Mayors Jeff Martin of Hamilton Township and Dave Fried of Robbinsville told the Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Committee on June 25 that a 1997 state statute allows telecommunications providers to reduce assessed property value to zero when coverage in a territory falls below 50%, and they urged the committee to update the law.

The mayors said Verizon notified Hamilton this year that it would stop paying about $750,000 annually under the statute, and later served suit seeking to pay nothing, a swing the mayors called abrupt and unfair. "$750,000 for Hamilton is a huge amount of money," Mayor Jeff Martin said, adding that the loss would force cuts to services such as police, firefighters or public works or require higher taxes.

In testimony, the mayors described the statutory threshold as a binary rule: when coverage falls below 50 percent coverage "you no longer have to pay property taxes at all. It's not a step down decrease. It's not a pro rata decrease. It's from everything to nothing at the snap of the fingers," Martin said. Both mayors said they asked Verizon for the basis of its coverage calculation but were told the information is proprietary, then received legal papers seeking to avoid payment for the current year.

Chairman D'Angelo proposed that staff and committee members review the statute during the summer recess and consider legislative amendments to protect municipal property-tax revenues and taxpayers. "What I would propose that we do is in the summer break, we can sit down and go through the law and, you know, look to ways that we can potentially amend that, resolve the matter on behalf of your communities and, on behalf of the taxpayers more importantly," he said.

Assembly members asked clarifying questions about how the assessment works. Mayor Fried explained that the company receives a yearly assessment similar to other property owners and that the tax rate is then applied; under the referenced law, a reassessment can reduce the taxable value if coverage falls under the statutory threshold. Martin and Fried pressed that the statute dates to 1997, when telecommunications infrastructure and household phone usage were very different, and said the law has not kept pace with cord-cutting and mobile-first communications.

No formal amendment or vote occurred during the hearing. The committee recorded the mayors' request and the chair said staff would work with sponsors over the summer to explore statutory updates and potential remedies. Mayors Martin and Fried thanked the committee for listening and emphasized the budgetary stakes for small municipalities.

The committee did not provide a timetable or specific bill language during the meeting; committee members asked staff to coordinate with the sponsors and report back before floor action.