A Tale of Two Jersey’s
By Albert B. Kelly
If you live in South Jersey, chances are you live each day
with the assumption that we get the short end of the stick when it comes to
State resources, incentives, programs and such. This is not new, like a sibling
rivalry, we just assume that our northern sibling was the favorite, though the
evidence always seemed subjective.
Recently, I attended a forum where this question of north
versus south was examined as objectively as possible by the Walter Rand
Institute of Public Affairs at Rutgers University. Their report looked at
everything from health, education, and demographic data; to State Aid, and
infrastructure.
My initial take away from the report is that we in the south
have less educational attainment, we’re less healthy by standard measures, and
we have less overall wealth. For starters, I don’t subscribe to the “poorer-
dumber- sicker” thing, but even if there’s some truth in those words, it didn’t
come about in isolation nor does it exist in a vacuum.
The real question then, as it’s always been, is weather
South Jersey really does get fewer public goods, and if so, perhaps this is why
we’re not where we want to be in health, education, and revitalization. In
order to find out, the researchers looked at specific categories at the county
level.
The areas of consideration included local revenues (i.e.
from the various county offices and agencies), State Aid (insurance franchise
taxes and education-related bonds), whether the State assumed certain costs
(state social/welfare services and psychiatric facilities).
The report also looked at public/private revenues offset
with appropriations (grant funding), and other special items (all approved
revenue sources that were not offset with appropriations).
Looking at these categories and comparing north to south
(and even to central) for a period of roughly 15 years, the research showed
that in all the relevant categories, all viewed on a per-county basis- these
numbers revealed that South Jersey gets a lot less than North Jersey.
This was particularly striking when came to “State Aid” and
“State Assumption”- meaning what costs the state would actually take on
themselves. On average, North Jersey got more than double the amount of love
than South Jersey received.
Cumberland County, with significantly less resources and
much lower property values, got an average of somewhere between $1,954,311 and
$2,785,198 in state aid, while counties in the north such as Warren, Morris,
and Essex averaged between $4,950,801 and $33,368,737.
When it came to the State assuming costs for County Social
and Welfare Services, southern counties such as Cumberland and Cape May had the
State assume an average of between $5,476,294 and 11,498,370.
Using those same metrics, northern counties such as Bergan,
Hudson, Essex and Union had the State assuming between $31,630,716 and
$116,259,169 for county-related social and welfare costs.
Things didn’t improve when it came to public goods; South
Jersey has fewer bus and rail miles than North Jersey, and not surprisingly
counties in North Jersey averaged 2,250 bus stops to South Jersey’s 929 bus
stops.
At first glance, you might think that some of this has to do
with the fact that South Jersey residents showed up less at the polls, but that
turns out not to be the case. Average voter turnout between 2000 and 2015
between North and South (and Central) was pretty much the same- averaging
between 45.9% and 49.7%.
The next question for researchers was whether the division
of resources was fair given the differences in population size, taxes, and
demographics or would the differences disappear when they control for other
possible causes.
When they did the regression analysis, they found that
whether or not a county is “South Jersey” is itself a significant predictor of
whether or not we receive fewer public goods and this was true when controlling
for things like taxes, size of a county’s population, taxable property value,
percent of racial minorities; voter turnout, and having bigger cities (50,000+
residents).
Maybe the one piece of good news is that some things are in
our control. It may be harder given the lack of resources, but we can be
proactive in terms of education and learning. We can make concerted efforts to
improve our health and develop healthier lifestyles.
In the garden side of the Garden State, we can offer things
North Jersey can’t match; just imagine what we could do in 2017 if we got the
resources to help us reach our full potential.