STATE OF NEW JERSEY CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1947
COMMITTEE ON TAXATION AND FINANCE
Thursday, July 10, 1947
(Morning session)

Committee for Constitutional Revision and wanted to be heard. Our regular hearing this morning is on the exemptions to the tax clause. We have announced that more particularly, and I’ll ask the Secretary to announce the next speaker.

MR. RAFFERTY: I present the Honorable John A. Matthews of Newark, a counsellor-at-law in that city, who speaks for and on behalf of the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark on the subject matter of tax exemptions. Judge Matthews.

MR. JOHN A. MATTHEWS: Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

I come here this morning as a representative of Archbishop Walsh of the Archdiocese of Newark and also of the Archdiocese of Newark to ask you respectfully to recommend an inclusion in the draft of the Constitution with respect to taxation – a clause exempting educational, religious and charitable institutions, or the property thereof, from taxation.

I don’t need to tell the lawyers of this Committee that this exemption is provided for now in our statutory law. I don’t need to tell either the lawyers or laymen or women of the Committee that this exemption has an historical background; that the very essence of it is that the State receives for this exemption what the decisions of our courts call a quid pro quo – something for something. I think that the philosophy of this exemption is important, and I’d like to speak about it for a moment.

The exemption of religious and charitable and educational institions certainly is something that we must consider in these days when religious and educational and charitable institutions are in what we might call a state – sometimes I’d like to call it a state of attack. A great many persons today are of the opinion that a statutory provision is sufficient to protect these institutions. The only reason why, in my humble opinion, we need a constitutional provision, or should have one, is because all of these institutions – religious, charitable and educational – find themselves forced, year in and year out, to go, in protection of their exemption, before the Legislature, because attempts are made very frequently and often collaterally to undermine this exemption.

If it is in the basic law, then indeed it cannot be subject to such yearly attacks. I consider that the exemption of charitable, religious and educational property from taxation is almost the right of the people. It’s the American way to do it. I was interested a moment ago in hearing Mr. Dwyer ask Mr. Kerney whether he didn’t have confidence in the Legislature. As I look over at Senator Read, who was in the Senate from Camden in 1912 and 1913 when I was in the House, I would say that both he and I in those days, and both he and I today, and citizens today generally, think that legislators, by

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