Sam Perelli, 66, Tax Activist, resurrected a river, Founder of United Taxpayers of NJ

The Newark Star Ledger ^ | 10.13.02

[Coleus]

In the midst of the debate over establishing the state income tax, Sam Perelli showed up in Trenton one day in 1975 leading a protest group that included a woman in a barrel, a man dressed as Abe Lincoln and another in Revolutionary Army garb, evoking the battle over taxation without representation.

[Coleus]

http://www.utnj.org

As an active listener of the Bob Grant show, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Sam Perelli from time to time as a tireless advocate for the repeal of the "temporary" sales tax and income tax in NJ. He was a friend of the hard-working taxpayer who couldn't make ends meet and all of us who wanted a fairer tax system in New Jersey and America. I've met him on a few occasions and was always impressed by his knowledge and tenaciousness, he was not afraid of the politicians. God Bless Sam Perelli.

[Coleus]

A taxing 25 years for Sam Perelli 10/02/01Put on your party hats, boys and girls! Break out the bubbly! It's time to celebrate a historic occasion. I'm talking about rekindling the Spirit of '76. Not 1776, when a visionary band of Americans gathered in Philadelphia.

Nope, 1976, when a visionary band of Americans gathered in Trenton. In both cases, what spurred the citizens to gather was the issue of taxation. Those 1776 patriots founded the United States of America. The 1976 patriots founded the United Taxpayers of New Jersey. Okay, that 1976 tax revolt was a failure. A rout. A slaughter. A brutal massacre.

A taxpayer advocate in the Statehouse has prospects roughly equal to those of a chicken in Frank Perdue's henhouse. UTNJ leader Sam Perelli may have put thousands of people on the Statehouse steps 25 years ago shortly after the Legislature enacted the state's first income tax. But they accomplished nothing. Less than nothing, really. Not only did the legislators keep the income tax, but over the years, they have raised the rates.

Meanwhile, property taxes continued to rise as well. The sales tax? That went up, too. Nonetheless, the UTNJ is planning a celebration of what Perelli calls the "25th year of the two-year temporary income tax." It will take place on the evening of Oct. 17 at Il Tulipano Restaurant in Cedar Grove. The taxpayers may have lost the war, but they have one consolation: They were right. The income tax has been a disaster.

Not on Perelli's terms but on the terms of those who pushed for it and signed it into law. "Everything happened exactly as we predicted," Perelli told me. "The income tax was an uncontrollable source of revenue because we knew they would just keep spending. We said it would never stabilize property taxes." Perelli got that right. I was a young reporter when the income tax was passed, and I confess I was a bit naive.

I actually believed the politicians and bureaucrats when they said the income tax would end the property tax crisis, save inner-city schools and halt the court fight over school funding. I learned my lesson. Property taxes are soaring. Inner-city schools are still failing the kids. And just last week the lawyers were in front of the state Supreme Court for the latest round of that mud-wrestling match called Abbott vs. Burke.

I have since made myself a student of the sorry history of the state income tax. This involves some math. The first thing you have to do is to convert all of the figures into real dollars to adjust for inflation from 1976 to the present. Then you can compare figures on equal terms. The problem in 1976 was that the state Supreme Court had ordered the state to find a more equitable way of funding schools.

The property tax favored rich towns, so the Legislature passed an income tax. The theory was that the income tax would produce enough revenue to equalize funding and greatly decrease reliance on property taxes. Nice theory, but let's do a little thought experiment here. Let's pretend the state income tax had never been adopted. Where would we get the money for our schools? The average per-pupil cost of education in 1976 in today's dollars was about $5,600. Multiply that by the current number of pupils and you get a total education bill of about $7.4 billion for this year.

Without an income tax, property taxes would have to soar to meet that lofty goal, right? Wrong. Property tax collections for schools last year were $7.7. billion. That's more than enough to pay the bill with no income tax at all. Look at it another way. Imagine we had just an income tax and no property tax. The income tax last year brought in about $8 billion. Again, that's more than enough to pay the entire education bill -- if only school costs had been kept to the rate of inflation.

But that's a big "if only." In fact, education inflation has been running out of control for 25 years now. Perelli knew they would just keep on spending -- and Perelli was right. Per-pupil costs are now in excess of $11,000 -- and climbing. In real dollars, the cost of education has doubled since the income tax. Why? Good question. Other expenses have remained constant or have dropped. In real dollars, gas is much cheaper than it was in 1976.

Phone rates are a fraction of what they were back then. Electronic appliances are cheaper. Cars are about the same. I can't think of a product or service that has doubled in price in real dollars since the 1970s -- except for education.

All this money brought little improvement if test scores are any indication. But the education establishment and the teacher unions are richer and more powerful than ever, much more powerful than any taxpayer group. "I compliment the unions," Perelli says. "They did their job. It had nothing to do with the children of this state. It had to do with the union fighting for its members. Forget the kids." And forget the taxpayers. When Perelli goes to Trenton, he's treated like a wild-eyed madman.

The people in power all think the income tax worked out just great. Which it did – for the people in power. Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist.

[motzman]

As an active listener of the Bob Grant show, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Sam Perelli from time to time as a tireless advocate for the repeal of the "temporary" sales tax and income tax in NJ.

Me too. And I live in Cedar Grove. Sam will be missed...

[Tired of Taxes]

Here I am, "tired of taxes" and living in NJ, and I'm ashamed to say that I'm not familiar with the name Sam Perelli. It sounds like he was my kind of guy. May he rest in peace.

[Tired of Taxes]

And, if anyone in NJ is interested, here's the website for UTNJ:
http://www.utnj.org/

[Coleus]

`

[Coleus]

Tired of Taxes? Boy are you ever in the wrong state.

[Betteboop]

I also used to hear him from time to time on Bob Grant's show, and spoke to him once on the phone... he was a gentleman and will be missed.
Condolences to the family.

[Tired of Taxes]

Tired of Taxes? Boy are you ever in the wrong state.

How true. Property is inexpensive in South Jersey (compared to PA), but the property taxes here are outrageous.

[Coleus]

Yep, that's because of all the Municipal Welfare the state provides to Newark and the other inner city towns up north and in Trenton, Vineland and Camden down south. Most of the school budgets are paid by the state, about 90% in most of the Abbott districts. In addition, there are many hidden taxes and fees for everything we use, gas, electric, phone, parkway tolls, etc..

How did the Port Authority come up with $300 million to fund a sports arena in Newark? They overcharge us with tolls and fees at the bridges, tunnels and airports. The PA cops are the highest paid in the country.

http://www.taxpayersnetwork.org/taxburdenchart.html

http://www.taxpayersnetwork.org/Resources/SBSI2002A.pdf

Pg. 18, we're up there in most of the categories. And these charts don't include tolls and other fees.

[Tired of Taxes]

I didn't know that most of the school budgets are paid through our state taxes. However, I do know that our township expected to receive money through the state to pay for the new $12 million middle school built here. But, the state denied the funds, and that's one reason why our property taxes were increased again.

I just posted today about it on this thread (see post #10): http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/768806/posts?page=10#10 It's probably a familiar story throughout NJ. (And then they claim to want "no child left behind").

Thanks for the links. (I cannot read the second link, though. It seems that my computer is not set up to read PDF files).

[Coleus]

go to http://www.adobe.com and download acrobat reader, it's free and many links on the net are in this type of file. You are missing out on a lot if you don't have this.

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

[Coleus]

Sam Perelli's gone, but taxes remain

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

They say the two things you can't avoid are death and taxes. In Sam Perelli's case, it's difficult to say which one he fought harder against.

Up until the day he died of cancer last week, Perelli was still railing against our political establishment. Earlier in the week, he'd called to tell me about his success in getting a bill passed that would require a public hearing at every town meeting. He had gotten a call from a taxpayer who had been shut up by a mayor at some small-town meeting on the grounds that state law did not require that the public be heard at public meetings.

"I did some research and the man was correct," Perelli told me. "There was no provision."

Perelli pushed for a bill that would require the politicians to at least listen to the people. He knew it wouldn't make a big difference, but at least the politicians would get an earful from the public on a regular basis even though they'd still waste money in ways that a small-business owner like Perelli would consider appalling. Perelli ran an electrical parts business in Cedar Grove. His main complaint about politicians was that they refused to make the same tough choices that businessmen make every day.

The lead article in Sunday's Star-Ledger supported Perelli's point of view. A study of property taxes by reporters Rob Gebeloff and Tom Hester showed that taxes rose by an average of 7 percent this year -- the biggest increase since 1990 -- and that no one at any level of government wanted to take responsibility.

The minute I read the story, I wanted to call Perelli. His numbers were always reliable and his insights always sound. Here, for example, is a Perelli quote about the nature of the state's auto insurance crisis: "I don't believe there will be any significant auto insurance reform in this state," Perelli said. He put the blame on the many legislators who are also lawyers. "These guys are making a ton of money in auto claims and litigation."

Perelli said that in 1990. The lawyers are still making a ton of money on our "no-fault" system. And rates are still sky-high.

The car insurance mess and the property tax mess were the two issues that our current Governor rode to victory last year. James E. McGreevey still hasn't announced how he will fix the insurance mess. And as for property taxes, that 7 percent hike was just the beginning. They could go higher next year.

Perelli never tired of pointing out the reason: The only way to cut taxes is to cut spending. And the James E. McGreevey who promised to cut your property taxes is the same James E. McGreevey who two weeks ago stood next to Tom Daschle at a rally of the Communications Workers of America, a prime union of government workers. To cut spending would be to cut the unions' source of income and power. So McGreevey won't be fixing the property tax problem.

Neither will the Republicans. They had eight years during which they could have put on the ballot some tax-freezing equivalent of California's Proposition 13. That's what Perelli wanted. The Republicans didn't want it. With one or two exceptions, they are as committed to big spending as the Democrats. And the one or two exceptions are consigned to the same lunatic fringe where Perelli was considered to reside during his 27 years on the political scene.

These days, the political class is pushing for a constitutional convention to change the system of taxation. Nonsense. We already changed the system of taxation. In 1975, we instituted an income tax to supplement the property tax as a means of funding our schools. Perelli said it wouldn't work. More tax revenue would mean more spending. Sure enough, the income tax is expected to generate $7.7 billion in the current fiscal year. Coincidentally, if the rise in per-pupil spending had been kept to the rate of inflation since 1975, the total bill for public schools in New Jersey today would be about $7.8 billion. Bingo! We just solved the property tax problem.

Except we didn't. Perelli wasn't writing the laws, so the cost of education more than doubled in real dollars since the income tax was adopted. We started with a high property tax. We now have a high income tax plus a high property tax. Perelli predicted it.

The one thing I never understood about Perelli is why he spent so much time fighting bad government when he knew the cause was lost. The only thing I can conclude is that he enjoyed the fight for its own sake. He was 66 when he died, but I had assumed he was in his early 50s. He was a small, enthusiastic guy whose mustache bounced over his lip as he described the latest atrocity of the political class.

He knew there was no hope, but the spectacle amused him greatly. If he was thinking of New Jersey politics at the end, then he certainly died laughing.

Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist.
http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1034673302122981.xml

http://www.utnj.org

[hobbes1]

Worng State? You Betcha. I am a software developer, whose wife is a stay at home mom to three children all under 5.

My Address.

Glen Ridge.

I went out to get fixins for breakfast Sunday morn. I don't EVER buy the Star Ledger. Don't even Glimpse at it.That F*ng headline was like getting hit with a bat.

My Taxes have already gone up close to 25% in the first 4 years I lived there....IT is really getting ridiculous.

[Tired of Taxes]

Property here is cheap compared to PA. But the taxes are astronomical. Since 1999, our property taxes have been raised at least 30 percent. And - guess what? - the property values in our neighborhood are rising, so you know what that means...

The voters here rejected a school tax hike earlier this year, but it looks like the township will make sure they get it from us, anyway. The school tax problem especially annoys us because we're homeschooling our three children; that is, we're not even using the schools for which we're paying so much.

[Coleus]

Property is cheaper in NJ than in PA? I thought it was the other way around. There is a commercial here that pushes a development where you pay $1,000 down and 1,000 a month for the mortgage.

Be informed.

http://www.stopthedebt.com
http://www.utnj.org

[Coleus]

Click to subscribe to Citizens-Against-Tolls in NJ, for BENNY's and Non-BENNIE's alike
Click to subscribe to NJ Parents-Choice
Click to subscribe to NJ-Transit-help-Information-discussions

[Coleus]

Citizens Against the Newark Arena http://www.citizensagainstanewarkarena.com
Stop The Debt
http://www.stopthedebt.com
United Taxpayers of New Jersey
http://www.utnj.org
End Tolls in New Jersey
http://www.endtolls.com
Bret Schundler
http://www.schundler.org/schundler/index.html

[Tired of Taxes]

Property is cheaper in NJ than in PA? I thought it was the other way around.

It may be different in each area of the state.

We lived in PA until we moved to South Jersey six years ago. At that time, we couldn't find a decent property in PA for $100,000 or less. In fact, PA real estate agents didn't even want to talk to us as soon as they heard our price range.

But, in NJ, there were plenty of properties available within our range. PA properties the same size and age as our NJ home were asking around $130,000 and up. We shopped here for two years and finally bought our home in NJ for less than $90,000. Even new homes in NJ were selling for much less than new homes in PA at the time. One PA agent did warn me that property prices were lower in NJ, but the taxes were so high that it "all evened out."

There were some rural areas in PA (like Downingtown, for example) where property prices were just as low as NJ. But, I don't know if things have changed in the last six years.

[firewalk]

Thanks for the ping & Bttt