After years of Squandering Billions Identity crisis for NJ sports authority
JUNE 28, 2014, 11:48 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2014, 11:51 PM BY JOHN BRENNAN STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
With its finances in the red and its role sharply curtailed, questions are being raised about the long-term future of the agency that put New Jersey on the map of big-time sports.
But no matter what its fate, the hard truth is that the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which once netted tens of millions of dollars annually from The Meadowlands Racetrack and Giants Stadium, will likely be a lingering financial liability for state taxpayers.
A series of decisions by officials over time have left it marooned, with significant structural costs and little means to pay for them other than dipping into the state treasury. The agency continues along, its prime attractions now in private hands, sagging under obligations undertaken during more flush times and with a payroll that — while pared significantly — still includes executives with some of the highest salaries in state government.
“There are certain obligations entered into by prior administrations that we’re going to be living with for the next 25 years,” said Wayne Hasenbalg, who makes $225,000 as president of the authority. “Some of these costs we inherited — even if the authority went away today — are still going to be somebody’s obligations.”
Among those obligations are long-term pension costs for retired workers, more than $6 million in annual payments due to East Rutherford as the host town of the Meadowlands Sports Complex and $4 million per year toward operating costs of the state Racing Commission.
What Is (and Isn’t) at Stake for Obamacare in the Hobby Lobby Case
The contraception mandate will not be axed completely; the Supreme Court has the power to narrow the rule’s reach.
The Supreme Court won’t strike down Obamacare’s contraception mandate, but a ruling for the law’s challengers could still render the policy toothless for millions of women.
The justices are set to rule any day now in a challenge to the birth-control mandate, and any decision against the policy would have ripple effects far beyond the two companies that filed this lawsuit. Just how far, however, depends on how broadly the Court rules—and it has plenty of options.
No matter what happens, the Court won’t strike down the entire mandate. The two companies that brought their challenge to the Supreme Court—Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties—haven’t asked the justices to ax the entire policy.
The most sweeping option is a broad First Amendment proclamation that all corporations have a fundamental right to exercise religion, in this case by refusing to cover birth control in their employees’ health care plans. This outcome would be almost a sequel to the Citizens United case on campaign finance laws and free speech. It would probably open the door for any company to challenge a slew of state or federal regulations, and would allow any corporation to avoid the contraception mandate—potentially affecting millions of women.
Your purchase supports All Volunteer July 4th Events
Evening Activities and Fireworks Tickets – List of local stores to purchase – www.RidgewoodJuly4th.org
Parade and Fireworks are scheduled for Friday, July 4th, 2014 Alternate date is Saturday, July 5th …FIREWORKS are viewed from Veteran’s Field, Ridgewood, New Jersey Entrance gates open at 6:00 PM and close at 9:00 PM While the Parade is free, Fireworks Tickets are required for entrance to Vet’s Field.
Donations for Fireworks Tickets is one of the Celebration’s largest sources of income. Tickets will be available for advance purchase at stores for $8 and online for $9. Tickets will be on sale at the gates for $15 for adults and $10 for children ages 6-12. Buy your tickets in advance for big savings! Children 5 and under are admitted for free.
Supreme Court to consider ‘kill shot’ on public sector unions By Tim Devaney – 06/28/14 01:06 PM EDT
The Supreme Court will make its most important ruling in labor law in decades next week when it weighs in on a right-to-work case that could determine whether non-union workers can be compelled to pay public sector union dues.
Courts for years have recognized the rights of unions to ask non-members to pay dues for union negotiating costs, but a group of home healthcare workers in Harris vs. Quinn are challenging dues they pay to a branch of the Service Employees International Union as a violation of free speech.
The case is pitting business groups and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation against labor giants like the SEIU, which worry the court could rule broadly to prevent all non-members of public sector unions from being compelled to pay dues.
Such a decision from the court, which is expected to rule on Monday, could deliver a “kill shot” to organized labor at a time when it is already struggling with a declining membership.
Still, some labor supporters say they’re anticipating a loss.
“I expect the worst,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
The case was brought by Pamela Harris, who receives money from the state of Illinois to take care of her son.
The inflation panic : The spontaneous combustion theory of inflation
Jun 26th 2014, 15:42 by G.I. | WASHINGTON, D.C.
In the last few weeks, ominous warnings of inflation’s imminent resurgence have multiplied, prompted by recent upside surprises on core inflation and the cavalier dismissal by Janet Yellen, the Fed chair, of those reports as “noise. ”
On factual, theoretical and strategic grounds, I find the panic over inflation perplexing.
First, factual. Yes, core CPI inflation has rebounded to 2% from 1.6% in February and today we learned that core PCE inflation has risen to 1.5% from 1.1%. What should we infer from this? Nothing. In the short run inflation oscillates because of idiosyncratic movements in various components, such as rent, health care and imported commodities, but over longer periods, it is remarkably inertial: the best forecast of inflation over the next five years is inflation over the past five years. The nearby chart illustrates this;
Why Democrats insist on lying about how ‘poor’ they are
By Kyle Smith
June 28, 2014 | 10:22am
Modal TriggerHillary Clinton claimed that, at the moment she and her husband were signing up for $18 million in book deals, that they were “dead broke.”
Harry Reid (who lives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) said liberals are getting bullied by Republican billionaires but the Democratic Party “doesn’t have many billionaires” behind it.
Joe Biden (family earnings: $407,000 last year plus a free house, driver, meals, etc.) claims he “I don’t own a single stock or bond. . . . I have no savings accounts . . . I’m the poorest man in Congress.” (Triple fail: Joe isn’t poor, isn’t in Congress and wouldn’t be the poorest member of it if he were.)
Right here in New York, we’ve learned that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the daughter of a wealthy doctor who left a $6.7 million inheritance, took advantage of a no-interest loan intended for underprivileged New Yorkers to buy a Harlem townhouse. Then she forgot to declare the rental income on required city disclosure forms. The townhouse you and I helped buy her for $240,000 is today worth $1.2 million.
The more Democrats insist on their proletarian cred, the more absurd it gets. They’re no longer just holier than thou: Now they’re prolier than thou.
Reid is worth about $3 million to $6 million and declined to release his tax returns even as he was screaming about Mitt Romney’s. His statement that “we don’t have many billionaires” was wrong too. Politifact dug up 22 billionaires who have made campaign donations to super PACs lately. Most of them — 13 — sent their checks to liberal and Democratic groups.
WHY DO ALL THESE EXCEEDINGLY WELL-OFF PEOPLE KEEP TRYING TO CONVINCE US WE’LL SEE THEM AT THE DOLLAR STORE?
Biden may have been the poorest member of the Senate (not all of Congress) when he was there, but his net worth is still somewhere in the $39,000 to $800,000 range, reported the Center for Responsive Politics.
Why do all these exceedingly well-off people keep trying to convince us we’ll see them at the dollar store?
It’s all part of the increasingly delusional myth Democrats tell themselves that they are the tribunes of the middle class. In fact, their party is a strange two-headed beast — picture a Cerberus featuring the faces of Barbra Streisand and Lois Lerner.
The Dems are a coalition of ultra-rich cultural-elite donors on the one hand and government employees and their clients on the other. In 2012, President Obama carried those earning under $50,000 by a wide margin. But Romney easily bested him among those over that threshold.
Ever wonder why the Democrats seem to want to keep people poor?
But there’s another reason Democrats can’t talk about their wealth. It’s because they can’t say, “I made it big. Follow me and you can, too.”
Democrats earn their money in ways that aren’t available to most Americans. Yet even for Democrats, the Clintons got rich in an exotic way. They accumulated something like $100 million not by building a business or inventing something or even writing some hit songs. Their entire fortune came from political celebrity. (Their daughter has even accumulated $15 million by being the offspring of political celebrities. Or did you think NBC News paid her $600,000 a year because of her obvious broadcasting ability?)
If the Clintons had gotten rich inventing Facebook, that fortune would have spawned many others. But celebrity honoraria don’t work that way.
Modal Trigger
Drug dealers create more middle-class jobs than these people do.
Moreover, both Clintons have given so many speeches to big-bucks interest groups that there are legions of fat cats who think Hillary owes them a favor should she reach the White House.
No, Hillary, contra your interview in The Guardian, you didn’t strike it rich by “hard work.” Swanning around the world staying in five-star hotels, reading speeches drafted by someone else and signing your name to books written by someone else is not exactly quarry labor.
Hillary would have been better off admitting she has done well and then pivoted gracefully to how her ideas might benefit struggling Americans. Instead, by getting tetchy, she made her vast wealth the thing people are talking about. Her approval rating last week hit 52%, down from as high as 70%.
Her miscues in talking about money, though, like many political gaffes, are symptoms of an underlying problem: her likability.
Like Mitt Romney, she seems disconnected from ordinary American life. The more she tries to seem normal, the more she comes across as Lady Hillary.
By following her lead, her party risks becoming more and more alien to the middle class whose interest it purports to protect..
Four Reasons NOT to Raise the Minimum Wage The Cato Institute June 21, 2014
The debate over minimum wage continues to rage across the country. But, would raising the minimum wage actually harm the very people it is purportedly designed to help?
Research shows that businesses would respond to the increased costs by reducing employment, particularly for low-skilled workers. Some businesses may even pass the higher costs on to consumers. Despite the hope of proponents, raising the minimum wage would do little, if anything, to decrease poverty.
Here are four reasons NOT to raise the minimum wage….
It Would Result In Job Loss
Evidence of job losses have been found since the earliest imposition of the minimum wage
The first 25-cent minimum wage in 1938 resulted in significant job losses.
Minimum wage increases recently imposed in American Samoa resulted in economic effects so pronounced that President Obama signed into law a bill postponing them.
A 2006 review of more than 100 minimum wage studies by David Neumark and William Wascher found that about two-thirds found negative employment effects.
In 2010, Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser estimated: “nearly 1.3 million jobs will be lost if the federal minimum wage is increased to $9.50 per hour.”
It Would Hurt Low-Skilled Workers
Evidence shows minimum wage increases disproportionately hurt the people they’re supposed to help
The 2006 Neumark and Wascher review found the literature “as largely solidifying the conventional view that minimum wages reduce employment among low-skilled workers.”
A 2012 analysis of the New York State minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $6.75 per hour found a “20.2 to 21.8 percent reduction in the employment of younger less-educated individuals.”
A 2010 analysis by Michael J. Hicks found: “the latest round of minimum wage increases” account “for roughly 550,000 fewer part-time jobs,” including “roughly 310,000 fewer teenagers working part-time.”
It Would Have Little Effect On Reducing Poverty
Evidence suggests that minimum wage increases don’t reduce poverty
In the previous federal minimum wage increase from $5.15 to $7.25, only 15 percent of the workers who were expected to gain from it lived in poor households, according to a 2012 review by Mark Wilson. If the minimum were today raised to $9.50, only 11 percent of workers who would gain live in poor households.
The 2012 Wilson review noted: “Since 1995, eight studies have examined the income and poverty effects of minimum wage increases, and all but one have found that past minimum wage hikes had no effect on poverty.”
The 2012 Wilson review noted: “One recent academic study found that both state and federal minimum wage increases between 2003 and 2007 had no effect on state poverty rates.”
It May Result In Higher Prices For Consumers
The costs of minimum wage increases must be paid by someone
The 2012 Wilson review noted: A 2004 “review of more than 20 minimum wage studies looking at price effects found that a 10 percent increase in the U.S. minimum wage raises food prices by up to 4 percent.”
A 2007 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that restaurant prices increase in response to minimum wage increases
What Does New Auto-Enrollment Rule Mean for Obamacare Customers? Marguerite Bowling
June 27, 2014
It’s more effort for consumers than should be needed, Haislmaier said:
What’s unfortunate is that had Obamacare not created this unnecessarily complicated subsidy design in the first place, taking steps to ‘streamline’ the process as HHS is doing now wouldn’t be necessary. … {A]ny of the simpler health care tax credit designs that Heritage and other conservatives have proposed over the years would also have subsidized coverage, but without creating all of these issues.
New analysis also indicates that Obamacare customers might not even go the auto-enrollment route for 2015.
Avalere Health LLC, a Washington-based advisory services company, found that many consumers in exchange plans who receive subsidies will face substantial premium increases unless they switch insurance plans in 2015.
“Most enrollees in 2014 chose a plan based on their monthly premium,” Elizabeth Carpenter, director at Avalere Health, said in the report. She added:
However, the lowest-cost plans in 2014 may no longer be low cost in 2015. Before consumers renew their 2014 plans, they should consider the trade-off between continuity of care and lower monthly premiums.
Ridgewood Art Institute is Seeking an Instructor for an Oil Painting for Young People June 25,2014 Ridgewood Art Institute 4:12 PM
The Board of Directors of the Ridgewood Art Institute is seeking a qualified instructor for an “Oil Painting for Young People” class to be held on Wednesdayafternoons from 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm in the West Studio.
If interested, please send a resume, brief class description and ten JPEG images of your most recent work to:
Joel Popadics Education Chairman The Ridgewood Art Institute 12 East Glen Avenue Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Please note, 6 original paintings (plus a hard copy of your resume and class description) will be needed for the Executive Board Meeting which will be held onMonday, September 8th.
Village of Ridgewood Employment Opportunities – Deadline June 30th
The following employment opportunities are available in the Village of Ridgewood Building Department – Zoning.
Click Here for description of the Part Time Assistant Zoning Officer
Click Here for Full Time Board of Adjustment Keyboarding Clerk 1
Send resumes to Michael Barker at [email protected] by June 30, 2014
Employment Opportunity – Building Dept Director – July 9 Deadline
Director of Building Department
Full-time position. The Village of Ridgewood seeks a Construction Official to act as the Chief Administrator of the Building Department; zoning license preferred. Seeking a strong leader and manager with a proven track record in implementing technology solutions and establishing streamlined processes that are driven by customer needs and compliance with NJ Uniform Construction Code. While actively enforcing the UCC, Village ordinances, zoning and property maintenance ordinances, the selected individual must also demonstrate their commitment to continual process improvement as well as optimizing customer satisfaction.
Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications. Village of Ridgewood is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. Send cover letter, resume and references to [email protected] or fax to 201/652-2318 by July 9, 20
July 1, 2014 Planning Board Reorganization Meeting
PLANNING BOARD
AMENDMENT TO MEETING SCHEDULE
SPECIAL PUBLIC MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
In accordance with the provisions of the “Open Public Meetings Act,” please be advised that the Planning Board will hold a special public meeting on Tuesday, July 1, 2014, in the Village Hall Court Room, 131 North Maple Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ. The purpose of the meeting is to hold the Annual Reorganization Meeting beginning at 7:30 p.m. A regular business meeting will follow.
All meetings of the Ridgewood Planning Board (i.e., official public meetings, work session meetings, pre-meeting assemblies and special meetings) are public meetings which are always open to members of the general public.
Ridgewood Police Issue Traffic Alert for Monday June 30th.
Weather permitting, Monday, June 30th from 7:30am to 11:00am, the Village Streets Department will be patching the road at Garber Square. For safety, one lane will be closed during this work. The Police will be monitoring traffic to ensure that the flow in both directions moves. This work is in preparation for the July 4th Parade and holiday festivities. The Complete Streets paving project will not take place until after the July 4th holiday.
Ridgewood Board of Education approves new administrators
JUNE 27, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2014, 2:46 PM BY JODI WEINBERGER STAFF WRITER Print PAGES: 1 2 > DISPLAY ON ONE PAGE
The school board voted on Monday to move forward with hiring new administrators under the condition that Superintendent Daniel Fishbein research whether teacher evaluations qualify as unfunded mandates from the state.
A lengthy Board of Education (BOE) discussion resulted in a 4-1 vote, with trustee Christina Krauss as the lone dissenter.
Fishbein spoke of the long-standing need to replace the administrators let go in 2010 when deep budget cuts set in, but to some BOE members that argument paled in comparison to what they believe is the real issue: increased workloads from the state-required evaluations.
Because of the state- mandated transition to a new evaluation system, administrators’ teacher evaluation “events” have increased from 44 to 109, Fishbein told the board at a previous meeting. But, he emphasized, Ridgewood has fewer administrators when compared to other districts and the need for new hires predates the evaluations.
Breath testing deters alcohol use at Ridgewood dance
JUNE 27, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2014, 2:40 PM BY DARIUS AMOS STAFF WRITER
There were approximately half the number of alcohol-related incidents at last Friday’s Backwoods dance than in previous years, and event organizers chalk up the improvement to the Ridgewood Police Department’s use of random breath tests on the attendees.
Of the 950 Ridgewood High School students to attend last week’s event, which took place in Memorial Park at Van Neste Square, “only six” were reported to test positive for alcohol consumption, according to co-organizer Paul Vagianos. In comparison, 11 juveniles were cited for alcohol-related reasons at the September dance, while 10 were sent home from Backwoods in June 2013.
“We’re out of the double digits. This was the best Backwoods ever for that and other reasons,” Vagianos said.
In a conversation with The Ridgewood News on Wednesday, Vagianos noted that the dance had a different vibe than prior events, and the feeling wasn’t necessarily related to the ambiance created by the “Neon Safari” theme. Last week’s event marked the first time in the dance’s brief history that the Ridgewood Police Department conducted random breath tests on the students.
In previous years, Vagianos and David Zrike, co-organizer, greeted each attendee at the gates to the park and performed visual observations, a practice that continued last week. Any student they suspected had been drinking was directed to speak with an officer.
Oil spike due to Iraq keeps prices climbing at time they usually decline
Gas prices continued to rise in most parts of the country the past week to a national average of $3.68 for a gallon of regular unleaded, the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report said Thursday. That’s just 2 cents off of 2014’s previous peak price.
In its weekly assessment of price trends, AAA said concerns over the ongoing violence in Iraq were keeping oil prices hovering around $106 a barrel, making it more expensive to produce gasoline.
Previously, AAA predicted gas prices would fall 10 to 15 cents per gallon during June, following a typical pattern for lower pump prices in early summer, but in a statement the organization said “that now appears unlikely due to higher oil costs. This means that even though the national average has only increased a few cents per gallon since the Iraq violence intensified, drivers are likely to pay substantially higher gas prices than they would have otherwise.”
Indeed, the national average for regular unleaded gasoline is 14 cents higher than a year ago, and AAA pegs it as the highest early summer average since 2008.
The national average crept up a penny the past week, and if prices continue to climb, it could soon approach the 2014 peak of $3.70, set on April 28. Diesel fuel also rose 1 cent the past week, to $3.90, which is 6 cents higher than a year ago.
Motorists in some states are paying substantially more for gas than a year ago. In Ohio, for example, the $3.68 average for regular unleaded is 25 cents higher than on June 26, 2013, even after prices fell 12 cents the past week. The $3.78 average in Pennsylvania is 28 cents higher than a year ago, and drivers in Kentucky and Michigan are paying 31 cents more per gallon this year.
