Taking on Fake Farms: The Public Service of Jack Curtis
MENDHAM TOWNSHIP – As he drives through this bucolic township, Jack Curtis offers a witticism.
“Real farmers milk cows. Fake farmers milk the system.”
It is funny, but then again, not really.
A former educator and alderman in Dover, Curtis, 78, is spending a good chunk of his retirement studying, analyzing and basically condemning the state’s farmland assessment program as a scam for the super-wealthy.
Unlike some crusades of this type, this one is getting noticed.
Curtis was invited to last week’s State of the State address and was singled out for praise by Phil Murphy.
Now it’s a few days later and Curtis is conducting a tour of sorts of the “fake farms” in his corner of the state.
It’s a small corner, but quite an affluent one. The Mendhams, of which there are two, and Bernardsville and Bedminster to the south, are home to some of New Jersey’s wealthiest families.
And that is the point. Some of these families are getting incredibly-generous property tax breaks by claiming to be farmers.
A list compiled by Curtis includes such luminaries as Donald Trump, Steve Forbes and Woody Johnson all in Bedminster. Also on the list are Bruce Springsteen in Colts Neck and Jon Bon-Jovi in Middletown.
All are farmers – at least technically. And that means they get a property tax discount of a whopping 98 percent on the land they farm.
At issue is the state’s 60-year-old farmland assessment policy, which is based on a legitimate principle – the Garden State should help farmers continue to be farmers.
An obvious question is, what makes a farm?
Here’s where things veer into the absurd.
The regulation is that a farm must be at least 5-acres and must produce at least $1,000 of products annually.
The 5-acre minimum lot size is pretty easy for the super-wealthy to meet. As for the $1,000 threshold, that can theoretically be met through the sale of tomatoes, cucumbers and firewood.
The key word is “theoretically.” That’s because Curtis says he discovered owners do not have to document the products they sell with receipts. It’s all on the honor system.
If that sounds crazy, it is because it is.
As we drove around, we passed gated-mansion after gated-mansion that Curtis said qualified for farmland assessment. It’s all in the property tax records.
The notion that these properties are what the state intended when it moved to help protect farms 60 years ago is laughable.
Just looking at Mendham Township, Curtis has identified 155 “farms” in the township compared to 20 when the law took effect in 1964.
It seems odd that in suburban New Jersey, the number of farms is increasing.
Not to Curtis, who says in a self-written report:
“Word spread around the community that you could get a 98% reduction on your tax bill by saying that you are a farmer and now there are tons of fake farmers in this town. All of those people can get away with scamming the system and saying they are farmers when they clearly are not ….”
He calculates – and he has the math to prove it – that those 155 properties avoided $1.1 million in property taxes one year by claiming to run farms.
That means, the 2,126 non-farmland-assessed property owners in town have to pay about $600 more each to compensate for the fake farmers.
What happens in Mendham Township happens elsewhere around the state.
This is not a new issue. It often pops up around election time when a candidate somewhere is accused by an opponent of being a “fake farmer.”
But then it fades.
Curtis is trying to keep the issue alive. He does have a political background, which helps. He spent 10 years as a Republican alderman in Dover before relocating to the township.
He may have served as a Republican, but Curtis makes clear that he is not a MAGA-Republican. Mendham Township and Dover are less than 10 miles apart, but they’re in different worlds. Curtis clearly relates more to blue collar Dover than he does to Mendham Township.
At any rate, Curtis called into one of Murphy’s radio shows and, shockingly, soon thereafter got a meeting with the governor and found himself sitting in the balcony at the governor’s State of the State address., When Murphy pointed up to Curtis, he credited him with raising “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.”
The governor spoke of plans to look into the farmland assessment program led by two Morris County lawmakers – state Sen. Joe Pennacchio and Assemblywoman Aura Dunn.
Curtis suggests that the 5-acre threshold for farms be increased to 10 and that the $1,000 threshold for sales be raised to $5,000 with sales documented. He says he knows sales receipts could be fabricated (imagine that) but the changes would be a step in the right direction.
Broadly speaking, cracking down on fake farmers seems to be something both the left and the right would support.
However, as noted, those who benefit from the status quo are among the most affluent people in the state, which means their political influence is enormous.
It is worth stating that this regulation has been around for 60 years and that those taking advantage of it are not doing anything illegal.
In other words, they’re just following the law. No, says Curtis:
“They’re just greedy.”
Excellent ideas from Mr. Curtis. The Farmland Assessment policy has become a way for the rich to fleece their fellow taxpayers, and it must be curtailed to protect real farmers who actually are working their land and do deserve an incentive to maintain it.
I agree that the law should be revised, but the notion that people are “scamming” or “fleecing” the system is wrong. If your situation fell within the bounds of a law that provides a tax break for you, you would take it. They are simply following the laws in place. It is our incompetent and corrupt NJ government that is responsible for not revising the law years ago and should not be left to a retired citizen to try and “persuade” our lawmakers to change. Instead, ask yourself why our NJ government hasn’t already changed this law that benefits those in a higher income bracket but rather keeps increasing the taxes on the middle class.
Jack Curtis is our high school (Dover HS ‘64) classmate. He has served the public his entire career as an elected official and educator. It is inspiring to see that Jack, at age 78, is addressing one of the worst inequities in New Jersey’s heavily property tax funded system of public education and local government. Bravo, Jack!
So what’s his answer to preserve open space and prevent further suburban sprawl? The State doesn’t have the money to buy open space and buying the development easements is taking time. Every year the State buys more easements but it’s expensive and takes time. Farmland assessment basically convinces land owners to preserve the land.
These same land owners may save taxes on their undeveloped land but their homes are fully taxed and often at higher values as a result of the surrounding open space.
There’s been a bipartisan commitment to preserve New Jersey’s open space since Governor Whitman. The goods news is that it’s working. New Jersey is the most densely populated State in the nation. We’re still loosing open land but we’ve slowed the loss. Farmland Assessment has been a part of that strategy .
Glad to hear former US Senator Torricelli ‘s position on farmland assessment. I guess he forgot to mention that part of the reason he loves the farmland assessment law is because he uses the law to get a 98% tax break on 12 acres of his large estate property.
I always enjoy hearing how a wealthy real estate developer feels about how a law that was meant for poor farmers gives him and his wealthy clients a huge tax advantage.
Plus, I truly value the opinion of a politician, who was forced out of the United States Senate because he was under Investigation for financial shenanigans.
Thanks for your valuable input! Much appreciated!!!
What a noble cause. But simply expanding the acreage and upping the sales requirements will likely hurt legitimate small farmers who struggle. Five acres is plenty to have a tree farm, or small organic farm. Larger that that would impose huge costs on small farmers.
My suggestion is to simply have inspections by the Farmland Preservation council or Forestry, etc. each season to verify the farm is indeed a working farm making produce or raising livestock.
I am aware of the State Dept of Law & Public Safety who licenses businesses does inspections / interviews to verify if a minority-owned business is actually run by a minority individual. (Then again, that DEI stuff is now under attack).
So, why not have simple annual inspections of the farms?
John W, in today’s dollars $1000 dollars is next to nothing, that’s the problem. Just for example, this past holiday season Christmas trees were averaging between $70-120 for locally grown trees. $1000/70= 14 trees. With respect to those in the tree farming business. No one who sells that many trees is a farmer, they are a hobbyist. And while it’s nice that people have agricultural hobbies, that doesn’t justify giving them GIGANTIC (tens of thousands of dollars) in tax breaks. Find a real farmer (someone who actually spends at least 20 hours a week doing agriculture, just owning animals or growing crops doesn’t make someone a farmer) and ask them how much in gross sales they make in a year. I can guarantee it’s a bit more than $1000. I wholeheartedly agree with your idea to mandate enforcement, couple that with increased minimums and that’s right on the money.