Having the highest property taxes in the nation is bad. But credit where it’s due: President Trump has made it worse.

To help pay for his trillions of dollars in tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefitted the wealthy, he targeted a tax break primarily used by the middle class in New Jersey.

Trump capped the write-off for state and local taxes, known as SALT, to $10,000. Many people pay more than that, especially in high-tax blue states like ours. Now they can’t deduct it from their federal returns.

The war of words between former Gov. Chris Christie and current Gov. Phil Murphy has really heated up.

The attacks launched by the never-shy Republican and the publicly cheerful sitting Democratic governor hit a new high in the past few weeks, getting more pointed and personal. Christie said Murphy was engaged in “political theater” and that he couldn’t get things done with fellow Democrats. Murphy said Christie “basically ruined the state.”

Christie had long broken his vow to not talk publicly about Jersey politics after he left office, declaring in April he gave Murphy “15 months of (his) silence” and that he planned to “go out and start having some fun.”

It was nearly a year ago when New Jersey voters approved a bond act allowing the state to borrow $500 million to improve security and water at schools across the state.

Of that money, $100 million was slated to go toward updating water systems at K-12 schools to remove lead.

But 11 months have passed since last November’s vote, and Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration has yet to go to the bond market to borrow the money or tell school districts how to apply for the funds, New Jersey’s top state lawmaker pointed out Friday.

President Donald Trump signed a new law on Friday that gives New Jersey officials access to $100 million in federal funds to invest in crumbling water infrastructure and prevent lead from leaching into the drinking supply.

The legislation, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., allows states a one-time transfer of funds from its Clean Water State Revolving Fund to the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. The measure allows New Jersey to pull additional resources to help Newark and other municipalities replace old lead pipes that are flaking into the tap.

“Every day, children and families are facing the realities of our country’s aging infrastructure and worrying about the safety of their drinking water,” Booker, Newark’s former mayor, said in a statement. "The federal government has a responsibility to restore their peace of mind and this legislation will give states desperately needed resources to repair and upgrade their drinking water systems.

Starting next Tuesday, most Newark residents will no longer be able to pick up bottled water and should resume using city-issued filters to reduce lead levels in the tap, Mayor Ras Baraka said.

“Our message is simple: the filters work, use the filters,” Baraka said in a statement on Friday, after preliminary testing showed most of the filters worked to reduce lead in the drinking supply. "Those numbers make us comfortable to move forward without bottled water.”

Pregnant women and families with young children six years old or younger will still be able to pick up two cases of water every two weeks. The contaminant is particularly harmful for a child’s development and cognition.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka adamantly defended his handling of the city’s lead water crisis Wednesday night, rejecting any notion that he misled or lied to residents about the problem that’s gripped the city for more than two years.

“I will never concede that we allowed people to drink lead coming from the water without telling them,” a fiery Baraka said during a town hall on the city’s water at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center as supporters cheered him on.

Holding a stack of mailers and press releases, Baraka insisted the city had been informing residents along the way -- since lead levels spiked citywide in 2017 -- but conceded that “some people may have gotten confused” with an April 2018 announcement saying the water was “absolutely safe to drink.”