Details about this story

• Source: Newark Star-Ledger
• Date: January 08, 2007
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Joe Donohue , Rob Gebeloff
• Topics: Tax , Real Estate
• Data Types: State Data
• Description/Excerpt: As lawmakers scrambled to enact a property tax reform plan last year, the problem grew by a record $1.4 billion, a Star-Ledger analysis has found. Local government agencies hit landowners with a $20.9 billion levy in 2006, of which $15.4 billion was billed to homeowners. That pushed the average residential tax bill up 6.8 percent to $6,170 -- an increase of $390. In the mid-1990s, the state's property tax levy -- the total amount collected to run local government and schools -- took three years to rise by a similar amount. But with costs increasing and aid from Trenton relatively flat, local officials have passed more than a billion dollars of their costs onto landowners every year since 2002.