Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/category/roundups/page/2/)
A high-ranking official at the tax-prep firm Jackson Hewitt said, in testimony before a task force on the EDA, that a top executive at the company lied to get a $2.7 million tax incentive to keep them from moving to Florida or New York even though they already had a deal for a site in Jersey City, the Spotlight reports.
The Division of Rate Counsel said it opposed PSE&G’s petition to spend $2.78 billion on energy-efficient upgrades, which they do before passing those costs on to customers. Rate Counsel “experts argued the utility overstated how cost effective the proposed six-year program would be,” the valuable Spotlight reports.
Phil Murphy withdrew the nomination of Kelly Mooij to the Pinelands Commission for reasons unspecified, though the Burlington County Times, citing “multiple sources,” says Mooij is expected to join the BPU instead.
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.
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.
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.
Pedestrian fatalities rose 9% in New Jersey in 2018 (vs. 2017), the Spotlight reports, part of a wider trend across the U.S., where pedestrian fatalities have increased a shocking 41% since 2008, even as overall traffic deaths have fallen by 6%.
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.
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.