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Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Gurbir Grewal couldn’t have picked a better town to outline the state’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over rules covering federal deductions for state and local taxes. South Orange has some of the highest property taxes in New Jersey – Village President Sheena Collum noted in her introductory remarks that the town ranks 15th in that department with the average bill topping $18,000. Residents were hit hard by the provision in the 2017 tax law that capped the deduction at $10,000. (Full disclosure: this writer is one of those residents.)

The issue traces back to the Republican tax bill enacted in 2017. In an apparently unsuccessful effort to get the revenue numbers to work, lawmakers installed the cap on so-called SALT deductions.

Obviously, that’s not enough for South Orange residents with average bills of $18,000. And that problem was shared by other high-tax states, like New York and Connecticut.

So those states developed a scheme to allow residents to make payments to a charitable fund that would, in turn, provide financial resources for government services. Presto! Property tax payments become charitable contributions, a greater proportion of which could be deducted on federal tax forms.

But the Internal Revenue Service was having none of it. Earlier this year, the agency ruled that such local funds could not be used to circumvent the $10,000 cap. Murphy called the move “nothing less than a gut punch” to New Jersey’s middle-class taxpayers.

The IRS ruling prompted New Jersey, along with New York and Connecticut, to sue the federal government, arguing that the plaintiff states are being treated unfairly.

If the lawsuit sounds like a long shot, it probably is. Just as the idea of magically turning property tax payments into charitable donations faced long odds.

Grewal, at least, is undeterred. At the event unveiling the lawsuit, he argued that 33 states had established similar programs and the IRS was always fine with them. “But when New Jersey, New York and Connecticut followed suit, the IRS adopted brand new rules that shut them down,” he said.

Given that, Grewal also insisted that the three plaintiffs are not advancing an unorthodox legal claim. “Every argument that we make in this complaint and that we will make in court is an argument that the IRS has supported in the past,” he said.

Maybe. But Grewal and his counterparts in New York and Connecticut have a tough row to hoe.

What if the lawsuit gets thrown out? What is Plan B? Murphy ticked off the list of programs now available to help residents deal with high property tax bills. The Homestead Rebate, the Senior Freeze and programs for veterans and disabled individuals.

Finally, he mentioned the state’s shared services czars, erstwhile Harding Township Mayor Nicolas Platt, and Jordan Glatt, who served two terms as mayor of Summit. “We have two former mayors, a Republican and a Democrat, who wake up every day up and down the state to find opportunities to share services among communities, between the counties and communities,” the governor noted.

That’s fine, but the limitations of Murphy’s approach were evident earlier this year in … South Orange. During the spring, Collum fought a bitter re-election campaign in which the main issue was a plan developed under her leadership to combine the town’s fire department with that of neighboring Maplewood.

While Collum’s opponent, former Village Trustee Deborah Davis Ford, also favored consolidation, she charged that Collum’s plan would give too much control to Maplewood and reduce the number of firefighters on duty in South Orange. Collum won the contest handily, but the two campaigns traded charges for several weeks and residents filled online forums with attacks on the motives of both sides.

So even given broad agreement on the idea of shared services, actually winning support for a specific course of action can be difficult and the process can descend into acrimony.

If Murphy is serious about reducing property taxes, his administration will have to do more than simply promote efforts to ameliorate the worst effects of the current system. That system will require a significant overhaul that changes the way the state collects revenue and allocates resources.

Does Murphy understand that? Perhaps. South Orange was chosen to host the lawsuit announcement because of its tax bills. And the venue for the event was also appropriate given the town’s recent debate. Murphy, Grewal, Collum and other elected officials gathered inside the South Orange firehouse.

The heat on that sweltering July day seemed like a vestige of the rhetoric that marked the election campaign.