempted virtually every municipality with a vocational-education program from contributing to the support of its county's vocational school. Recognizing that, Senate Education Committee amendments to Senate Bill 74 significantly narrowed the scope of the exemption in order to exempt only Bayonne from the general obligation to support county vocational-educational programs. That narrowing was achieved by limiting the effect of the legislation in two ways. First, the amendments restricted the municipalities affected only to those in a "county of the first class having a population of not more than 700,000 according to the 1970 Federal Census." L.1973, c. 305, § 1. In 1973, N.J.S.A. 40A:6-1 defined a first class county as "a county having a population of more than 600,000." By that criterion, Bergen County (1970 population 897,148), Essex County (1970 population 932,526), and Hudson County (1970 population 607,839) qualified as first class counties. Only Hudson, however, met the amended statute's population requirement for the tax exemption.
Second, the amendments required that in order for a municipality to qualify for the exemption, its vocational program would have to have been in existence, as a program approved by the State Board of Education for state or federal funding, for at least twenty years. Because, among the Hudson County municipalities, only Bayonne had a vocational education program in existence and approved by the State for at least twenty years, the amended statute applied only to Bayonne. The statement to the bill, from the Senate Education Committee, left no doubt about the intent of the legislation: "This bill, as amended, would exempt the City of Bayonne from any assessment of taxes due to the cost of supporting the county vocational school in Hudson County."
When the 1980 census revealed a reduction in Hudson County's population to 556,972, thereby jeopardizing its first-class status, the Legislature, by L.1981 c. 462, § 44, established population density as a new criterion and amended N.J.S.A. 40A:6-1 to redefine counties of the first class as "counties having a population of more than 550,000 and a population density of more than 3,000 persons per square mile." Under that reclassification, Hudson County, with a density of 12,801.1 residents per square mile, retained its status as a county of the first class. At the same time, the Legislature, by L.1981, c. 462, § 20, amended N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 to substitute "latest federal decennial census" for "1970 federal census." Consequently, Bayonne remained the sole New Jersey municipality exempt from county-vocational-school tax payments.
The exemption statute, N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37, now reads:
Notwithstanding any of the provisions of chapter 54 of Title 18A of the New Jersey Statutes, in any county of the first class having a population of not more than 700,000 according to the latest decennial census, each municipality included within a school district which has maintained for a minimum of 20 years a vocational educational program approved for the purposes of federal or State allotment of vocational funds by the Commissioner under the regulation of the State Board of Education shall be exempt from assessment, levy or collection of taxes based on any apportionment of amounts appropriated for the use of a county vocational school district.
To implement the mandate of N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37, Hudson County devised a two-tier tax system for assessing the county tax burden on its municipalities. The system, administered by defendant Hudson County Board of Taxation (HCBT), provided a higher rate (which included the costs of operating the county vocational school) for eleven of Hudson County's twelve municipalities, including plaintiff, Secaucus, and a lower rate (which excluded the costs of operating the county vocational school) for Bayonne. The dual rate was necessary because appropriations for county vocational education must be assessed, levied, and collected in the same manner as general county appropriations pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:54-29.2. Lacking any statutory authorization, HCBT could not separate the county vocational-school component from the common purpose budgetary requirements of the county. Under the two-tier system, the other eleven Hudson County municipalities, by paying proportionally more tax than Bayonne, compensated for the revenue lost through Bayonne's exemption from the cost of maintaining HCVS. As the Appellate Division noted: "Put more bluntly, and more precisely, Hudson County struck two county tax rates for its municipalities, the lower one solely for Bayonne." 255 N.J.Super. at 668, 605 A.2d 1151.
The two-tier system of taxation, however, operated not only in the assessment of regular county taxes but also in the determination of what each Hudson County municipality had to pay in added and omitted assessments. As the trial court in the litigation below explained:
On February 15, each year, municipalities must also pay to the county a share of the revenues derived pursuant to N.J.S.A. 54:4-63.1, et seq., (added assessments of real estate), N.J.S.A. 54:4-63.12, et seq., and N.J.S.A. 54:4-63.31, et seq., (omitted assessments of real estate). These provisions prevent new properties constructed after the October 1 assessment date, or properties which were not included in the regular assessment list of October 1 for the tax year, from escaping taxation until the following year. Under N.J.S.A. 54:4-63.19, -63.38, the added or omitted property assessment list is multiplied by the county rate to calculate the sums due to the county for added and omitted taxes.
[Secaucus v. Hudson County Bd. of Taxation, No. 094204-86W (Law Div. June 29, 1990).]
By applying its two-tier system of taxation to the added-and-omitted...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Muhammad
...a statute are equally plausible, the view sustaining the statute's constitutionality is favored." Town of Secaucus v. Hudson County Bd. of Taxation, 133 N.J. 482, 492, 628 A.2d 288 (1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1110, 114 S.Ct. 1050, 127 L.Ed.2d 372 In Hunt, supra, 91 N.J. at 364-67, 450 A.......
-
State v. Maldonado
...basis" for their conclusion that such added deterrent effect is warranted to protect society. Town of Secaucus v. Hudson County Bd. of Taxation, 133 N.J. 482, 494-95, 628 A.2d 288 (1993), cert. den., --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1050, 127 L.Ed.2d 372 (1994). But in this case more than conceivab......
-
D.J.L. v. Armour Pharmaceutical Co.
...exclude those who would naturally be related to those included, will the law be declared invalid. See Secaucus v. Hudson County Bd. Of Taxation, 133 N.J. 482, 494, 628 A.2d 288 (1993), cert. denied sub nom., City of Bayonne v. Town of Seacaucus, 510 U.S. 1110, 114 S.Ct. 1050, 127 L.Ed.2d 37......
-
Mack-Cali Realty Corp. v. State
...challenges, we "afford every possible presumption in favor of an act of the Legislature." Town of Secaucus v. Hudson Cnty. Bd. of Tax'n, 133 N.J. 482, 492, 628 A.2d 288 (1993) (citing Holster v. Bd. of Trs., 59 N.J. 60, 66, 279 A.2d 798 (1971) ); accord Strategic Env't Partners, LLC v. N.J.......
-
INTRASTATE PREEMPTION: A NEW FRONTIER IN BURDENING CHOICE.
...(158) Garcia v. Siffrin Residential Ass'n, 407 N.E.2d 1369, 1379 (Ohio 1980). (159) See Town of Secaucus v. Hudson Cty. Bd. of Taxation, 628 A.2d 288, 297 (N.J. (160) See Town of Emerald Isle v. State, 360 S.E.2d 756, 763 (N.C. 1987). (161) Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 158 (2007). (16......