Mario Kranjac, the Republican mayor of Englewood Cliffs, caused a bit of a brouhaha recently when he referred to New Jersey’s affordable-housing laws as “a socialist scheme.”

Wrong. This is not a socialist scheme. It’s a crony capitalist scheme - and a pretty darned effective one at that.

If our affordable-housing laws were truly socialist, then New Jersey would look like Havana, where the government has built massive blocks of high-rise housing available to all comers on an equal basis.

What they get to share equally are broken elevators and chickens being raised in the hall. But at least that misery is handed out to all comers.

In New Jersey we get the sort of thing that’s going on in Edison at the moment. A developer there is building a 220-unit complex called Camelot of Edison.

In keeping with that name, 187 of the units can be rented or sold at market rate, which will be a princely sum indeed.

Only 33 will be marketed as affordable units, with rents running from $432 a month to $1,435 a month. Those will be awarded by lottery to a few lucky families.

The fair-housing advocates call this a win-win. The developer nails down a nice profit and those 33 families get nice housing at low rents.

But it’s a lose-lose from the Board of Education’s point of view. The cost of educating each pupil is $17,167 per year, according to state Department of Education figures. But state aid covers only about $1,300 per pupil.

In the past three years, enrollment grew by 1,300. That’s a hit of almost $20 million that mostly has to be absorbed through property taxes.

The school system is also running out of space and is considering building additions to the current schools. That would be another big hit on property taxes that are already too high.

That has led the Board of Education to suggest a novel approach. The board members are proposing to sue the Zoning Board for permitting all that housing.

Left to their own devices, the leaders of such towns would pass zoning laws that limit growth to the carrying capacity of the schools, just as they limit growth to the carrying capacity of water and sewer systems.

But they are not left to their own devices. In its two decision in the Mount Laurel zoning cases, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution requires that towns avoid “exclusionary zoning” to limit growth.

That’s led to the current situation in which developers can pretend to advance equality while pushing for the so-called “builder’s remedy.” That permits a developer to build large projects that have only a small percentage of affordable units, a mere 15 percent in the case of that Camelot development.

State Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick said the Republican candidates for the 80 Assembly seats that are up this year will run on a platform of reversing the Mount Laurel decisions.

“The Mount Laurel decisions do not take into account the impact on the schools,” said Bramnick, who is a lawyer. “If you overcrowd the schools, why isn’t that a violation of the constitution?”

Bramnick said the Republicans will demand that the state Legislature put a referendum on the November ballot to overturn Mount Laurel.

Both houses are dominated by Democrats. So that’s unlikely to happen.

But many of the towns hardest hit by Mount Laurel are Democrat-controlled. Another prominent example is Cranford in Bramnick’s own Union County.

There, Hartz Mountain Industries is pushing to build a 905-unit rental complex in an area that is already subject to near-gridlock traffic around rush hour in that quaint little town.

Hundreds of residents want to Keep Cranford Quaint and have shown up at hearing to oppose that plan.

Jeffrey Surenian, the land-use attorney who represents Cranford and many other towns, says the intentions of the Mount Laurel decisions may have been good, but the result has been to put a lot of high-density housing where there is no room for it.

“Towns are under such pressure to meet high numbers that we’re over-developing the state,” Surenian said. “You might get a new home but you’re not going to be able to drive a mile away from it.”

Republican Assemblyman Mike Carroll suggests erecting traffic cameras in some of the spots most subject to traffic jams, such as the intersection of Route 24 and Interstate 287 in his own Morris County.

“I would have signs put up next to the cameras saying, ‘If you’re not moving in traffic thank your local Democrats,'” Carroll said.

Actually, the Republicans have been just as guilty over the years. Christie Whitman had a Republican legislature during her time as governor. But instead of siding with the towns, she sided with the developers.

Socialism is easy to oppose. As for crony capitalism, that gets bipartisan support