COAH Meeting Canceled After State Supreme Court Issues Temporary Stay
Appellate panel had ordered fair-share housing agency to hold its first meeting in 10 months.
Just 18 hours before the NJ Council on Affordable Housing was to hold a court-ordered meeting, which would have been its first in 10 months, the agency cancelled that meeting after the state Supreme Court issued a temporary stay of the order late yesterday afternoon.
The stay issued by the state’s highest court’s one-page order put a hold on last Friday’s extraordinary Appellate Division ruling that COAH meet by 9:30 a.m. today to begin working on rules for municipalities to provide their “fair share” of housing for low- and moderate-income residents as required under the state Supreme Court’s so-called Mount Laurel rulings.
Soon after the Supreme Court issued its temporary stay, the state Department of Community Affairs posted a that it had cancelled the meeting. Spokesmen for DCA and the state Attorney General’s office both declined comment. The meeting cancellation notice stated that the meeting “has been cancelled because the Supreme Court’s Order stayed the Appellate Division’s Order of March 7, 2014, which constituted the legal basis for holding the emergency meeting.”
Prior to early 2011, COAH used to hold monthly meetings. The council is supposed to have 12 members, but currently only half the seats are filled. (O’Dea/NJSpotlight)
The governor should keep working to kill COAH for ever.