Murphy urged to end NJ Transit, clean energy fund diversions
Published: February 21, 2021
Governor Phil Murphy signs an executive order requiring NJ TRANSIT to release monthly rail performance metrics at the Bay Street Train Station in Montclair on August 19, 2019. Edwin J. Torres/GovernorÕs Office.
TRENTON In advance of Gov. Phil Murphy’s budget plan being proposed Tuesday, groups have begun publicly pressing for him to end longstanding budget practices that shortchange priorities.
Among the issues on that lengthy list are NJ Transit, which uses money from its capital program to pay operating costs, and the Board of Public Utilities clean-energy funds that are perennially diverted from their intended purpose to offset costs at NJT and elsewhere in state government.
NJ Candidates And Activists Join Federal Lawsuit To Take Election Ballot Design Out Of The Party Machines Hands
arrow Voting booths at polling station during American elections. Moab Republic / Shutterstock
A group of former candidates and progressive activists are throwing their weight behind a lawsuit that argues New Jersey’s ballot design is unconstitutional.
arrow The ballot for Camden County
“Because the entire state legislature is beholden to the line and benefits from the line, it s nearly impossible to vote people out,” said Sue Altman, executive director of New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “The only recourse activists and outsiders have is litigation.”
New Jersey s influential teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, overwhelmingly powered Gov. Phil Murphy s nonprofit that blasts out his policy wins and goals. The NJEA provided $6 million of the $6.5 million the social welfare nonprofit raised during the end of 2019 and all of 2020.
New Direction New Jersey, a group run by former aides to the governor that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, reported that it also collected $175,000, from the union Greater PA Carpenters, $127,000 from the state s largest public workers union, the Communications Workers of America, $100,000 from real estate agency GP Management LLC and $75,000 from the Greater New Jersey Carpenters union.
The Gov. Phil Murphy who struck an agreement to revamp and expand the state s politically tainted corporate tax incentive program is not the same Murphy who waged war on the program a year ago.
Back then, those entrenched in the grassroots ranks of the New Jersey Democratic Party heralded Murphy as the new, progressive Moses who would lead their flock to the promised land of reform a land where taxpayer dollars are doled out by merit, not simply to those with political clout.
But by agreeing to a complicated, 219-page agreement that was approved Monday by both houses of the Legislature after less than a week of deliberation, Murphy instead led Democrats back to the old, familiar confines of the Trenton backroom.
NorthJersey.com
The Gov. Phil Murphy who struck an agreement to revamp and expand the state s politically tainted corporate tax incentive program is not the same Murphy who waged war on the program a year ago.
Back then, those entrenched in the grassroots ranks of the New Jersey Democratic Party heralded Murphy as the new, progressive Moses who would lead their flock to the promised land of reform a land where taxpayer dollars are doled out by merit, not simply to those with political clout.
But by agreeing to a complicated, 219-page agreement that was approved Monday by both houses of the Legislature after less than a week of deliberation, Murphy instead led Democrats back to the old, familiar confines of the Trenton backroom.