Dear Editor: Until then-governor Jim Florio put a stop to it, individual counties were greedily climbing aboard the build-an-incinerator trash train and issuing megamillion dollar tax-exempt bonds which were snapped up by investment houses on behalf of their wealthy clients. Such bonds were issued by autonomous authorities and afforded tax avoidance to the purchasers as the interest was free from income tax, a boon to those in the 39+% federal tax bracket [as much as 70% in the past]. Since the services provided by these facilities would be billed to municipalities as part of their trash collection efforts, the ultimate payment was exacted from taxpayers. Not to be left out of this “goodies” basket, the State of New Jersey exacted add-on fees which significantly bumped up the cost to municipalities. These fees were placed in “trust” funds to be used exclusively for trash-related cleanup, etc. In point of fact, the state diverted some of these funds to balance a budget in trouble. When one of the fee’s shelf life expired, the autonomous authorities obtained permission to continue charging the non-existent fee to the municipalities. The Newark-based incinerator, owned by the rich Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was the host for Hudson County’s trash; accordingly, Hudson County taxpayers paid the incinerator’s inflated fees. Even though the Newark-based incinerator was operating at only one-third capacity, and needed Hudson County’s trash to survive financially, the Hudson County Improvement Authority proceeded to borrow $300+million from wealthy bondholders to build its own incinerator. Although the incinerator was not built-and not needed-nearly $50 million of bond moneys were used to satisfy preliminary site, architectural and engineering planning [for an incinerator which will not be built]. The bonded debt continues to impact significantly as interest accumulates and moneys are diverted to purchase county properties [to bail out the county’s budget]. In the best of all cases, the autonomous authorities would default on their bonded indebtedness and the bondholders would eat their losses. Of course, future tax-exempt bonds would be hard to come by and municipalities would find funding scarce and expensive. Thus, we are told, this cannot be allowed to happen [to the rich political contributors]. Perhaps it would be a good thing if bond moneys became scarce. Then the politicians’ feeding frenzy would be frustrated and only needed projects would be undertaken. Before the federal income tax was enacted during World War I, tax exemptions did not exist. In fact, they were not needed. The first income tax was on annual incomes of $5000; since this only fell upon the wealthy, they immediately looked for a loophole. Thus, tax exemptions were born [municipal bonds, charitable contributions, mortgage interest, foundations, etc.] Frank X. Landrigan