The following guest column, authored by Christina M. Renna, President & CEO of CCSNJ, was featured in The Press of Atlantic City on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey has been flush with cash – a rarity in New Jersey – and the current Administration has been fast to increase state spending over recent years. Case in point, the FY2025 state budget is a $55.9 billion proposal, which is a 61 percent increase in state spending since 2018.

Although recent state budgets included no new taxes, as well as some fiscally responsible decisions, the Chamber of Commerce Southern New Jersey (CCSNJ) has repeatedly sounded the alarm that eventually the overall increase in spending would be problematic, leaving the state no choice but to raise taxes on its already overburdened residents and businesses. In the FY2025 proposed budget, it seems the CCSNJ’s fears have come true in a way that unfairly impacts South Jersey.

When the most recent budget proposal was unveiled, the CCSNJ was disappointed to see cuts to critical small business services, including cuts to the New Jersey Business Action Center and the New Jersey Small Business Development Centers, and increased taxes on certain businesses and industries. One of those proposals by Governor Murphy was a 2.5 percent Corporate Transit Fee – on top of the 9 percent Corporate Business Tax already paid - on companies that gross $10 million or more. The reason? To create a dedicated funding stream to fix NJ TRANSIT, which serves very little of the southern portion of the state.

Regionally, NJ TRANSIT oversees the Atlantic City Rail Line, which runs from 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia to Atlantic City. It also oversees the River Line, which runs from Trenton to Camden and has oversight over most of the region’s limited bus services. Not only are these NJ TRANSIT services limited, but they lack regularity, maintenance and overall upkeep. And although ridership is not high, there is limited marketing and advertising of the available NJ TRANSIT services in South Jersey, making residents uninformed of the transportation options that do exist, or uninterested in taking dilapidated modes of transportation that run on inconsistent schedules.

Which brings us back to the Governor’s 2.5 percent Corporate Transit Fee. This fee will be imposed on the state’s largest businesses – approximately 600 across the state – and the CCSNJ estimates that at least 100 are from the seven most southern counties of New Jersey. But the question bears asking, why should any South Jersey-based business be taxed to fund NJ TRANSIT given the region’s lack of access to its services?

The CCSNJ discusses how being a mass transit desert impacts the region’s economic growth and workforce development potential in its recent policy report entitled, Long Story Short: South Jersey - A Busy Policymaker’s Guide to Understanding a Misunderstood Region. It goes on to note that Trenton policies have a disproportionate impact on the region’s residents and business because most policymakers are uninformed as to what makes South Jersey uniquely South Jersey. As a result, the region is neglected or unfairly burdened when policies – in this case, a tax increase - are proposed for a reason deemed to be for the betterment of statewide public services.

Which brings us back to Governor Murphy’s proposed 2.5 percent Corporate Transit Fee to fund NJ TRANSIT. The simple fact is that the farther south you travel, the worse public transportation options are in New Jersey. The Corporate Transit Fee is not only a tax increase on businesses, but a tax increase that will be used to fund services South Jersey desperately wants and needs but has minimal access to. Enacting new taxes is never the right answer in our overtaxed and unaffordable state, but a new tax to cure NJ TRANSIT’s financial woes is a bitter pill to swallow for a region neglected by its services.