The Gloucester County event was the governor's seventh town hall meeting statewide to pitch his proposal to cap property tax increases and his first in South Jersey.
Christie is proposing a constitutional amendment, which would require voter approval, to cap property tax increases at 2.5 percent. Town officials who wished to exceed the cap would be required to seek approval from voters. The only exception to the cap would be for debt service. New Jerseyans pay the highest property taxes in the nation.
Christie said that to get the constitutional amendment on the ballot in time for the November election, it has to clear the Legislature in the next few weeks.
Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney, of Gloucester County, is pitching a counterproposal that calls for a 2.9 percent cap but with more exceptions than are allowed under the current cap of 4 percent, including pension contributions and health-care costs.
Christie argued that over the years, politicians of both parties have failed to get at the root of the state's property tax problem, which he said is how much money government spends.
"It's all a shell game unless we get to the root of the problem - what government spends, what they're allowed to spend," he said.
The governor argued that a constitutional amendment would result in "permanent tax relief that can't be erased by a Legislature or a governor." He said his proposal would let voters decide whether a property tax increase above 2.5 percent was really necessary.
Contrasting his proposal to Sweeney's, the governor said, "The real core difference is who decides property taxes - you or politicians in Trenton."
