Silver guilty on all counts in retrial; faces 130-year term

Sheldon Silver found guilty on all counts (Richard Harbus photo)



Kaja Whitehouse reports for the New York Post:

The ex-speaker of the New York state Assembly Sheldon Silver was found guilty on Friday of selling his office for $4 million in kickbacks — affirming a 2015 conviction on the same charges that had been overturned on appeal.

A jury of seven women and five men found Silver, 74, guilty of all seven counts against him, including two counts of honest services mail fraud and money laundering.
He faces as much as 130 years in prison when sentenced on July 13.
Silver showed no emotion as the jury read the verdict to the judge.
“Obviously I am disappointed,” the Lower East Side Democrat said outside of court, adding that he will appeal the verdict.
The verdict is a crushing blow to Silver, who was once one of the three most powerful men in New York along with the governor and Senate majority leader.
In 2015 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison, which his lawyers argued was a death sentence for the septuagenarian, who was fighting prostate cancer at the time.

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Poll: Broad support for taxes on wealthy, corporations

NJTV News correspondent Michael Aron reports:

The predominant topic in Trenton this season is, how will Gov. Phil Murphy get his budget passed? The governor has proposed taxing income over $1 million. He also wants to restore the sales tax, currently at 6.625 percent, to 7 percent where it’s been for a decade.
Legislative leaders have been noncommittal. They’ve called tax increases “a last resort.”
Now, a poll commissioned by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal think tank, suggests the public supports Murphy’s taxes. Of 600 respondents, 70 percent support raising the income tax on households earning $1 million or more a year, while just 24 percent oppose. Fifty percent support reinstating a 7 percent sales tax, while only 37 percent oppose.
The head of the organization that commissioned the poll says, while taxes are generally unpopular, when you connect taxes to investments in key areas, the numbers change.
“This should give comfort to people who understand that, to members of the Legislature who know that we need to improve our investments in transportation, in school aid, in all of those things, property tax relief, put those together with higher taxes, it becomes possible,” said New Jersey Policy Perspective President Gordon MacInnes.

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Take a ferry from Carteret, NJ to NYC? Yes, coming soon

Ferry boat doing test runs between Carteret and NYC three years ago

Larry Higgs reports for nj.com:

Ferry service between Middlesex County and New York City, talked about since the 1990s, could set sail soon now that federal officials have awarded a $6 million grant to purchase a boat. 

The Federal Transit Administration awarded the grant this week to NJ Transit to purchase a 299-seat ferry for a proposed Carteret to Manhattan route. NJ Transit applied on behalf of Carteret , which will receive the money.
The ferry route from Carteret’s Waterfront Park, along the Arthur Kill to midtown, could transport passengers to the city in 54-minutes.
Ferry service from Middlesex County and Staten island was first studied by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1996, which recommended Carteret because of its location along the Arthur Kill.
The grant is the most significant recent step since a ferry was brought in to conduct test runs in 2015. That route took the Arthur Kill to the Kill Van Kull through New York Harbor, and ended at Pier 11 in New York. 
Work to get federal funding for various stages of the project started when now U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, D-N.J., was a congressman and Carteret was part of his district. 
“It was 22 years ago, that the Port Authority first found this would be an ideal place for ferry service into Manhattan,” Menendez said.  “So, I’ve long known what a new ferry would mean for this community – faster commutes, greater access to jobs, and better quality of life.”

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NJ asks feds to extend offshore-wind comment period


Governor asks feds for six-month extension to assess impact of offshore wind farms on state’s main fishing grounds

wind

Tom Johnson reports
for NJ Spotlight:


Gov. Phil Murphy is asking the federal government to extend the public comment period on proposed new lease sales for offshore wind in the New York Bight, a step that could delay the process for up to six months.
In a letter to Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, the governor requested more time (180 days) because the areas in New York under consideration for wind-energy development include New Jersey’s main fishing grounds, including two that are closest to its coast.
The request, if granted, could slow recent steps taken by both states to expedite building offshore wind farms in waters near New York and New Jersey. All along the Eastern Seaboard, states are bidding to lure developers to build large wind farms off their coasts, a process that is becoming increasingly competitive.
New Jersey needs more time to adequately respond to the proposed lease sale, and more than a dozen issues raised by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in seeking comment from stakeholders, Murphy noted in his letter. New Jersey stakeholders have not yet been meaningfully involved in the process, including the state’s large and valuable commercial fishing industry.


Productive coexistence

“While New Jersey believes that wind energy and the fishing industry can coexist productively, it is critical that potential conflicts from these multiple uses be identified and planned for early in the process,’’ Murphy’s letter said.
In the letter, the governor cited his strong support for offshore wind, including setting a goal of 3,500 megawatts of capacity for the state by 2030. “We look forward to working cooperatively with BOEM and our New York neighbors to achieve this ambitious goal,’’ Murphy said.

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Enviros want governor to block No. Jersey frack-gas plant


Michael Hill reports for NJTV News:

Environmentalists oppose the North Bergen Liberty Generating Plant. A subsidiary of Mitsubishi wants to build the fracked gas-fired plant in New Jersey and have its electricity power Manhattan. Critics say that’s incompatible with candidate and Gov. Phil Murphy’s pledge.
“I remain and we remain committed to a new energy master plan, one that we have not had in a long time in this state that would see our state achieve 100 percent clean energy by the year 2050,” Murphy said last December.
Environmentalists feel empowered by the governor’s words and on Tuesday made a big demand of the governor.
“Today we’re calling on Gov. Murphy to sign an executive order putting a moratorium on all new power plants that are from fossil fuels,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
Murphy replied to the plan on Tuesday, saying, “I always scratch my head with something that is being done here that some other state will benefit from, but beyond that I don’t an opinion.”

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Lowest property towns taxes in each of N.J.’s 21 counties

Atlantic County sceneSamantha Marcus reports for NJ.com:
New Jersey’s average property taxes may
have hit a new record high last year, but you can find plenty of property tax
bargains in all of of New Jersey’s 21 counties.
So which towns have the lowest property taxes in your county, as well as
all the others? We’ve charted 63 towns where homeowners are lucky enough to
have some of the lowest tax bills in New Jersey.
You can find at least three towns where the property taxes are lower
than the state average of $8,690 in 20 of the 21 counties. The other county —
Passaic — has two towns in that category.
And some counties have towns where the property taxes are but a fraction
of the state average. A low property tax bill for Cumberland County is quite
different than a low tax bill for Passaic County.
See for yourself below, as we go county-by-county to find
the lowest average tax bills, based on data from the state Department of
Community Affairs.

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