Gas Tax Bill Wasn't 'Logrolling'

The hard-fought, compromise legislation recently signed by Gov. Christie to raise the gas tax contained several other changes to New Jersey taxes. In addition to the gas tax increase, the bill also cut the sales tax from 7 percent to 6.5 percent; phased out the estate tax; increased pension and retirement income tax exclusions; and increased the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A group of legislators has indicated they may challenge the constitutionality of the legislation based on a little-known provision in the New Jersey Constitution providing: “To avoid improper influences which may result from intermixing in one and the same act such things as have no proper relation to each other, every law shall embrace but one object, and that shall be expressed in the title.” (Article IV, section VII, paragraph 4). This provision, the substance of which appears in most state constitutions, has its origins in the 1702 instructions from Queen Anne, and is intended to avoid the evil of “logrolling.” This takes place when several, arguably unrelated, provisions are joined in the same bill so that provisions without majority support can be mutually supported and thereby enacted. It is also intended to insure rational deliberation on one subject (or object) at a time. The basic constitutional test for violations is whether the provisions are “germane.” The limitation, however, is not intended to prohibit compromises or the enactment of even complicated legislation as long as it is confined to a “single object.” We view the gas tax bill as falling on this latter side of the line. Of course, what is a single object, in the first instance, is in the eye of the legislative beholder, but the final analysis is in the eye of the judicial beholder. Importantly, the federal Constitution does not contain such a clause, thereby permitting (sometimes despite congressional rules) omnibus legislation containing unrelated provisions, some of which have threatened—or actually led to, in extreme cases—federal government shutdowns. In New Jersey, although there are not many cases, the courts have demonstrated significant deference to legislative design.