More than half of NJ school budgets defeated

When you read the article there are two things that are apparent, people are fed up with increased taxes with no results, and the Tea Party movement is effective.

Excerpt: Voters in 479 of New Jersey's school districts rejected 260 proposed budgets (54 percent), the most rejections in a single school-election season since 1976, when 56 percent of school budgets were defeated, according to The Star-Ledger (Newark). The budgets involved now go to the respective town councils for further action.

The sizes of the property tax levies did not appear to make the difference between acceptance and rejection, or at least not in Essex County (except perhaps in the West Orange case, an obvious outlier). Rather, the relative level of Tea Party activity did. The counties approving most of their budgets had the weakest Tea Party organizations, or indeed no active organizations in the past year. But, as Essex County illustrates, that is already changing or about to change. Read article here.