Trenton NJ, Two more jarring statistics were released yesterday regarding New Jersey’s economy. First, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimated that New Jersey lost 7,700 jobs in February. The state lost 9,300 private sector jobs, as the total number was offset by job gains in the taxpayer funded public sector.
Second, the Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJCPA) released an internal poll of 500 New Jersey CPAs, where 70% said they believe Governor Murphy’s budget will harm the State’s economy. A measly 23% viewed the State’s economy as “good” and only 12% think it will get better.
The following editorial by Senator Robert Singer (R-30) on Amazon’s rejection of New Jersey’s proposal to host a new headquarters was published on Feb. 25, 2019 in the Asbury Park Press:
A whopping 238 cities across the United States sought to be the home of Amazon’s second headquarters, dubbed “HQ2.” Of all city applicants, Newark, New Jersey offered Amazon the largest tax benefits in the country. Regardless of being one of twenty cities to make the final cut, Newark was passed over by Amazon not once, but twice. It speaks volumes that a package of tax incentives totaling $7 billion could not entice Amazon to choose New Jersey.
Our state’s prime geographic location, diverse workforce, state-of-the-art infrastructure, convenient transportation, and best-in-the-nation schools should have made the Garden State an easy sell. The New Jersey Legislature’s successful bipartisan effort to top all other competing tax incentive offers nationwide should have made the Garden State an easy choice. The competition was fierce to court HQ2, and New Jersey was in play.
Elizabeth NJ, BANKRUPTCY filed in Newark NJ Court – New England Motor Freight Inc HEADQUARTERS IN ELIZABETH NJ CLOSES ITS DOORS – 4,000 JOBS LOST – NJ IS A JOB KILLER
Ask Phil Murphy and Senator Menendez & Cory Booker what they did to try and help this company, besides raising taxes to the point of collapse. It’s no wonder Phil Murphy was begging Jeff Bezos on his knees to bring the Amazon HQ to NJ.
Trenton NJ, NJBIA President and CEO Michele N. Siekerka Esq. issued the following statement today relating to Governor Murphy’s efforts to attract Amazon to Newark.
“NJBIA shares and appreciates Governor Murphy’s enthusiasm for Newark as an ideal location for Amazon’s future expansion. Newark’s rebirth, where we have seen billions of dollars in high-tech investment, has been nothing short of inspiring. We hope Amazon will recognize the quality of Newark’s location, infrastructure and workforce and how it is serving as a model on how to own the innovation mantle and replicate it in urban areas across the state.
Trenton NJ, NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt released the following statement on President Trump’s State of the Union Address: “President Trump is taking our country in the right direction. His policies are earning new, well-paying jobs, helping small businesses thrive and lifting America’s economy to new heights. “While America grows, our home state of New Jersey lags behind. It’s time for New Jersey to fight back and tell Democrats in Trenton that we have had enough of the burdensome tax increases and strangling regulations. It’s time for both parties to come together and take action on improving New Jersey’s business climate and making our state more affordable.”
New Jersey Business and Industry Association President and CEO Michele N. Siekerka issued the following statement regarding the $15 Minimum Wage law signed by Governor Murphy today.
“After calling for a responsible, slow and predictive pathway to increasing the minimum wage, we are disappointed that our policymakers have put into place a plan that will result in a 35 percent cost increase to New Jersey’s small businesses, when including the increased wage and payroll taxes, within just 11 months.
Trenton NJ, Senator Anthony Bucco said a law signed by Governor Phil Murphy today to raise the minimum wage in New Jersey from $8.85 to $15 per hour will force small business owners to make tough choices about staffing levels and the adoption of labor-replacing technologies.
“As a small business owner, I understand how difficult it is to maintain employees’ jobs and benefits when we’re constantly faced with new taxes and expensive mandates from the State,” said Bucco (R-25). “I have no doubt that the huge costs being forced on employers by Governor Murphy and the Democratic legislature will lead to reduced hours for workers, layoffs, and the faster adoption of automation technologies that already are driving workforce reductions in many industries.”
Trenton NJ, In an Op-Ed that appeared in ROI-NJ on Friday, NJBIA President and CEO Michele Siekerka called the agreement announced last week by Gov. Phil Murphy and legislative leadership to raise the minimum wage to $15 as “far from economically responsible.”
Siekerka first notes the cumulative expenses already absorbed by small businesses in New Jersey – including “costly mandates, expensive compliance regulations, more subsidies for energy delivery and increased taxes as a means to balance the state budget. For this, New Jersey ranks dead last for business friendliness before we even get to a $15 minimum wage.”
Trenton, NJ – Yesterday, Governor Phil Murphy gave New Jersey Business a good laugh , after 18 tax increases totaling over $1.5 billion in new taxes the Governor has come up with a new scheme spending even more money to encourage startups in the Garden state .
Trenton NJ, Senator Menendez’s re-election campaign has begun to invest in a line of attack that includes criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry. NJGOP Chairman Steinhardt released the following statement in response to those attacks:
“Corrupt, career politician Senator Menendez’s election conversion on these issues won’t fool New Jersey voters. The fact that Menendez greedily solicited and took nearly $1 million in donations from pharma, but now suddenly is the crusader against the industry is the height of hypocrisy. His desperate rhetoric directly contradicts his votes in Washington, where he voted to allow pharmaceutical companies to delay the release of less expensive generic drugs.”
Votes:
● Menendez Voted Nay, Regarding S Amdt 2107, “Authorizes Import Of FDA-Approved Drugs From Canada.” (SAmdt 2107, Amendment Rejected – Senate, (43 – 54), U.S. Senate, 5/24/2012; Menendez Voted Nay)
● Menendez Voted Nay, Regarding S Amdt 2111, “Prohibits Pharmaceutical Companies From Delaying The Release Of Generic Drugs.” (S Amdt 2111, Amendment Rejected – Senate, (28 – 67), U.S. Senate, 5/24/2012; Menendez Voted Nay)
● Menendez Voted Nay, Regarding S Amdt 769, “Authorizes Individuals To Import FDA Approved Drugs From Canada.” (S Amdt 769, Amendment Rejected – Senate, (45 – 55), U.S. Senate, Oct. 20, 2011; Menendez Voted Nay)
● Menendez Voted Nay, Regarding S Amdt 2793, “Authorizing Importation Of Prescription Drugs.” (S Amdt 2793, Amendment Rejected – Senate, (51 – 48), U.S. Senate, Dec. 15, 2009; Menendez Voted Nay)
● Menendez Voted Nay, Regarding S Amdt 4299, “Expressing The Sense Of The Senate On The Legalization Of Importing Certain Prescription Drugs.” (S Amdt 4299, Amendment Adopted – Senate, (73 – 23), U.S. Senate, 3/14/2008; Menendez Voted Nay)
● Menendez Voted Yea, Regarding S Amdt 1010, “FDA Drug Import Certification Amendment.” (S Amdt 1010, Amendment Adopted – Senate, (49 – 40), U.S. Senate, 5/7/2007; Menendez Voted Yea)
Vetoes Legislation That Would Impede Economic Gains and Hinder Garden State Businesses
August 30, 2016
the Staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton, NJ , Taking action to protect New Jersey’s economic future, Governor Chris Christie today vetoed Assembly Bill No. 15, which would have raised the minimum wage to $15 per hour by the year 2021. Three years ago, New Jersey residents voted to raise the minimum wage to $8.25, along with annual adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This bill would have made New Jersey only the third state to adopt a $15 minimum wage.
“Despite having a constitutional mandate in place, the legislature now wants to increase the minimum wage by almost 80 percent just three years later,” said Governor Christie. “While this bill’s proposed increase surely is responsive to demands from Democrat legislators’ political patrons, it fails to consider the capacity of businesses, especially small businesses, to absorb the substantially increased labor costs it will impose, killing jobs and erasing gains of more than 275,000 private sector jobs since 2010. I cannot support a bill that undermines the positive results we have achieved in New Jersey and I am returning A-15 to the legislature with an Absolute Veto.”
Business owners would face added expenses from this substantial wage hike through increased payrolls, taxes and supply costs, leaving them with these undesirable options: laying off workers; reducing employee hours; raising prices; leaving New Jersey; or closing altogether. Other states and cities ramping up to a $15 minimum wage – California, Seattle and Washington, D.C., for example – are already seeing those negative economic impacts, from fewer jobs to increased costs for goods and services on college campuses, in restaurants and in the manufacturing sector.
Similar outcomes in New Jersey would be a significant step backward on the road to economic recovery and an affront to all of the accomplishments of our private-sector businesses over the past six-and-a-half years.
From offering $380 million in unemployment insurance tax relief to merging the State’s economic development incentive programs through the Economic Opportunity Act, Governor Christie has fought to make New Jersey more competitive and to encourage businesses not only to move to the Garden State, but also to stay here, and to expand their operations and hire new employees.
Governor Christie continues to focus on creating better paying, middle-class jobs in innovative sectors and through small business growth while continuing to build on New Jersey’s economic momentum.
As a proposal to regulate Uber and other car-hailing services moves closer to becoming reality in Newark, the company says it is prepared to take its cars and go home. Dan Ivers, NJ.com, Read more
New Jersey tax collections will come in about $162.1 million short of Gov. Chris Christie’s expectations for the current and upcoming fiscal year, the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services told lawmakers Tuesday. Samantha Marcus, NJ.comRead more
If you move away from your home state, some friends might throw you a party. Maybe you’ll get a happy-hour discount at your local bar.
If you’re really a big deal, you might get to throw out the first pitch at your local minor-league baseball team’s next game.
Other than that, everything will be pretty much the same after you’re gone.
That is, of course, unless you’re billionaire David Tepper.
If you are him, then when you move away you have the potential to send your whole state ( in this case New Jersey) into red-alert mode.
Tepper, the founder of the hedge fund Appaloosa Management, moved to Florida last fall. This, according to Bloomberg, has leaders of his former state very concerned.
Day of verbal assaults in N.J. was vintage Christie
DECEMBER 9, 2015, 11:49 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2015, 12:05 AM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
In a rare public event in New Jersey this week, Governor Christie ripped into the state’s largest business community for nearly 40 minutes, stealing headlines by telling leaders to “get a spine” and quit playing “kissy-face” with “crazy and liberal” Democrats he said were bought and paid for by union “pigs.”
But he was far from done.
Over the course of that speech to the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, and later during his monthly radio call-in show, Christie attacked or insulted at least a half-dozen other targets, some familiar, some not.
Tuesday’s string of attacks was a vintage version of the Christie who rose to national fame hurling invective at his adversaries and dressing down supporters if they strayed from the path.
Christie spared few from his withering critiques, from former governors to “liberal lunatics” in the Legislature to the “brutally liberal, ridiculous” media to a Senate aide. He even took a jab — jokingly — at the hapless Philadelphia 76ers, who plan to move their practice facility to Camden next year.
His speech to business leaders and the radio show were the only public events on his schedule Tuesday. On Wednesday, Christie did not attend a groundbreaking ceremony for Subaru’s new headquarters in Camden, one of the many achievements — along with luring the 76ers to New Jersey — he’s touted as part of his tax-incentive program.
