THE HIGHLANDS TRAP: ANOTHER BROKEN PROMISE FROM TRENTON
I believe we can protect our environment and our drinking water without sacrificing local control, crushing taxpayers, or financially strangling communities.
The Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act was passed in 2004 to protect one of New Jersey’s most important water resources. Today, the Highlands supplies drinking water to nearly 7 million people.
More than 20 years later, however, communities across northern New Jersey are sounding the alarm about what has become known as the “Highlands Trap.”
The problem is not the goal of protecting our water. The problem is an approach to land-use management that can severely restrict reasonable development while shifting the financial burden onto municipalities, property owners, and taxpayers. It can deplete the local tax base.
Towns subject to the law’s strictest development restrictions have limited ability to grow their commercial tax base. When reasonable economic development is restricted, municipalities lose opportunities to add new ratables and expand their tax base.
At the same time, many of these communities have faced reductions in state school aid. The result is predictable: fewer ratables, greater pressure on homeowners, struggling school budgets, and rising property taxes.
There is also a legitimate concern about the effect these restrictions can have on individual property owners whose land can no longer be developed as it otherwise might have been. When development potential is dramatically reduced, the economic value associated with that property can also be affected.
State funding has become another broken promise.
When the Highlands Act was adopted, the state created mechanisms intended to compensate municipalities and property owners affected by development restrictions. But according to legislation now pending in Trenton, the Highlands Tax Stabilization Fund was last funded in the FY 2010 budget, even though the development restrictions remained.
Other watershed aid and compensation programs have historically been inadequate, underfunded, or discontinued. Payments in Lieu of Taxes for preserved open space also may not come close to replacing the municipal revenue that could otherwise have been generated from taxable property.
In other words, Trenton imposed permanent restrictions while the financial assistance intended to offset their impact did not remain permanent.
This is not a partnership! It's Trenton imposing the rules and leaving local taxpayers with the bill.
There are also unfunded mandates and additional administrative burdens.
Highlands Plan Conformance can require significant municipal staff time, planning work, engineering review, legal expenses, and administrative resources.
Land-use decisions that traditionally belong at the municipal level can become more complicated when additional layers of state review are introduced. That can mean more expense and administrative friction for municipal employees, residents, and property owners.
Even the Transfer of Development Rights program has not solved the problem.
The Transfer of Development Rights, or TDR, program was intended to compensate property owners whose development rights were restricted by allowing those rights to be transferred elsewhere.
But the program has provided limited relief compared with the scope of the restrictions imposed on affected properties. A compensation system that exists on paper but fails to adequately compensate property owners does not solve the underlying problem.
This matters directly to Bernards Township. Bernards is part of the Highlands region, but our township is entirely within the Planning Area, where conformance with the Highlands Regional Master Plan is optional.
Bernards has wisely chosen to retain local control rather than voluntarily add another layer of state agency review over our land-use decisions.
There have been efforts to push Bernards toward greater Highlands involvement, but I believe we should be extremely cautious before surrendering additional local authority to Trenton. Once that control is surrendered, getting it back may be difficult.
Mayor Ana Duarte McCarthy was right to resist moving Bernards in that direction in 2024 and 2025.
I support protecting our water, open space, and natural resources. Those are important parts of what makes Bernards such a special place to live.
What I oppose is a system where Trenton dictates how communities can use their land, restricts their ability to generate tax revenue, creates additional administrative costs, fails to deliver the financial relief it promised, and then expects homeowners to make up the difference.
Environmental protection should not become an excuse for unfunded mandates and permanent state control.
We should be very careful before accepting what sounds like an environmentally responsible proposal without examining the long-term financial and governmental consequences that come with it.
Bernards should not swallow a poison pill disguised as good planning.
As your Township Committeeman, I will fight to protect Bernards Township’s ability to make decisions locally, defend our taxpayers, and resist efforts by Trenton to take more control away from the people who actually live here.
Local decisions belong with the people who live here.
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