NJ Spotlight published the following article on 8/1/2014. To read the full article, click here.
Open-Space Funding Gets One Last Chance to Get Spot on November Ballot
| August 1, 2014The effort to establish a new source of funding for preserving open space, farmland, and historic structures is not dead after all.
The Assembly plans to post a measure (SCR-84) on Monday giving proponents of open-space preservation a last-ditch opportunity to resuscitate a program that is essentially broke — even though it has won widespread bipartisan and public support in the past.
Unless the Assembly approves the measure by Monday, it has no chance of getting on the ballot this fall. The resolution proposes a constitutional amendment that would authorize at least $70 million a year to protect open space, farmland, and historic structures to be taken out of the corporate business tax already dedicated to other environmental programs.
Beginning in 2019, the share taken out of the corporate business tax for open space would be raised from 4 percent to 6 percent, boosting the amount that could be dedicated to open-space preservation to $117 million annually.
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