No on Marijuana, Shark Deaths, Strip Club Lawsuit – Tuesday’s Roundup

Everybody reports on the decision to pull the bill on legal marijuana for lack of votes in the senate.

NJ.com’s story points out the governor, the “state’s legislative leaders” and 60% of New Jerseyans support the idea but that is not the way this operates. Politico reports four South Jersey Democrats in the Senate were no’s and one was a “soft” yes.

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Trafficking, Fireworks, King Kong’s Cats and More – Monday’s Roundup

Human Trafficking
Avalon Zoppo and Molly Bilinski have a very good and tough story on human trafficking in Atlantic County, which had nearly the same number of indictments as Bergen County between 2005 and 2018, even though Bergen County has 3.5 times the population. “She kept saying she deserves this,” the mother of one of the victims says. “I know that’s not true.”

Fireworks
Elsewhere in crimes, the case of the missing fireworks drags on as Jack May, a managing director at Keystone Novelties, tells Lynda Cohen he will not be doing business in Atlantic City this year. Readers may recall the video of ACPD officers nonchalantly removing boxes of fireworks from a tent behind the Ducktown Tavern last summer. May said the detective tasked with investigating his colleagues never got back to him and his emails to the county prosecutor, DOJ and ACPD chief have not been returned.

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Marijuana Crunchtime, Subsidy Pressure and My Long-Awaited TED Talk – Friday’s Roundup!

Council President Marty Small said he spoke with Phil Murphy, who assured him the city would absolutely get the maximum local revenue allowed under the legislation.

Small also said he asked Murphy if Atlantic City would be allowed to make rules to favor local ownership of marijuana dispensaries and Murphy told him that the city would be allowed to do so.

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Shoobies, Whales and the Worst People – Tuesday’s Roundup

Avalon Zoppo writes about moving a very old home that used to be in Avalon from Egg Harbor Township (where it was in storage) to Cape May, where it will now live, with the assistance of seven law enforcement agencies.

The shoobies grow tired of putting their houses on stilts and hoisting them into the air. Now they cut them into pieces and drive them down the Parkway instead. My, whatever will they think of next.

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Home Rule, Immigration and Your Natural World – Friday’s Roundup

Home Rule
Micha Rasmussen has a fun op-ed in the Asbury Park Press on the proposal by Steve Sweeney for a pilot program for countywide school districts, which he (Rasmussen) says would “reduce duplicative administrative costs” and maybe even reduce segregation and the inequality that attends a system where students, “born into ZIP codes with strong property values go to better-funded schools than students born into ZIP codes with weak ones.” Of course people like their segregation and will even pay for 565 separate municipalities to maintain it. But I’m beginning to think people here secretly like the high taxes too. In Atlantic County, the small-governmenters want the homerule and the duplicative services and also want to replace the Hamilton Mall with an Amazon HQ somewhere that gets a 5,000-year tax abatement. Immigration
Today is the deadline for local law enforcement to implement new procedures for dealing with immigrants, and NJ.com has a helpful explainer.

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