My family has been in New Jersey since the Revolution — and Trenton is losing us

My father's family has been in New Jersey since before it was a state. Both sides. Some lines arrived before the Revolution, some after, but the Johnsons have been planting roots in this soil for more than two centuries.

I know this because my dad was a genealogist long before Ancestry.com existed. He did it the hard way — courthouse records, church registers, family bibles, county histories. What he found was a lineage that runs deep into the ground of this state. We had ancestors making cannonballs for the Continental Army in the Pine Barrens ironworks during the Revolution. My great-grandfather David Johnson was a bayman on Barnegat Bay. My grandfather was a construction engineer who built things across South Jersey. And my dad — he was Atlantic County through and through. Volunteer fireman. Rescue squad. Board of Education member. Football coach. The man who gave more to his community than he ever thought to ask from it.

He never complained about property taxes. Not once. Not in the 1960s, not in the 1970s, not in the 1980s. Because back then New Jersey worked for the people who loved it. The deal was simple — you work hard, you raise your family, you stay. And most people did.

My dad passed away in 1991. He left at what turned out to be a pivotal moment.

The year the deal broke

That same year Governor Jim Florio pushed through what was then the largest state tax increase in American history — a $2.8 billion package that hit New Jersey families hard and fast. The backlash was immediate and ferocious. A grassroots movement called Hands Across New Jersey formed almost overnight. And a radio station in Ewing that had been quietly building its identity rebranded as New Jersey 101.5 and became the voice of that anger.

The station I am proud to work for today was forged in that frustration. Think about that.

The taxes spiked in 1991. They never looked back. The average New Jersey property tax bill now tops $10,000 a year statewide. In Bergen, Essex and Morris counties it runs well past $12,000. The politicians changed. The bills did not.

Governor after governor. Legislature after legislature. The promise was always the same — relief is coming, reform is on the way, we hear you. And here we are in June 2026, twenty-seven days from the most important budget deadline in years, and the promise is being renegotiated again in real time.

SEE ALSO: Stay NJ is being cut — and the argument with Trenton just got louder 

Abandoned former Mays Landing Cotton Mill and Wheaton Plastics | photo by EJ

What Stay NJ was supposed to mean

Stay NJ was supposed to be the moment Trenton finally said it out loud. That the people who built this state — the ones who stayed through every tax hike, every broken promise, every "just one more year" — deserve to stay in it. Property tax relief for seniors on fixed incomes. Up to $6,500 in credits. A signal that loyalty means something.

Now Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) wants to cut the maximum benefit to $4,000. Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex) — the legislator who wrote Stay NJ into law — said publicly last week that $4,000 is not enough. He said it at an AARP town hall, to the audience of seniors who were counting on this program most.

The man who created Stay NJ is telling the governor her number is wrong. With 27 days left on the clock.

The 467,676 New Jerseyans who received Stay NJ benefits this past year are watching. The seniors who planned their retirement budgets around what the law promised are watching. And anyone who has been in this state long enough to remember when Trenton actually kept its word is watching.

What two centuries of roots taught me

My dad never got to see Stay NJ. He never got to see what the tax bill became in the decades after he died. I think about that sometimes. He loved this state completely and without reservation. He gave it everything — his time, his service, his whole working life. He asked very little in return.

That is the story of a lot of New Jersey families. Not just mine. Families who have been here for generations, who built the roads and the schools and the fire stations and the rescue squads, who paid their taxes without complaint because they believed the deal was real.

The deal was real for a long time. Then it stopped being real. And the people who feel that most are not the ones who arrived recently and are still deciding whether to stay. They are the ones who have been here so long that leaving feels like a betrayal of something they cannot quite name.

I know that feeling. I carry it every time I drive through Atlantic County and see the places my family built. Every time I walk a Pine Barrens trail that my ancestors worked. Every time I think about my dad and what he gave to a state that is making it harder every year for his kids and grandkids to afford to stay.

June 30 is not just a budget date

It is another chance for Trenton to decide whether the people who built this state are worth keeping.

The math is simple. Seniors on fixed incomes cannot absorb a $10,000 annual property tax bill indefinitely. The Stay NJ program was designed specifically to address that. Cutting it from $6,500 to $4,000 with 27 days left on the clock — after people planned around it, after the man who wrote it says it is not enough — is exactly the kind of move that turns loyal New Jerseyans into former New Jerseyans.

My family has been here since before this country existed. We made cannonballs in the pines. We worked the bay. We built things. We served. We stayed.

Trenton, the people who love this state the most are the ones you keep asking to absorb the most. That is not sustainable and it has not been for a long time.

June 30. Do not blow it again.