An Atlantic City bankruptcy:promising for taxpayers, bad for politicians!
By Matt Rooney
Doomsday predictions were leveled, Save Jerseyans, but over one year removed from the Detroit, Michigan bankruptcy – the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history –the Motor City is shaping up and making substantive progress. It can pay its bill and streets are being repairs. Sad as it is to stay, that’s huge.
You’re only surprised if you don’t trust the framework established by our Framing Fathers. Specifically, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution which authorizes Congress to enact “uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”
And, of course, if you’re a politician fighting over Atlantic City like lions or hyenas battle over the scraps of a rotting carcass… Continue reading…
With a record number of New Jersey residents holding jobs, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday announced the state will be able to offer $200 million in tax relief to businesses by cutting their contributions to unemployment insurance. Claude Brodesser-Akner, NJ.com, Read more
The state on Monday will order three New Jersey municipalities that have not revalued property in at least a quarter century to conduct revaluations that will affect property taxes for thousands of residents, NJ Advance Media has learned. Samantha Marcus, 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
Religious institutions in New Jersey are no longer allowed to sell grave markers, thanks to a new state law that took effect this week.
Signed into law a year ago by Republican Gov. Chris Christie, the new regulations target the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, which in 2013 began selling grave markers for burial plots within the archdiocese’s cemeteries. The Monument Builders Association of New Jersey sued the archdiocese and then successfully lobbied for the passage of a law to protect their members from competition.
GRAVE MATTERS: Religious institutions in New Jersey, like the Archdiocese of Newark, headquartered in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, are no longer allowed to sell grave markers, thanks to a new state law that took effect this week.
Christie signed the bill in March 2015 but delayed its implementation for one year.
“We have dreaded this day for a year,” said Andrew P. Schafer, executive director of the Newark Archdiocese Office of Catholic Cemeteries.
But the courts will likely get the final say in the matter.
The grave marker business is a lucrative one. The archdiocese made about $500,000 in the first year after it started marketing headstones directly to consumers, and the MBA argued that its members lost more than one-third of their business.
The archdiocese’s business model differed from that of the for-profit memorialists. While the businesses simply sell headstones to consumers, the archdiocese sells “inscription rights,” retaining ownership of the headstone while allowing the bereaved to engrave a message on it. This means maintenance of the headstones in the archdiocese’s 11 Catholic cemeteries will be at the Church’s expense in perpetuity.
With the threat of losing more business to the Catholics, the Monument Builders Association sued the archdiocese in 2013, but the lawsuit failed because it was not illegal for religious institutions to sell grave markers.
Stopped by the courts, the MBA turned to the state legislature. A bill banning religious institutions from selling grave markers sailed through the state legislature in December 2014 with bipartisan support.
Lawmakers who backed the bill said they were worried about the nonprofit archdiocese taking business away from monument dealers.
“We’re not millionaires. We are small businesses trying to survive,” said John Burns Jr., president of the Monument Builders Association of New Jersey, told lawmakers.
Now the issue is back in court. The Archdiocese of Newark, along with two of its constituents and the Institute For Justice, a libertarian law firm, is challenging the banon religious institutions selling grave markers.
The state of New Jersey has asked the U.S. District Court in New Jersey to dismiss the complaint, but the case is still pending.
The Institute For Justice says the case could be a model for attacking similar protectionist regulations in other areas of the economy, an issue on which federal courts have established no settled rules.
Until that gets resolved, consumers in New Jersey will have fewer options when it comes time to purchase a grave marker for a family member or loved one. The state is one of just three in the country to ban religious institutions from selling gravestones.
“This new law protects only the interests of funeral directors and monument dealers while eliminating the rights of families we serve and our ministry,” Schafer said Wednesday.
on March 31, 2016 at 5:40 PM, updated March 31, 2016 at 5:41 PM
TRENTON — New Jersey’s public pension shortfall, already one of the worst in the country, got even bigger in 2015, according to new actuarial reports.
Unfunded liabilities in the state retirement system for government workers grew to $43.8 billion, as of July 2015. The state system had $85.2 billion in liabilities but just $41.4 billion in assets, 48.6 percent of the money needed to pay for promised benefits.
The unfunded liability reported at the end of July 2014 was $40 billion, but Department of Treasury officials said that figure has since been revised. The up-to-date data was not immediately available.
lt Gov Kim Guadagno with former Freeholder John Mitchell
In any election year other than 2017, New Jersey’s Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno would be considered one of the leading stars in the national GOP firmament. Indeed, she has a “star” quality about her that is reminiscent of my former boss in whose administration I served quite proudly, Christie Whitman. Alan Steinberg, PolitickerNJ Read more
Voters in dark on key details of casino expansion referendum
When New Jerseyans decide in November whether to approve two new casinos in the northern part of the state, they’ll likely have only a vague notion of what they’re voting on. Wayne Parry, Associated Press Read more
Are the days of wining and dining over at N.J. Statehouse?
The Auditor noticed that lobbyists last year spent about $70 million to sway public officials and public opinion – the second highest amount in state history. But precious little of that money went toward wining, dining and entertaining state bigwigs. Lobbyists paid only $2,439 in 2015 on meals, trips and entertainment in 2015. And officials wrote a check and paid lobbyists back for nearly $500 of these funds. The Auditor, NJ.com Read more
New Jersey lost its richest resident late last year when billionaire David Tepper decamped to the tax friendly climes of Florida.
Tepper registered to vote in Florida last October, listing his residence as a Miami Beach condominium, and followed up in December by filing a court document declaring that he is now a resident of the state. He also carried out a business reorganization on Jan. 1 that relocated his Appaloosa Management from New Jersey to Florida, which is free of personal income and estate taxes.
The move could save Tepper hundreds of millions of dollars in state taxes several years from now. Florida has been pitching itself as a warm-weather tax haven to hedge fund managers in the Northeast, some of whom face a 2017 deadline to pay taxes on billions of dollars in performance fees that they had kept offshore for years. A Florida residence could offer partial relief to New York and New Jersey money managers who face the prospect of surrendering at least half of the deferred money to federal, state and local taxes.
“Anyone who has a large deferral coming due in 2017” is thinking about ways of reducing the tax hit, said Anthony Tuths, a tax attorney in the New York office of Withum who advises alternative investment funds. “What is easier than packing up your house in New York City and moving down to Miami?”
Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) and veteran Senator Ronald L. Rice (D-28) exchanged harsh words in the Senate Democratic caucus chamber this afternoon before state Senator James Beach (D-6) stepped in to keep the men apart. Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ Read more
Prior to a Monday’s session, where several bills from an anti-poverty initiative from Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto (D-32) were on the board list, Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-20) laid the blame for New Jersey’s dire financial straits at the Democratic majority’s feet. Bramnick and Assembly members Anthony Bucco (R-25) and Amy Handlin (R-13) joined him in saying that majority rule from tax-payers should determine spending. JT Aregood, PolitickerNJ Read more
Billions of dollars, thousands of retired workers and dozens of laws are all entangled in the latest pension dispute at the state Supreme Court. Salvador Rizzo, NJ.ComRead more
Posted by Laurie Ehlbeck On March 01, 2016 2 Comments
By Laurie Ehlbeck
We haven’t even made it out of the first quarter of 2016 but there is already plenty for small businesses in New Jersey to be concerned about on the upcoming legislative calendar. Senator Sweeney and Speaker Prieto seem determined to continue to challenge the economic stability of our state by introducing bills to nearly double minimum wage, mandate all employers provide sick leave and attempt to convince the voters that a pension payment must be constitutionally required. Sweeney and Prieto are creating what may ultimately amount to the most hostile session in state history in terms of damage caused to the small business community.
When it comes to minimum wage it is imperative that as a society we are honest about what it truly is. Minimum wage is not now, nor has it ever been, a vehicle in which to feed a family 4. It is an entry level wage that is earned almost exclusively by teens and young adults seeking work experience and a smooth transition into a career. Raising the minimum wage again, especially to the rate of $15 will have one direct effect. It will result in a loss of job opportunities for those seeking to expand their skill sets. It will not alleviate poverty. It will not empower the middle class. It will leave teenagers wondering what to do after school.
According to a recent study, 63 percent of workers who earn less than $9.50 per hour are the second or third earner in their family and 43 percent of these workers live in households that earn over $50,000 per year. In spite of what the proponents would have you believe, minimum wage earners are not an impoverished, disenfranchised group of struggling single mothers just trying to make ends meet. Most are teenagers from middle class families and many more are sharing the responsibility of providing for their families, not breaking under the burden of putting food on the table.
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Governor Christie on Monday nominated a Republican judge for a long-vacant seat on the state Supreme Court and named a successor for the state’s outgoing acting attorney general, moving to fill two high-profile vacancies that loomed as question marks over the rest of his tenure.
But he refused to discuss anything else — not his disappointing bid for the White House, not his controversial endorsement of Donald Trump. He conducted his first local news conference since dropping out of the race last month in regimented fashion, at least four times swatting down off-topic questions and telling one reporter, “Permission denied.” Christie also blocked the opportunity for anyone to ask him about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday morning, favorable to his administration, to decline ruling on a case challenging billions of dollars in cuts to the public employee pension fund, therefore allowing the reductions to stand.
Now, after his brief and tightly controlled appearance in Trenton, Christie sets off to campaign with Trump in Ohio and Kentucky during the Super Tuesday nominating contests having laid down a challenge to Democrats in New Jersey that he also hopes will resonate in Washington, D.C.
The death last month of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has triggered a battle between Republicans who control Congress and President Obama, who has 11 months left in his term, over who will fill the conservative justice’s seat on n the bench, potentially shaping the court for years to come.
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