ONE PARTY RULE MUST GO !
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Hackensack NJ, Bergen County’s Republican Commissioner candidates are kicking off their fall campaign with a direct voter contact initiative in August by conducting a door-to-door campaign in key municipalities in the county.
The candidates Jay Costa, of River Vale; John Dinice, of Mahwah; and Andrea Slowikowski, of Demarest are running under the slogan: “For an Affordable Bergen County.”
The GOP candidates are starting their voter contact campaign early because of importance of this year’s county commissioners’ race and the need to inform voters about the fiscal abuse that the all-Democrat Board of Commissioners is inflicting on taxpayers.
“Like Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, the Bergen County Democrat Commissioners have been on a spending spree for years and taxpayers are suffering,” said candidate Costa, 36, who noted that Gov. Murphy raised state spending by $22 billion during his controversial tenure as governor that the Bergen Democrats have endorsed.
Bergen County, said Costa, had the second highest tax levy of any county in the state in 2024 — $80 million higher than heavily urban Essex County. (The 2025 figures are not yet available)
“Gov. Murphy doesn’t care about driving young families and senior citizens out of New Jersey with his reckless spending, and neither do the Bergen Democrats,” said Costa, the self-employed father of three small children. “We will work to make Bergen affordable by cutting unnecessary spending”
ONE PARTY RULE MUST GO
Just as one-party rule in Trenton has turned New Jersey into an economic nightmare for taxpayers, one party rule in Bergen County is equally devastating to homeowners, says Dinice, 64, a member of the Mahwah Board of Education.
“Our message to the voters is that Bergen County’s one-party rule has created a financial nightmare for homeowners and that is undeniable,” said Dinice, who retired from the Bergen County Utilities Authority where he worked as an Environmental Manager.
“We are running to bring fiscal accountability to county government and end years of frivolous spending that is burdening the hard-working families and senior citizens of Bergen County,” said Dinice. “The Democrats have been in office too long and have lost touch with the financial realities of taxpayers as they vote to increase taxes year after year.”
The Republican candidates said they will hold the Democrats accountable for their spending record. They point out that Commissioner Thomas Sullivan voted to raise county taxes by $156.43 million during his time on the commission. His running mates Germain Ortiz and Mary Amoroso each supported tax increases of nearly $140 million. All the Democrats also supported millions of dollars in debt increases and spending that pushed the overall county budget in 2025 toward three-quarters of a billion dollars.
The 2025 county tax levy has ballooned to $544.41 million, according to available records, which are preliminary and may not accurate. Included in the tax levy is the cost of the commissioners’ borrowing, which will require debt payments of $105.6 million in the current county budget, an increase of $11 million over 2024. Debt payments are nearly one-fifth of the county budget.
HIDING FROM TAXPAYERS
Slowikowski, 54,who is the Demarest Borough Council President, said the incumbent Democrats will have to justify their spending to the taxpayers during this year’s campaign.
“The county commissioners have the luxury of being hidden from the taxpayers. They can spend millions on nonessential items and personnel and almost no one notices. The county doesn’t send out tax bills; the local government collects tax money for the county. As a result, there is very little oversight of county government,” said Slowikowski.
“My running mates and I will run a campaign that exposes the abusive spending by the county commissioners, and, when we are elected, we will force county government to be more transparent and more prudent with the taxpayers’ money,” she added.
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