Repubican opponents of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposal to borrow up to $9.9 billion for offsetting COVID-19-related revenue losses was argued before the state’s highest court Wednesday and they said the state’s constitution and past legal precedent should prevent the plan from proceeding. Marc Pfeiffer, assistant director of Rutgers University’s Bloustein Local Government Research […]
…. in the political sphere, dismissing women, feeling comfortable ridiculing and diminishing them, abusing them verbally, has been going on for a long time, violating any sane standard for acceptable behavior. But now, what may have once been thought, even ‘uttered under the breath,’ as they say, is out in the open — and abundant […]
Small employers are at the cross-currents of pandemic-driven forces. Many small businesses rely on face-to-face interactions, and few have deep pockets to weather shutdowns and stalled demand. The revenue freefall that businesses have experienced over the last five months makes sustaining payments for health insurance coverage challenging if not impossible. Yet, at a time when […]
Rutgers analyst James Hughes says the cultural and economic landscape’s been forever altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. He notes New Jersey’s still short 600,000 jobs lost to the lockdown. As for all the jobseekers, his new report sketches a bleak economic recovery that’s completely restructured by the pandemic. “It’s been essentially gasoline on the fire […]
State and local revenues have cratered since New Jersey was slammed by the coronavirus, and the need to cut costs by sharing municipal services has taken on a greater meaning. Data from the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) shows that Gov. Murphy is serious about shared services. … Murphy is hardly alone: In 2018, Senate President Steve Sweeney’s […]
New Jersey is the only state in the nation to see the number of new coronavirus cases drop in the last two weeks, but the pandemic’s financial impact continues to grow, according to a new Rutgers study. The economic freeze, fueled by coronavirus restrictions that shut down businesses for months and urged residents to stay home, has found the Garden […]
For nearly four months, a large chunk of New Jersey has been working from home. Now, even though the state’s reopening is on pause, employers are preparing for an eventual return to the workplace — and experts familiar with the North Jersey suburban office market are predicting the suburbs may see an unexpected boost from […]
While stocks are soaring, so are applications for unemployment. Applications for jobless aid are still about seven times higher than before the pandemic, and people are lining up outside unemployment offices, desperate for help. Economists remain concerned that new applications for unemployment aid — even in July — remain above a million a week. “You will […]
It is a mistake for the governor and the Legislature to sell bonds to balance the fiscal year 2021 budget. Not only is it prohibited by the New Jersey Constitution but, more important, it is bad public policy and will ruin the state’s finances for years. Opinion by Richard Keevey, NJSpotlight, July 16, 2020
Marc Pfeiffer, the assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University, said the increase in taxes would go up about 20 percent a year. Township attorney Steven Martino, who helped draft the resolution, said a resident would not see a tax increase in the first year following the improvement. After that, […]
