Counties and municipalities will feel a budget crunch if the state Legislature doesn’t renew a 2 percent cap on the salaries police and firefighters can win through arbitration, a Wall Street Rating agency warned Wednesday. Echoing local government officials who’ve warned of impending tax hikes and spending cuts if the cap expires Dec. 31, Fitch […]
Category: Health Benefits
For the past six years, salary raises for local police officers and firefighters have, in some instances, been kept to 2 percent, for the most part, due to a state law that is set to expire December 31. With New Jersey’s high property-tax bills once again front of mind, municipal officials hope that should be […]
If we’re going to be honest, as effective policy makers it’s incumbent upon us to do the hard work, master the facts and policy nuances before us, and present cogent proposals to the public and the legislature. This list of policy proposals is me doing my job. The inescapable logic of permanently tying the arbitration […]
Jersey City Police Officers were awarded a 2% pay increase by a state appointed arbitrator this week. – Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, not the Democrat nominee for Governor, declared that the best interests of his city’s residents and taxpayers prevailed, according to Hudson County View. The arbitrator’s decision will enable Mayor Fulop and the city council […]
Taxes are a perennial top issue for New Jersey voters, and public-opinion polls indicate they remain so this year with the governor’s office and the full state Legislature on the November ballot. Yet the top Democrats in both the Assembly and Senate are continuing to say they have yet to decide if a limit on […]
Since late July, Save Jerseyans, Senator Cory Booker (D-Twitter) has been touring the state on what is being called the “21 county Jersey road trip.” In typical Booker form, he and his staff are extensively chronicling his moves on social media. They’ve even created a special hash tag (#JerseyRoadTrip) to document all the photo ops… err… “highlights” from the important […]
Officials at a handful of hospitals will finally get to review a confidential consultant’s report and other documents they claim are at the heart of Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield’s alleged plan to exclude them from a preferable insurance network under the company’s OMNIA health plan. On Monday the New Jersey Supreme Court granted four […]
David Tepp It is challenging to find any degree of optimism in the healthcare debate. Mostly, what we hear are rhetorical grandstanding and bitter divisiveness. Meanwhile, the uninsured continue to suffer and, for the fortunate ones who have coverage, their income is being siphoned by skyrocketing insurance premiums and prescription medication costs. Yet, there is […]
The Senate’s Republican leadership released a revised health care bill Thursday afternoon, a move welcomed by House conservatives even as they were reluctant to comment before digesting it. “We are going to withhold judgment,” Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said earlier in the day during the monthly Conversations With Conservatives event on […]
The ugly keeps getting uglier, Save Jerseyans, and there’s no let-up in sight. On Tuesday, one week after New Jersey government reopened from a budget impasse-fueled shutdown, the nationally-respected Mercatus Center down at George Mason University released its state fiscal condition rankings and found the glorious Garden State in… dead last place. Trenton should’ve stayed […]
TRENTON – Lesbians and other people who want to use non-conventional means to conceive a child are entitled to insurance coverage for fertility treatments if they work for state government or the public schools, under a measure Gov. Chris Christie signed into law Monday. The law mandating coverage for infertility was defined narrowly, sponsors say, […]
Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff In 1866, Surrogate Gideon J. Tucker wrote that “[n]o man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” Over a hundred years later, the New Jersey Legislature is doing its very best to keep Surrogate Tucker’s warning pertinent by once again advancing special-interest legislation that reaches for a new […]
Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff Prediction: Sometime in the foreseeable future, the federal government will step in to address the self-inflicted crisis in state and local government pension and health-benefits funding. The only real question for us in New Jersey is whether it will happen soon enough to save us from ourselves. How and why? Let’s review where […]
It’s arguably the number #1 affordability issue facing New Jersey voters as they select a successor to Chris Christie this November, Save Jerseyans…. What to do about New Jersey’s pensions system? Here’s a brief round-up of the four Republican candidates’ positions (from their own mouths): — Lieutenant Governor KIM GUADAGNO — Assemblyman and Businessman JACK CIATTARELLI […]
That’s what he told NJ Advance Media over the weekend, Save Jerseyans. And it’s a plan that’s sure to raise eyebrows should former SNL comedian and present day radio host Joe Piscopo jump into this year’s gubernatorial race. According to NJ Advance Media, Piscopo believes exempting firefighters, police, state troopers and teachers from state income […]
The applicable question might not be who will be our next governor but, rather, who would want to be New Jersey’s successor to Chris Christie? This week, S&P announced that it’s downgrading New Jersey’s credit rating from “A” to “A-.” It’s the 10th credit rating downgrade since January 2010. S&P’s slam comes two weeks after a […]