Sunlight Blog
New Direction NJ Back at It with $2 Million TV Ad Campaign
Posted On10/22/2019 byAccording to InsiderNJ, formerly “dark money” group New Direction New Jersey (NDNJ) is back at it with a $2 million TV ad campaign leading up to the Assembly elections in November. It’s nice to have a lot of property tax dollars to spend. How much of the $2 million comes from the NJEA? Is this…Read More
Assemblyman Hal Wirths Is Right About NJ Citizens’ Massive Tax Burden
Posted On10/17/2019 byIn today’s Star-Ledger, Assemblyman Wirths correctly highlights the inexorable rise of NJ’s property and other taxes and the insatiable appetite of the state’s special-interest-dominated status quo for more spending and more taxes. Wirth also wisely points out our state’s vulnerability to a recession. Wirths does NJ citizens a service by stating this clearly and succinctly….Read More
NJEA Ends Silence, Announces New Executive Director
Posted On10/10/2019 byAfter some prompting from the SPCNJ and others, the NJEA has announced that Ed Richardson is out and Steve Swetsky is in. The NJEA says Richardson is retiring, which is an ordinary reason for leaving a position, so it’s still a little odd that the NJEA was caught so flat-footed. Without the prompting, one wonders…Read More
NJEA Admits Richardson Is Leaving But Still Refuses To Say Why
Posted On10/09/2019 byThe strange saga of the NJEA’s ouster of executive director Ed Richardson continues. After SPCNJ dug up the fact of Richardson’s removal and noted the NJEA’s strange silence on the matter, NJ Spotlight at least followed up with NJEA Communications Director Steve Baker. All Baker would say was that the NJEA would provide more details…Read More
NJLeftBehind: Who Is in the Driver’s Seat: NJEA Leaders or Phil Murphy?
Posted On10/09/2019 byWe re-post NJLeftBehind’s excellent piece on the continued and remarkable similarity between Governor Murphy’s policy agenda and the NJEA’s policy agenda: Who Is in the Driver’s Seat: NJEA Leaders or Phil Murphy? Two weeks ago Governor Phil Murphy was the guest speaker at Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for Politics’ “Governing New Jersey” series.* As reported…Read More
Truth In Accounting: NJ Ranks Last in Fiscal Health – for the Fifth Straight Year
Posted On10/08/2019 byShowcased in a NJ101.5 report, Truth in Accounting (TIA) is one of many research outfits that analyze New Jersey’s dire fiscal condition. Mercatus Center and Pew Charitable Trusts do so as well and make similar findings. SPCNJ’s recent report “Beware the Downward Spiral” provides a comprehensive look at New Jersey’s fiscal and economic woes, and…Read More
Ed Richardson (Very Quietly) Out as NJEA Executive Director
Posted On10/04/2019 byThis month’s NJEA Review revealed that Ed Richardson is no longer the executive director of the NJEA, having been replaced by another long-time political operative, Steve Swetsky. So the dominance of the executive office – and of the NJEA – by political organizers continues. But what is strange is that Richardson’s removal was done very quietly….Read More
Governor Murphy Holds the Door While New Jersey’s Future Walks Out
Posted On10/04/2019 byThe New Jersey Globe quotes Governor Murphy: “If you’re a one issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business, if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision, we’re probably not your state,” Murphy said at Rowan, according to KYW Newsradio. I had to read that…Read More
Study finds NJ is #46 when it comes to taxes on families
Posted On10/02/2019 byOn the back of SPCNJ’s release of its “Beware the Downward Spiral” report, personal-finance publication Kiplinger’s released a study that looked at the property-, sales- and income tax-burden on a hypothetical family of four. Illinois – the one state with a worse bond rating than New Jersey – had the biggest tax burden. New York…Read More
The Record’s Charlie Stiles Gets A Lot Right About NJ’s High Debt Load and Our Water Crisis
Posted On09/27/2019 byBut he does leave out some important details. Kudos to the Bergen Record’s Charlie Stiles for identifying the main reason why New Jersey doesn’t have the money to fix its water pipes (and other infrastructure needs): its worst-in-the-nation debt load. Money that is used to pay for massive unfunded pension liabilities cannot be used to…Read More