State bigwig: Healy kept city from tax

Monday, June 30, 2008
By KEN THORBOURNE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

A state legislative bigwig has credited Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy with getting a huge chunk of Jersey City exempted from a commercial tax that's part of the affordable bill passed last week.

The bill, which takes away the ability of suburban towns to pay other municipalities to pick up their affordable housing obligations, slaps a 2.5 percent tax on commercial development to help raise money to build affordable housing units.

But Healy felt strongly the commercial tax would hinder development in Jersey City. So he phoned the bill's author in the state senate, state Sen. Raymond J. Lesniak, D-Union.

The end result: a half-mile radius of PATH and light rail stations is exempt from the commercial tax, which according to Healy, exempts 40 to 45 percent of Jersey City from the tax.

"He (Healy) was the only one to call me on it and (he) was very persistent in arguing the merits of excluding transit hubs since we passed legislation for using tax credits to encourage development in those areas," Lesniak said. "He made a persuasive argument that made a lot of sense."

Besides Lesniak, Healy thanked Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, State Senate President Richard Codey, and Gov. Jon Corzine for getting the exemption adopted.

"We wanted to make sure there wasn't this huge obstacle to keep commercial investment from flowing into our city," Healy said

Besides Jersey City, Hoboken is the only other Hudson County municipality out of nine in the state that qualifies for the exemption.