## Facts

- Bayonne operated its own vocational-education program beginning in 1931, later integrating vocational and general education within a comprehensive high school.
- Hudson County later operated a separate countywide vocational system, the Hudson County Vocational School (HCVS).
- The Legislature enacted N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 to exempt certain municipalities from county vocational-school taxes if they operated their own vocational programs.
- An amendment narrowed the exemption to municipalities in “first-class counties” (population at least 600,000) with county population under 700,000 and a vocational program in existence for more than 20 years.
- Bayonne was the only municipality statewide that met the combined criteria.
- To implement the exemption, Hudson County imposed a two-tier county tax rate: Bayonne paid a lower county tax rate, while the other Hudson County municipalities paid higher rates to fund HCVS.
- Secaucus challenged the statute and the resulting two-tier tax system as unconstitutional.

## Issues

1. Whether a two-tier county tax rate implementing N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 violates the New Jersey Constitution’s tax uniformity requirement for property taxation within a single taxing district.
2. Whether N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 is unconstitutional special legislation relating to taxation because its criteria effectively single out Bayonne for preferential tax treatment.

## Decision

- The New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed judgment for Secaucus.
- The Court held the two-tier county tax system violated the constitutional requirement of uniform taxation within the county taxing district.
- The Court also held N.J.S.A. 18A:54-37 was unconstitutional special legislation because its interlocking classifications created a closed class that only Bayonne could satisfy.
- The exemption statute and the tax scheme implementing it were invalid.

## Legal Principles

- Property taxation within the same taxing district must be imposed under general laws and by uniform rules; a county may not levy different overall county tax rates on municipalities within the same county taxing unit to fund a county function.
- Legislative tax classifications are permissible only if they rest on real, substantial distinctions and bear a rational and fair relation to the statutory purpose.
- The constitutional ban on special legislation relating to taxation prohibits statutes that, though facially general, use narrowly drawn criteria to confer preferential treatment on a single locality through a closed class that others cannot realistically enter.

## Conclusion

A county may not fund a countywide vocational-school system through different county tax rates among municipalities in the same county taxing district, and a tax exemption statute that effectively applies only to one municipality is invalid both for lack of tax uniformity and as prohibited special tax legislation.


Town of Secaucus v. Hudson Cnty. Bd. of Tax'n, 133 N.J. 482, 628 A.2d 288 (N.J. 1993)