Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/2019/03/page/2/)
There were seven new arrests Friday in the big prescription fraud case, everyone reports. This batch includes two guys I grew up playing various kinds of sportsball with. I don’t know what that brings the total to on former sportsballers I sportsballed with, who have gone on to get involved in this debacle. I stopped counting.
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.
Payton Guion at NJ.com has some details on the marijuana bill set to go to the legislature, which includes “several social justice provisions aimed at helping people who have been negatively impacted by marijuana prohibition.”
The New Jersey Department of Education released its School Performance Reports for 2017-2018. The valuable Spotlight has a tool that let’s you search by county, district or school, while NJ.com notes the rankings are often criticized as overly simplistic.
Walt West of Uplift Solutions addressed (a partial gathering) of the Boardwalk Committee this a.m. to discuss the new supermarket coming to Baltic Avenue near Ohio, not far from the convention center. West said Uplift is looking to finalize RFPs by the end of April, after which they’ll move quickly to secure an operator and developer for a supermarket that will be 40,000 square feet total (30,000 square feet of active retail space) and employ about 125 people (80% part-time). He estimated it will take 18 months to build. Uplift will be holding townhalls on this important subject on March 21, April 11 and April 23 (details here). In answer to the important “loss-prevention” question that tends to arise when the subject of supermarkets come up in Atlantic City, West said there are “intelligent and effective ways to address that.”
Everybody’s reporting that March 25 is the day the state legislature will vote on marijuana legalization, though NJ.com, citing unnamed sources, say the leaders of the pro-legalization side are still many votes short, and if they can’t whip their colleagues into position, the vote could be delayed.
Guy Gargan at the Press has a nice story on the fundraiser for Stockton’s crew program where they honored rowing coach Stan Bergman and announced the Alton and Endicott families will provide funds for two new boats, which cost about $40,000 a piece, the Press reports.
New Jersey A.G. Gurbir Grewal is suing ExxonMobil, which is the ninth-largest corporation on the planet or something, for dumping toxic waste in a tidal zone in East Greenwich Township, NJ.com reports.
You may recall Chris Christie let Exxon pay $225 million to settle a $9 billion lawsuit in 2015 when he wanted to be president.
The old Masonic Temple on Hartford Avenue in Chelsea is for sale, and has been for a while, per the big sign on the side of it.
In the 90s, the building was used as headquarters for the Atlantic City Police Department, when it was known as the “Temple of Doom.”
Lobbyists spent $2.8 million last year to stop legislation to give PSE&G $300 million in subsidies. We did that sh*t for free, so let this be exhibit 11,000 in the PowerPoint presentation I am preparing for myself titled: Why You are in the Wrong Business.