Dems Trying to Suppress County Tax Hike Data

For Immediate Release
August 26, 2025

Bergen County, NJ—Bergen County officials are refusing to release important tax information to the Bergen County Republicans, thereby preventing tax information from getting to the public and hindering the fall GOP commissioners’ campaign, say representatives of the Republican candidates Jay Costa, John Dinice and Andrea Slowikowski.

“The county’s refusal to provide our team with public records on the tax levies for all 70 Bergen municipalities is a brazen attempt to stop the taxpayers from learning how they have been taxed by county government over the past 5 years,” says Costa, a River Vale resident. “What are the Democrats afraid we will find out and share with the public?”

“The fact that the Democratic Administration is trying to hide their record on taxing and spending highlights one of the major reasons we are running for office; we want to bring fiscal restraint to county government, but we cannot do that if Democrats are hiding information from the public,” said Dinice, a Mahwah resident, and member of the local school board.

On July 24, using the state’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA) law – the Republican candidates asked the county to produce documents delineating  the amount of county taxes paid by each municipality in the county from 2020 through 2025. The campaign also asked for an accounting of the amount each Bergen municipality paid in the so-called Open Space Trust fund for the same time period.

The county’s Custodian of Records at first said the records do not exist. When the GOP campaign pushed back, saying “it is incomprehensible that the county does not keep records of how much tax money it collects from each municipality,”  the Custodian directed the GOP representative to the treasurer’s page on the county website, that did not have the information the Republicans requested.

“It is hard to believe, said the GOP spokesman, “that the Democrat County Commissioners do not have the information we are asking for.”

The link the custodian referenced does not detail tax payments by municipalities: https://bergencountynj.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2024-Final-Equalization-Table.pdf.

Slowikowski, a Demarest Borough Council member, said the Democrats are acting foolishly to thwart information from getting to the voters before Election Day.

“For a month, our campaign has asked for basic information that the county – or any governing body –  should have at its fingertips. The Democrats look very bad trying to pretend they do not have the information that any member of the public is legally entitled under state law,” said Slowikowski.

“One way or another we will get the tax information from other sources and we will let the taxpayers know how the Bergen Democrats are taxing them,” added Slowikowski.

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