NEW YORK, NY May 22, 2007 —A battle is brewing in New Jersey over how best to fund its purchases of open space land. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

Later today, the Sierra Club and the New Jersey Environmental Federation will join a bi-partisan coalition of state legislators in a call to let voters decide if they want to use part of the sales tax to fund open space preservation. That puts them at odds with Governor Corzine, who wants to use his plan to lease the turnpike to pay off existing state debt and fund new capital spending like land preservation efforts.

Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1960s, the latest DEP mapping indicates the Garden State continues to loose at least 15,000 acres of land to development each year. For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.