TRENTON -- Each day past sundown in scattered small towns across New Jersey, police radio dispatchers start a nightly ritual of shifting incoming calls from the local to the state police. In some places, such calls are handled by troopers all day long.

It's a time-honored law-enforcement exercise that Gov. Jon S. Corzine suggests has become too costly. In the debate to create a state budget, lawmakers face the idea that some of the 97 municipalities that use State Police patrols may be asked to pay for it.

It's unclear which towns may be affected, should the plan go through. But a closer look at the plan suggests that it may add $24 million in costs to rural towns with a 2005 municipal tax levy of $43.4 million combined, though residents of those towns pay lower municipal property tax bills -- in many cases, much lower --than most New Jerseyans.

"It's come up before, and we've always managed to shoot it down," said state Senate Minority Leader Leonard Lance, R-Hunterdon, whose district includes the northern rural areas along the Delaware River, from hilly Blairstown down to artsy Lambertville -- and includes 28 towns that rely at least part-time on state trooper patrols.

But two things add urgency to this year's call. Residents face state tax hikes to close the budget shortfall and property tax hikes in most towns, and at least one other state --Pennsylvania -- is exploring the same idea.

Lance said the issue this time is so weighty that he hesitated to join seven other senators in signing a letter to Attorney General Zulima Farber seeking justification for the plan.

"I agree with their position,"Lance said. "I want to talk personally with the governor about it. It's that important."

Corzine's budget documents say municipalities "with tax rates below their county average, or where residential property values are higher than the county average" would pay for the state police patrols.

Administration officials say they haven't determined which towns would have to pay, but the budget details say affected towns would have to pay $280 per household for full-time coverage and a lower rate, not yet set, for part-time patrols.

A Gannett New Jersey analysis of property tax data compiled by the state Department of Community Affairs suggests 22 of the 97 towns may be exempt -- including Bloomsbury, Califon, Eagleswood, Englishtown, Glen Gardner, Hampton, Milford, Pemberton Borough, Plumsted, Roosevelt, Shiloh and Shrewsbury Township.

That would mean taxpayers in 75 municipalities would share a $24 million bill for trooper services, amounting to about one-third of the $74 million that the state says it spends on rural patrols.

Seen one way that could prove a financial shock: Those towns' property tax levy last year for municipal government was $43.4 million combined, meaning the rural policing fee could add 55 percent to what local governments must raise from taxpayers.

Seen another, however, taxpayers in those towns don't face the kind of tax bite that residents of other towns do. The average municipal-purpose property tax statewide was $1,524 last year, but it was below that in all but two of the affected towns.

Fourteen of those towns had no municipal-purpose tax levy last year. In 19 of the municipalities, the municipal tax on the average home was less than $100, and in 54 of the 75 the average municipal tax was below $500, or one-third of the state average.

Treasury Department spokesman Tom Vincz said a taxpayer in a town with a police department pays twice, for local and state protections, which helps defray costs that a taxpayer next door pays in a municipality that lacks a police department and relies entirely on the state.

"You will have significant variety up and down," said Vincz. "You'll have towns with a low tax rate and low values matched up with towns with high values, but not necessarily high property-tax rates. ... Where there is a clear ability to pay, with low rates, then those towns would be consequently impacted."

Sen. William Gormley, R-Atlantic, a signer of the letter sent to Farber, called the savings "chump change" and said he believes that Corzine is floating the idea so he can bargain it away. Three or four towns in Gormley's district may have to pay.

Sen. Leonard Connors, R-Ocean, sees the issue from two perches -- as a state legislator and as the mayor of Surf City. Connors said billing municipalities will boost property taxes, and three or four of his district's towns rely exclusively on state police.

"Now they are going to burden the towns with this?" asked Connors. "It's just another form of property-tax increases." Faced with new costs and no new money coming from Trenton, municipalities tend to raise property taxes.

The state police patrols now are provided for free, and in fact they underpin the very creation of the state constabulary, which came to be in 1921 when 81 troopers were deployed on horses and motorcycles across New Jersey's bogs, hills and pines.

So rural was the focus of the original two state police "troops," or divisions, that they headquartered in mountainous Netcong and in Hammonton, which to this day is an Atlantic County agriculture center surrounded to the horizon by vast farms.

"The state police was expressly created to patrol rural towns," stressed William Dressel Jr., executive director of the state's League of Municipalities, the lobbyist for the 566 cities and towns. "I am opposed to it," he said of the fees.

Mayors of affected communities, as expected, don't cotton to it either.

"Obviously somebody is in a suburban or urban area that's paying a lot for police protection, and thinks we ought to too," said Mayor Richard Bethea of Bass River, a township of less than 1,600 residents made up primarily of a state park and a military bombing range. The township has no police department and no municipal taxes.

In Warren County, Mayor Peter Lance of Blairstown had just downsized his police department to being on call 15 hours a day, handing the remaining nine hours to state troopers.

"Our contention is we are paying for these services already," Lance said of his township's nearly 6,000 population. "We are paying for a tax that supports NJ Transit, for which we up here are receiving no benefit. We live in the same state. We have to look out for each other."

Buena Vista township in rural Atlantic County is a 42-square-mile municipality with no police department and more than 7,500 people. By comparison, Watchung in Somerset County has 5,800 people over 6.2 square miles and is policed by a department of 28.

"These things send chills,"Buena Vista Mayor Chuck Chiarello said of Corzine's idea. "They perceive we are getting some kind of special deal."

The municipal tax on the average home in Buena Vista was $391 last year and roughly $2,800 in Watchung. The average total property tax bill in Buena Vista, after the state rebate, was $2,276, compared with $10,575 in Watchung. But things are relative: Median household income in Buena Vista in 1999 was $43,770, compared with $101,944 in Watchung.

But rural mayors say all towns benefit from the troopers without paying a user fee.

"There are many, many towns with state highways through them that the state police patrol," Chiarello said. "All towns benefit from the state police lab, from the marine unit. There are so many aspects that the state police serve. Should there be fees imposed for that?"