It's the home-rule system, stupid

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When is The Record of Woodland Park going to expose the home-rule system as the real reason our property taxes are so high and when is Governor Christie going to put pressure on towns to join their neighbors in seeking more efficient ways to run schools and keep streets safe? Probably not in our lifetime.


Instead, the former Hackensack daily will continue to publish articles on the high salaries of school superintendents (on the front page today) and the governor will try to get laws passed to put a cap on those salaries, as well as on the salaries of teachers, police officers and, presumably, police chiefs.


Any sign of cooperation among towns gets headlines in the paper, as Park Ridge does today on its plan to hold meetings with Woodcliff Lake and Montvale to discuss saving money. What about bigger towns -- such as Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood, which have a lot in common? 


In place of the local news editors didn't have for today's paper, a big photo showing the continuing demolition of the old Giants Stadium appears on the front of Local. An A-1 story on drunken fans at the new stadium had too much detail about an accident Friday in the first few paragraphs -- when the focus should have been on the nine fans who tried to cross a highway and whether they had been drinking.


More than a decade ago, The Record launched a project to expose the folly of home-rule finances, including the incredible duplication of services among the 70 towns in Bergen County (map). 

The series, which went by the acronym MUNFIN around the office (for municipal finance), ran with an explanatory note from the editor that the newspaper wasn't trying to bring reform to the broken system. Predictably, the series brought little or no change.