NJAS Opinion: Spring, 1998
Not since the passage of the Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act in 1988, a decade ago, has the time been so ripe for NJAS members to do so much for the habitats they love by supporting a single piece of legislation. Although as we write in early March that legislation has not yet been drafted, we expect it will be as soon as Governor Christine Todd Whitman and the Legislative leadership can agree on the right combination of taxes and revenue measures needed to fully fund it at $200 million dollars per year. Governor Whitman woke up the State with her resounding Inauguration speech on January 20, calling for the preservation of 300,000 acres over the next four years, nearly triple the previous pace, and ultimately, 1,000,000 acres over the next decade. It was music to our ears.
The Governor has gotten the message, the message being transmitted from the public through her Council on New Jersey Outdoors, Chaired by Maureen Ogden and Vice-Chaired by Tom Gilmore and Dan Kelleher. That message is clear and straightforward, and we quote from the Council's Report:
New Jersey has to aggressively preserve its open spaces. The public has said that New Jersey's ecological integrity, economic future, and quality of life are interrelated and depend on our ability to preserve a critical mass of open space. New Jersey continues its trend towards habitat fragmentation and suburban sprawl, despite a complex web of regulations and plans that help guide land use. What we have accomplished thus far is not enough to ensure a sustainable, livable New Jersey. The time is right to establish a strong and steady financing mechanism to both preserve and provide excellent stewardship of our natural and historic resources. The Governor's Council on New Jersey Outdoors recommends a total commitment of $200 million of annual, dedicated funding for the next ten years to fund the state's open space and stewardship goals. This fund would appropriately be called the Green Acres, Farmland and Historic Legacy Trust. At this level of funding New Jersey would be able to meet current critical need, support preservation goals into the next decade, and at the same time reduce reliance on the traditional bond funding mechanism.
We like to think we've already had something to do with getting this message out, beyond our work in front of, and through the Council. If our State Plan was working well, along the lines called for in our Petition, we might not need so bold a funding measure. But there is a growing consensus that the State Plan is not adequate to the task, and needs serious revisions. Those revisions have yet to be designed, much less to be set in motion. But over the next four months, our focus must be on winning Legislative passage of this substantial funding "stable source," which needs to clear the Legislature this summer so that it can be placed before the voters in November for ratification. This is the fundamental first step in any meaningful habitat conservation plan for Highlands' watershed lands, our threatened grassland bird species, and the broader preservation of agricultural lands. It is the common denominator that should be acceptable now, across the political spectrum, when other, more complex anti-sprawl measures have yet to win such a consensus. This consensus rests on the fact that the Legacy Trust will be proceeding with a non-regulatory, willing-sellers-only approach. The Council's report promises a more generous payment in-lieu-of-taxes program that should be favorably received by municipalities who fear they already have too many conservation acres. And we certainly hope that the Democratic Party will resist the temptation to avenge the voter backlash against their tax increases in 1991 by taking an ironclad position against any new tax increases, even ones that voters have repeatedly showed they are willing to pay for: witness the voter's readiness to tax themselves in municipality after municipality for open space funds in the fall of 1997, even when it touched that sensitive nerve called the property tax.
Anyone driving the congested roads of New Jersey this spring of 1998 knows, by looking out the window, that we are starting to witness another one of our classic building booms. We see the big yellow earthmovers all along Routes 579 and 31 in Hunterdon County. Since 1950, we have lost more than 1,000,000 acres of farmland, with the current estimated annual rate of loss being between 10,000-13,000 acres, but we've saved only about 37,000 acres with State funds since we created the Farmland Preservation program in 1983. The need, it seems clear, keeps bumping up against the lack of funds. According to the Governor's Council, "as of January, 1998, the Green Acres Bond Fund has $5 million remaining to be allocated against more than $250 million in pending requests," and the "Farmland Preservation Program has $21 million remaining for pending 1998 approvals which total more than $300 million..."
So we ask you, our members, and the citizens of New Jersey, to remember what we tell audiences all over the State when we are asked to say where we stand on New Jersey land use: in front of the local planning boards, the clocks all read 5 minutes to midnight for the fate of our natural resources. We simply must take this big, bold first step to help recapture the nationwide leadership New Jersey always has enjoyed in land use protections. Governor Whitman has created a whole new opportunity, and now we must get behind her and convince the Legislature that the hour is very late, and that a state that spends $2 billion dollars a year on its roads can afford to spend just 10% of that to save the remaining open spaces in between them.
Please see the State Conservation Report for the details on how to contact the Governor and Legislative leadership.
|
