Panel wants to say bye to school budget votes Bill clears committee. Senator who sponsored plan says New Jersey holds "far too many elections." Friday, May 12, 2006 • By TERRENCE DOPP• The Express-Times TRENTON | The Senate Education Committee on Thursday approved a bill eliminating school budget votes and moving school board elections to November. The measure, which cleared the committee in a 3-1 vote, is the upper house's counterpart to Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts' CORE reform plan for local and school governance. It comes after 47 percent of statewide spending plans went down, the lowest passage rate in a decade. Citing abysmal voter turnout, Roberts and Senate sponsors said allowing voters to cover all elections in one November trip to the polls would end duplicative and costly run offs. Residents would still vote on any school budget exceeding the state's 3 percent spending cap. "New Jersey holds far too many elections every year. School elections are costing districts a great deal, both in terms of dollars and in the time of administrators," said Sen. Shirley Turner, D-Mercer, Senate sponsor. Republican leaders in both houses have been lukewarm on the change. In the Senate, Minority Leader Leonard Lance has long championed a bill moving the vote to November. But he did not endorse the proposal by Turner and Roberts. "I prefer holding a vote on budgets. But I do favor moving the elections to November," said Lance, R-Hunterdon/Warren, who called November votes an American tradition. The measure, if approved by the Senate, the Assembly and Gov. Jon Corzine, would extend current school board terms until 2007 and take effect that year. School budgets are the only government spending New Jersey residents have direct control over. Those fiscal plans turned down are then pared back by the local government with schools retaining the right to petition the Department of Education for the restoration of any cuts. In announcing his CORE plan, Roberts said it would: foster money-saving regionalization and shared services agreements for the state's 566 municipalities and 611 school districts, tie state aid to shared services, create "super" county superintendents with authority to eliminate waste in local schools' budgets, move fire district elections to November. One backer said the plan deserved a closer look. "The (budget) vote is largely a sham. Many people rightly complain that the cuts made to the defeated budgets are mostly symbolic," said Gregg M. Edwards, president of the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey. Terrence Dopp is Trenton correspondent for The Express-Times. He can be reached at 609-292-5154. © 2006 The Express-Times. Used with permission.