The New Jersey Builders Association unleashed its first public attack yesterday on legislation designed to preserve the northern Highlands, raising a series of questions about its fiscal impacts, fairness and timing.

Gov. James E. McGreevey has pressed for a regional council with veto power over large-scale development in about half the region, which stretches across seven northwestern counties and contains the water supply for half the state's residents. The bill was introduced March 29, and Assembly and Senate environment committees immediately began a series of hearings.

Patrick J. O'Keefe, the builders' chief executive officer, said in a memo to members and a subsequent interview, that the bill is on a fast track cloaked in secrecy and designed to accomplish one aim: choking off development.

"I can, at least, give them credit now for being honest," O'Keefe said. "From Day 1, this administration has had a policy of no growth, anti-housing and regulations intended to deny modest and middle-income families a place to live."

A key sponsor of the bill, state Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), said he welcomed the input, but he questioned many of the builders' contentions.

"My ultimate comment to builders is they have to stop thinking short- term," he said. "If they want to build in the future of New Jersey, there has to be water."

The legislation has set up a classic battle, with environmentalists and many, but not all, mayors and elected officials across the region saying it is needed to stop overdevelopment in highly sensitive environmental areas. Other municipal officials have voiced concerns about fiscal impacts and home rule, while builders argue the plan is unbalanced because it includes no mandatory growth areas outside the core.

A map of the core has yet to be released, but Smith said it will be available Thursday.

O'Keefe said his memo was written as a series of questions because, without the map, it was impossible to know whether builders will truly oppose it. But many of the questions raised were clearly rhetorical.

"Have provisions been made for the workers who will be displaced by the bill, many immediately upon enactment?" read one.

Another, a reference to the region's longtime war over affordable housing, read, "What principle of social justice warrants the denial of constitutional rights to the disadvantaged, while rewarding those who have perpetuated that denial?"

O'Keefe also said the water argument is specious, claiming that strict new environmental regulations already protect the water supply and the bill does nothing to address agricultural pollution.

Smith noted that environmentalists and water-protection experts have been trying to save the Highlands since the turn of the last century. He dismissed calls to slow down.

He said closed-door meetings and public hearings were helping him hone the bill to ensure towns in preservation areas don't get hurt. But he said mandatory growth areas - like the ones set up outside the Pinelands - have proven to failure, leading only to sprawl.

Smith said he remains hopeful the bill can be voted out of committee on April 22, when the full Legislature can begin debating it.

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Steve Chambers covers land-use issues. He can be reached at schambers@starledger.com or (973) 392-1674. Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger.