Jack Curtis has been to Trenton before during his multiyear mission to expose thousands of “fake farmers” who claim big tax breaks on their properties with little or no genuine farming involved.
On Tuesday, the Mendham Township man was back in the state capital as a guest of honor, finally seeing his long campaign gaining traction. Curtis was invited by Gov. Phil Murphy to sit in the Statehouse gallery during the Democrat’s 2025 State of the State address. He received a shoutout and a round of applause as Murphy endorsed bipartisan legislation to reform the farmland assessment program, whose abuses were detailed in a NorthJersey.com investigation last summer.
“I invited Jack to join us today to thank him,” Murphy told the packed audience. “He has raised our attention to a flaw in New Jersey’s farmland assessment tax system that allows the wealthiest among us to avoid paying their fair share. That’s wrong. If our state’s law-enforcement officers, veterans, nurses and other working people are paying their fair share, so, too, should those at the top of our economic ladder.”
Murphy threw his weight behind legislation sponsored by two Morris County Republicans, Sen. Joe Pennacchio and Assemblywoman Aura Dunn, that would create a commission to reform the system.
“Jack, stand up and take a bow,” the governor added. “Your wife, Mary, is with us. Mary, you’ve got to stand up and take a bow. Let’s go.”
He called on lawmakers “to eliminate this flaw once and for all.”
“I thought I was just there as a guest that would just be in a position to listen to the speech,” Curtis, 78, a former Dover alderman and Roxbury school principal, said in an interview after the address. “I didn’t have any idea he was going to speak about me.”
NJ Farmland Assessment Act co-opted?
Curtis has spent much of his retirement researching what he sees as abuses of New Jersey’s Farmland Assessment Act of 1964. The law was crafted to help farms that were being squeezed out of business as demand for suburban housing drove up land values — and the taxes that went with them.
But critics complain that the act has been co-opted over the years by well-off property owners who can claim a small amount of their estates as farmland, with little documentation, to lower their taxes. Statewide, about 35,000 landowners currently enroll some part of their properties in the program, which can discount a real estate tax bill by up to 98%.
When the act passed six decades ago, the state required that farmers produce at least $500 a year in revenue to qualify, whether through sales of produce, firewood or other products or the value of livestock kept on site. That minimum would equate to about $5,000 in today’s dollars, but when legislators raised the threshold in 2013, it was increased only to $1,000.
“Now, this topic may seem obscure, but it matters,” Murphy said during Tuesday’s address. “It shows we are listening when the people of New Jersey speak up. And at the end of the day, taking this step will ensure our tax system is stronger and fairer for everyone.”
Story continues after gallery.
Pennacchio’s bill to establish a nine-member Farmland Assessment Review Commission, S3446, was unanimously advanced by the Senate’s Economic Growth Committee last month. Dunn’s companion legislation has not yet received a vote in the Assembly.
Curtis discovered that in 1964, Mendham Township had only about 20 farmland-assessed properties. Today, the wealthy residential community — where median home values hit $1.01 million in 2022 — has more than 150. By his math, that adds up to $1.1 million in property tax breaks in the Morris County town that must be paid by other residents to balance the municipal budget.
“This law has morphed into a scam that wealthy people, with large tracts of land, have adopted as their own personal tax-reduction scheme,” Curtis said.
He caught up with Murphy last spring, raising the issue during the weekly “Ask the Governor” radio show. That led to an invitation to meet with the governor in Trenton in April for further discussion. After meeting with Murphy, Curtis engaged bipartisan support on his own from Pennacchio and his Senate co-sponsor, Morris Republican Sen. Anthony Bucco.
“The size of that program is a red flag,” Pennacchio said. “I’m not against it. But what I don’t want is people gaming the system, forcing other people to pay more tax, which is what is driving people out of this state.”
Trump, Jets owner get farm tax breaks
Complaints about alleged abuses have been around almost as long as the program itself. In her 1993 race for governor, Christie Whitman faced criticism for farm assessments on two family properties in Central Jersey, though she won the election anyway.
Johnson & Johnson heir and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and family members of the Forbes publishing empire also get farmland preservation tax breaks on their residential properties.
And in Bedminster, President-elect Donald Trump enjoys a $257,000 annual farm tax break for a portion of his exclusive Trump National Golf Club, which frequently serves as his summer residence.
More:In NJ, tiny farms ‘gaming the system’ can earn big tax breaks for wealthy estates
Murphy caught up with Curtis again on Tuesday. The Mendham Township man said he and his wife received VIP treatment in Trenton. A Murphy staffer led the couple and other invited guests to where they needed to be, including a pre-speech meeting with the governor in his office.
“They couldn’t have been nicer,” Curtis said.
“I’m just a regular citizen,” Curtis said. “He didn’t have to meet with me, or push this; he didn’t have to do any of it. My wife told him he should have run for president. I told her she was about six months late with that suggestion.”
“The important thing is this is something you can do in a democracy that you can’t do in other kinds of governments,” Curtis continued. “If you don’t agree with something that is going on, make an effort to change it.”
