Monica Yant Kinney: Stay focused on the top N.J. issue

Watching Bruce Springsteen perform Born in the U.S.A. in its entirety Tuesday night at the Spectrum got me thinking about adopting the one-album concept in New Jersey politics. Imagine a governor's race where each candidate had to focus on the single subject that vexes every resident of this state, rich or poor.

Here's a clue: It's not whether Republican former U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie is overweight. (He is. So what?)

It's not whether incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine seems too cozy with state unions (he is) or whether brainy independent Chris Daggett will lose his head to party animals in Trenton (he might).

Go to any strip mall, beauty salon, or soccer game from Morristown to Moorestown, and you'll find people griping about their property taxes.

We pay them, we hate them, we don't entirely understand them. Whether you're a native or a newcomer, you know you're charged more to live here than anyplace else in the nation. But why?

Garden State property taxes average $7,000 a year and total more than the income, sales, and business taxes combined. Some homeowners spend the equivalent of a second (or third) mortgage for the privilege of enduring Jersey jokes.

Property values may sink, but property taxes never drop. Mine jumped 41 percent in eight years.

I often think of how I could have spent all that money, but what I'd really like can't be bought: a governor with the guts to force a statewide heart-to-heart about a crisis whose solutions no one will love.

Logic holds that you can't lower one tax without raising another or slashing services, but any discussion of property-tax reform usually begins and ends with an emotional subject: home rule. New Jersey has an astonishing 566 towns, 603 school districts, 500 police departments, and 792 fire companies, which make living here both delightful and financially unbearable.

Residents usually freak out at the mere mention of merging suburban police forces or sending their kids to a county-run school system. But deep down, smart folks know that redundant layers of administration and bureaucracy involve salaries, benefits, and pension obligations that cost us all dearly.

Corzine talks tough, but Governor "Hold Me Accountable" prefers carrots and sticks to executive orders. What a shame. Why spend your hard-earned megamillions to become the nation's most powerful governor if you're not willing to throw your weight around?

Christie, whose girth has been the subject of tasteless attack ads, has hardly stepped to the plate on property taxes. He's too busy vowing to cut every other tax, confusing voters with muddy math.

Absent any meaningful ideas to radically alter the way New Jersey operates, both Corzine and Christie cling to the fallacy of tax rebates - which Daggett correctly calls "money Democrats and Republicans shouldn't have taken from you in the first place."

Tax rebates aren't relief and they're not reform. If the state doesn't need all that money, collect less. But don't snow voters and crow about it come election time.

Rebates, Seton Hall Dean Joseph Marbach reminds me, "are tangible, something somebody can take credit for getting to you."

"Who signs that check?" he asks. "The governor."

Not if Daggett has his way. The lone candidate to wade into this swamp, he'd kill rebates and shrink property taxes by expanding the sales tax and imposing a hard cap on municipal budgets.

He's not as bullish as I am on consolidation as a cure, but Daggett deserves credit for shooting high while his rivals fire blanks.

Real leaders should be willing to risk their political futures on a lasting legacy like taming property taxes. With two weeks left in the campaign, there's still time for Corzine and Christie to focus on the issue the rest of us can't ignore.