To be sure, much has happened in New Jersey since the 2% cap was enacted, and it’s hard to fully attribute the slowed growth to just one thing.
In addition to enacting the 2% cap on levy increases, and the similar restriction on police officer and firefighter pay increases, Christie also worked with Democrats in the Legislature to change public-worker pension and health benefits in ways that shifted more of the funding burden for those benefits from taxpayers to workers.
All three were key policy changes once they became baked into labor contracts by the middle of the decade, said Marc Pfeiffer, a former deputy director of the state Division of Local Government Services who now serves as the assistant director of Rutgers University’s Bloustein Local Government Research Center.
“Those three things, together, really made the big changes,” Pfeiffer said.