Christie proposed an overhaul of the way New Jersey's schools are funded. In 1976, the way we fund schools is what prompted the state income tax. The bill passed the Assembly on July 7, the Senate two days later.
By Fran Wood
On May 23, a group of 25 friends and colleagues met for a reunion that can safely be called unlike any other in America. They were Republicans and Democrats who were thrown together four decades ago in the common pursuit of passing the law that created New Jersey's income tax.
They get together every five years -- and yes, we know what you're thinking: Why would anyone hold a reunion to celebrate the creation of a new tax?
But they were not celebrating the income tax. They were celebrating friendships that go back 40 years, friendships cemented or enhanced by the unpopular job they executed in the early weeks of the summer of '76.
The operative phrase here, in case you missed it, is "Republicans and Democrats."
In today's world, that's news. At a time when elected members of the two major parties barely speak to one another, this gathering was a reminder it wasn't always that way.
"We all became friends and respected each other," says former Gov. Tom Kean, who at the time was Assembly minority leader. "You don't see that anymore."
The reunion was one of "much conviviality," says former Sen. Bill Hamilton (D-Middlesex), then Assembly majority leader and now the reunion organizer, emphasizing the gathering is an opportunity to renew old friendships and rekindle memories.
It began "with the pledge, then the invocation, and then the former majority and minority leaders spoke," he says.
Al Burstein (D-Bergen), a decorated World War II veteran who served four terms in the Assembly, paid tribute to those who had passed away since the last reunion.
"And then," says Hamilton, "we went around the room, so everybody got to say something."
Among them was former Gov. Brendan Byrne, who declared "the Byrne-Kean years" (1973-1989) "the golden age of New Jersey politics."
Last week, Gov. Chris Christie proposed an overhaul of the way New Jersey's schools are funded, saying he wants the same amount of funding -- $6,599 -- for nearly every child in the state. This bears noting because the way we fund schools was what prompted the state income tax in the first place.
Here's the short version of what led to the summer of '76:
New Jersey's constitution requires the Legislature to "provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools."
Traditionally the funding for those schools was local property taxes. You needn't know any more to see why that method short-changed students in poor districts with lower property assessments.
In 1970, the mother of a Jersey City student, Kenneth Robinson, sued then-Gov. William Cahill for not enforcing the constitutional mandate. The case was argued in the New Jersey Superior Court, which held that financing schools through property taxes "violated the equal protection clauses of the federal and state constitutions."
This inequality -- in some cases gross disparity -- was reflected in everything from teacher-student ratios, materials and available courses to school building conditions, sports facilities and libraries.
The state contested the decision, the case went to the state Supreme Court, and Robinson again prevailed.
The court has wrestled with this issue more than 20 times over the years. But the dilemma confronting the state in the early '70s was urgent: the court's demand that the state devise a more fair and equitable means of school funding.
The effort to find a solution on which both chambers of the Legislature could agree was lengthy and at times combative. After Byrne was elected governor in 1973, he decided a state income tax was the most viable option.
This posed a problem for legislators, because taxpayers had made it clear they didn't want an income tax. But the court had painted them into a corner.
"We had passed Gov. Byrne's income tax in the Assembly, but the Senate couldn't pass it," remembers Hamilton. "So we decided we were not simply going to pass a tax to fund a thorough and efficient education; we were going to have fundamental tax reform."
Several legislative sessions passed with no agreement. The court ran out of patience in May 1976. It ordered schools closed at the end of the academic year and said they could not open in the fall without a new funding method in place.
"Without Robinson, no school would have opened that September," says Gordon MacInnes, who had served in the Assembly a year earlier and now runs the think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective. "So (legislators) went back to their un-air-conditioned chambers."
By early July, they were getting close. Judge Barbara A. Curran, then an assemblywoman (R-Morris), recalls a moment when you could see the tide turn.
"You would see people who had been extremely outspoken begin to not say much," she remembers. "A lot of them just got to the point that it was inevitable. They knew Gov. Byrne wasn't going to back down. He was, at that time, very unpopular. I think people recognized he was putting his reputation out there."
"We knew we couldn't pass it with just Democratic votes," says Hamilton. "The first night, we had five Republicans on board."
After that vote, three dropped out, and only two Republicans -- Karl Weidel (R-Mercer) and Bob Littell (R-Sussex) -- voted in favor of the final bill. It included, says Hamilton, "a homestead rebate, revenue sharing and, eventually, a dedicated tax for education."
Kean, who as minority leader was a particular target of voter opposition to the tax, recalls attending a meeting in Wayne during the debate where "I had to pass under an effigy of myself to get into the meeting."
Hamilton praises Kean's leadership. "He told his conference they were free to vote their conscience. It was the right and courageous thing to do."
That's precisely what Anthony "Doc" Villane (R-Ocean) did on the first vote, and he still remembers the dire warnings from people in his district that he'd never get re-elected.
The bill passed the Assembly on July 7, the Senate two days later, and the tax went into effect in September 1976 -- six years after the initial filing of Robinson v. Cahill.
The law also created instant group of legislative war veterans
The first reunion of legislators and staffers who forged and passed the bill was held in 1981.
"As people get older, there are fewer of us" says Curran, who since recently retiring from the bench serves as pro bono counsel for No Greater Sacrifice, a nonprofit agency to benefit children of killed or seriously wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
"But there's always lots of conversation about those days," she adds, "especially about the more colorful characters."
Legendary figures such as political boss "Hap" Farley (R-Atlantic) and labor leader "Chris" Jackman (D-Hudson). And former Sen. David J. Friedland (D-Hudson), whose 14-year legislative career ended in 1980, when he was convicted on racketeering charges. (He disappeared while awaiting sentencing, faked his own death-by-drowning off Grand Bahama in 1985, and was captured in the Maldives in 1987.)
And the late Assemblyman Kenneth Gewertz (D-Gloucester), a loud, flamboyant man Curran remembers sitting in the chamber with his cowboy-booted feet propped on his desk.
"He was a Democrat, but you never knew which side of an issue he would be on," she says. "As the saying goes, he marched to the tune of his own orchestra."
Curran recalls how respectfully she was treated when she arrived in Trenton in 1973. "I got elected after three recounts, so I was at the bottom of the barrel as far as my district went. I was the youngest, totally new, and one of only 14 Republicans out of 80 Assembly members.
"I will say everybody did get along," she notes. "There was a different attitude back then."
Kean calls it "an open-mindedness that doesn't exist anymore. You could change minds on the floor of the Legislature -- actually see votes turn during arguments on the floor."
One example was a bill addressing desecration of the American flag.
"The bill passed by 20 votes in committee," says Kean. But, when put before the Assembly, "Bob Wilentz (who later became chief justice of the state Supreme Court) got up and gave a speech about what the flag really means, what the Bill of Rights and Constitution mean, and the bill failed.
"The sponsor came to me afterward and said, 'What happened?!!'"
Villane, a dentist by profession, provides the most amusing example of camaraderie between the parties, ticking off a string of Democrats who regularly sat in his dental chair -- the late Willie Brown (D-Newark), Steve Adubato Sr., former state Supreme Court Chief Justice James Zazzali and Hamilton himself.
"And when Walter Kozlovsky (D-Monmouth) was dying," says Villane, "we all got together and held a fundraiser for his family."
Forty years later, in an era of polarized politics, the esteem in which the officials who passed the income tax bill still hold one another reminds us why politics once was called "the art of the possible." They understood that if you can't always get what you want, sometimes you can listen, compromise and deliver what may not please everyone, but serves the greater collective good.
"Even though I voted against him many times, I became a very good friend of Brendan Byrne," says former Gov. Kean. "(In those days) you had an affection and respect for each other, no matter whether Republican or Democrat."
Fran Wood is a retired op-ed editor, columnist and books editor for The Star-Ledger.
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