Sherrill vetoes two Jersey City fiscal bills — open-space levy and rental-car tax stay off the table

Governor Mikie Sherrill on Monday returned two Jersey City–targeted budget bills without her approval — listed as absolute vetoes — keeping a temporary open-space levy diversion and a citywide motor-vehicle rental tax off the municipal toolkit.

The governor’s office listed absolute vetoes of Senate Bills S-4513 and S-4514 in a Trenton action notice dated September 28, 2026, alongside other signed and conditionally vetoed measures. The full veto messages are posted as official PDFs on nj.gov.

What S-4513 would have done — and what it would not

S-4513 would have let a municipality that already maintains an arts and culture trust fund deposit money raised by its annual open space, recreation, floodplain, farmland, and historic preservation levy into the municipal current fund for uses not limited to those trust purposes — but only for the fiscal year 2027 levy (and for unspent pre-2027 deposits still sitting in the open-space trust).

That is not the same as emptying an arts-and-culture trust to plug the budget. The bill text conditions the divert on having an arts trust; the money that would move is the open-space levy stream. The Department of Community Affairs, cited in Sherrill’s veto, says Jersey City is the only New Jersey municipality that has both that open-space annual levy and an arts-and-culture trust.

Sherrill’s veto message reminds Trenton that Jersey City voters in 2016 approved a Municipal Open Space, Recreation and Historic Preservation Trust Fund levy of not more than $0.02 per $100 of assessed valuation, with ballot language dedicating those dollars “exclusively” to acquisition, development, and maintenance of lands for recreation, conservation, and historic purposes.

“The plain language of the ballot question that was submitted to Jersey City’s voters clearly dedicated to recreation, conservation, and historic purposes the revenues that this bill now seeks to divert to the City’s general fund,” she wrote. “The will of the City’s voters should not be set aside in the manner proposed in the bill.”

What S-4514 would have done — Jersey City only

S-4514 is written so narrowly that the Office of Legislative Services and the governor’s veto both identify Jersey City alone as the qualifying city: population of 200,000 or more and more than 15 percent population growth between the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

Among other changes, the bill would have:

• Allowed Jersey City, by ordinance, to impose a municipality-wide tax of up to 5 percent on motor-vehicle rentals (removing the usual major-airport / industrial-zone limits that apply elsewhere).
• Let Jersey City use mass-transit access parking tax proceeds for operating and administrative mass-transit facilitation costs, not only pedestrian-access capital projects.
• Raised the share of certain parking penalties steered to municipal court costs from a flat $2 to 10 percent of the penalty for that city.

Sherrill’s veto statement notes the bill was introduced June 24, 2026, and passed less than a week later in the same rush as the Fiscal Year 2027 Appropriations Act.

“The residents of Jersey City are currently suffering from a fiscal crisis caused largely by the irresponsible decisions made by the City’s prior administration,” she wrote. “The prior administration’s over-reliance on short-term budget gimmicks and ‘one-shots’ have seriously undermined the City’s long-term stability. Going forward, sustainable revenue growth and structural reforms must be a priority. The proposed legislation is not appropriate at this time.”

The veto language does not name former Mayor Steven Fulop. It does land on the administration that left office before Mayor James Solomon’s team took City Hall in January — the same prior-era books Hudson TV previously reported from the city’s own August audit release showing $94,124,946 in deferred charges on the 2025 (final Fulop-era) financials.

What the nonpartisan scorekeepers said the rental tax might raise

The Legislature’s Office of Legislative Services, in a July 1, 2026 fiscal estimate on S-4514, concluded the new rental-car authority could mean an annual revenue increase for Jersey City of less than $10 million. OLS said it could not count JC rental transactions precisely; it noted Newark collected about $10 million from its rental-car tax in 2024 and would be expected to out-collect Jersey City because of Newark Liberty International Airport.

OLS also recorded that Jersey City collected $10.09 million from the mass-transit access parking tax in 2024 — money whose uses S-4514 would have broadened — and $2.45 million in parking violation fees that year (with the 10 percent court-share shift left indeterminate).

Those are fiscal-office ceilings and baselines, not a promise of cash in hand. The governor still said the package was the wrong tool “at this time.”

Sponsors (no comment invented)

Sponsors listed on the introduced bills include Sens. Raj Mukherji and Angela McKnight and Assembly members William Sampson and Jerry Walker (S-4513 also lists Assemblyman Gabriel Rodriguez). This article does not invent comment from them; none appears in the governor’s veto PDFs.

Doubt check — who benefits, what doesn’t fit

• Voters vs. crisis: Sherrill’s strongest primary argument on S-4513 is democratic process — a 2016 referendum dedicating a levy. That protects park/historic dollars; it also leaves Solomon’s budget without that temporary FY2027 divert.
• Blame lane: S-4514’s veto message frames the crisis as the prior administration’s “one-shots,” which politically echoes Sherrill’s 2025 primary fight with Fulop even without naming him — while today’s mayor is the one asking Trenton for tools.
• Speed: Both bills moved in under a week in late June. Fast track is not proof of bad policy; it is a reason to read the veto and OLS estimate slowly.
• Money scale: OLS’s “less than $10 million” rental estimate and ~$10 million parking-tax baseline are real numbers — and still small next to a deficit Solomon’s team previously put in the hundreds of millions. Neither veto PDF claims these bills alone would have closed the gap.

Hudson TV’s job here is the paper trail: the veto PDFs, the bill text, and the OLS estimate — not recycled political framing.

Hudson TV asks: Should Jersey City’s 2016 open-space levy stay locked for parks and historic uses as voters approved, or should Trenton allow a temporary divert into the general fund during the fiscal crisis?

Share your take in the comments — and tell us which option you’d pick and why.

React: reply LOCK or DIVERT (or OTHER + your idea).