A man doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire outside the Veterans Affairs clinic in Northfield on Saturday afternoon. Fifty-one-year-old Charles Ingram was airlifted to Temple University Hospital, where he was reportedly in critical condition.
A former Ocean City police officer, Charles Cusack, was given five years’ probation after pleading guilty to charges of criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. Cusack was accused of having sex with a seventeen-year-old employee when he was beach tag supervisor for the city.
The A.C. Press has good story on the “gig economy”—the number of workers patching together part-time, freelance and temporary jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, in Ocean City, some disenfranchised business leaders met at a fancy breakfast to fret their inability to prevent a progressive minimum-wage law’s moving through the state legislature. “Voting no isn’t good enough,” Michele Gillian, executive director of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce, said.
Home bakers are pushing for the right to legally sell their goods in New Jersey, which is one of only two states (the other’s Wisconsin) that effectively bans the practice, NorthJersey.com reports. A measure to legalize sales of home-baked products has passed the state assembly 2x but Senator Joe Vitale, chairman of the senate health and human services committee, has refused to bring the measure up for a vote.
The A.P.’s Wayne Parry (seen at the Irish Pub last week on Bag Day, wearing what appeared to be a Jets jersey) says New Jersey voters will have on a vague notion what they’re voting for when they cast ballots in a referendum on North Jersey casinos next fall. Key details remain unresolved, “and appear likely to stay that way until after voters have had their say.”
NJ.com’s S.P. Sullivan has a dive into the “most dangerous two miles in America”—the stretch of the N.J. Turnpike around Newark airport and the ports of Newark and Elizabeth.
The state Board of Public Utilities approved another natural-gas pipeline through the protected Pine Barrens, citing the “need for redundancy” in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. It’s the second pipeline that BPU has approved since December. Bordentown Mayor Jill Popko called the project “unneeded and unwanted.”
NJ.com lists the nineteen towns with the lowest average home prices in the state. Lots of South Jersey towns, no surprise.
Easter Egg hunts across South Jersey! Courtesy of Cat Country 107.3.