Murphy Wins at Supreme Court but NJ’s Future Generations Lose
Posted On08/14/2020 byCongratulations, Governor Murphy. Unsurprisingly, the NJ Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that you get to borrow up to $9.9 billion to cover budget gaps due to shortfalls and costs related to COVID19. This is good news for NJ’s most powerful special interests, the public sector unions, who are Murphy’s political supporters. Unfortunately, this is bad news…Read More
Three Indisputable Facts about NJ21United
Posted On08/10/2020 bySunlight Policy Center of New Jersey (SPCNJ) recently published a report “Who and What Is NJ21United?” asking who was behind NJ21United, the dark-money, political-action group that is organizing the #OnlyWhenItsSafe campaign. #OnlyWhenItsSafe calls for delaying the reopening of NJ public schools until certain conditions are met. Here are three indisputable facts about NJ21United: NJ21United is…Read More
NJLeftBehind Digs into NJ21United and Finds a Lot More than COVID-related Issues
Posted On08/06/2020 byNJLeftBehind dug into NJ21United’s policy positions and figured out that they extend well beyond COVID-related, school-reopening issues. SPCNJ also dug into NJ21United and concluded the same thing in its just released “Who and What Is NJ21United?” report. SPCNJ’s report also uncovered NJ21United’s deep ties to the NJEA and asks whether NJ21United is another NJEA “dark…Read More
For NJ, It’s Always the Same Answer from Our State Government: Raise Taxes
Posted On07/29/2020 byNJ Chamber of Commerce President Tom Bracken spoke out against a proposed new tax on health insurance (in ROI-NJ here). The new tax supposedly is to replace the federal tax that was repealed and shore up NJ’s insurance exchanges, but Bracken does an excellent job of refuting this. The bottom line is that when facing…Read More
New Study: NJ’s Roads Among the Worst. But We Have No Money to Fix Them.
Posted On07/28/2020 byThis won’t come as news to many NJ drivers, but NJ101.5 reported that a study by Copilot determined that 42.4 of NJ’s roads are in poor condition. Only RI and CA were worse. The national average was 26%. As detailed in SPCNJ’s report “Beware the Downward Spiral: The Economic Consequences of New Jersey’s Special-Interest-Dominated Status…Read More
New BEA Analysis Confirms NJ Public Pensions as Worst-Funded in Nation
Posted On07/24/2020 byAnd this was before COVID19 hit. The US Bureau of Economic Analysis did a laudable analysis of defined benefit pension plans across the country. BEA used a constant set of methods and assumptions so that in looking at the various plans, BEA was comparing apples to apples. Importantly, BEA used a 4% discount rate for…Read More
NJLeftBehind on SPCNJ’s Response to Jersey Jazzman’s Flawed Defense of His Flawed Research
Posted On07/23/2020 byThanks to NJLeftBehind for blogging and Tweeting SPCNJ’s response to Jersey Jazzman’s flawed defense of his flawed research. As usual, NJLeftBehind adds its own take and helpfully includes @stateaidguy in the thread. To reiterate: Jersey Jazzman’s two research reports for New Jersey Policy Perspective are deeply flawed. Despite Jazzman’s Ph.D., he seems not to understand…Read More
Worrisome Sign: Pension Assets Drop to $75 Billion, Funded Ratio to 35 Percent
Posted On07/23/2020 byNJ’s Division of Investment provided an update on pension assets. As of April 30, the assets had dropped to $75 billion from $81 billion, or -8.1%, due to the decrease in the market value of the investments. With the system’s liabilities at $212 billion, this means that the funded ratio dropped from 38.4 % to…Read More
Jersey Jazzman’s Defense of His Shoddy Research Is Just as Shoddy
Posted On07/21/2020 bySunlight (not “Sunshine,” Jazzman) Policy Center of New Jersey (SPCNJ) will give credit where credit is due: at least The Jazzman (a.k.a., Mark Weber, Ph.D.) took the time to defend his research. Presumably, no self-respecting Ph.D. would allow SPCNJ’s critique “More Shoddy Research from Jersey Jazzman and New Jersey Policy Perspective” to go unchallenged. However,…Read More
WalletHub Sees NJ Unemployment and Recovery as Second-Worst in Nation
Posted On07/20/2020 byInsiderNJ wrote an article on WalletHub’s recent ranking of the unemployment rates in all 50 states. NJ currently has the second-highest unemployment rate at 16.4%, which is up 407% since June 2019, the second-worst recovery. We all hope that NJ’s unemployment numbers will come down, but if the past is prologue, we have cause…Read More