It’s official: New Jersey government is shut down


The following story was filed at 12:32 this morning by The Record’s Dustin Racioppi, Nicholas Pugliese, Bob Jordan:

Gov. Chris Christie ordered the first state government shutdown in over a decade Friday night as he and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto remained deadlocked in budget negotiations, fighting over a plan to overhaul the state’s largest health insurer.

Christie’s executive order, declaring a state of emergency, closes non-essential services around the state.

“This order is necessary to maintain the protection, safety and well-being of the people of New Jersey while I attempt to convince the Legislature to send me a fiscally responsible budget that I can sign and re-open New Jersey’s government,” Christie said in a statement. “This was completely avoidable. But Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto needlessly stalled the budget process, forcing the closure of New Jersey government and inconveniencing everyone living in and visiting our state.”

Christie then called a special joint legislative session on Saturday. He had no plans to speak at the session, his office said.

“The governor has called the session not to give speeches but to try to work to convince the speaker to reopen the government that the speaker has closed tonight. The governor will be here early tomorrow to continue to work for the people of New Jersey,” spokesman Brian Murray said in a statement.

While lawmakers work toward an agreement in Trenton, people across New Jersey will be locked out of state parks and beaches, unable to renew their driver’s licenses and blocked from processing unemployment claims.

Lack of agreement in the final days of the fiscal year is nothing new in Trenton. But it was a surprising shift of circumstances that threatened to bring government to a halt, stunning even veterans of the State House. Many Democrats supported the budget agenda of Christie, a Republican, in order to see a spending plan they support signed into law and allow them to break for the summer and begin their legislative re-election campaigns.

But lawmakers appeared more likely to spend the days heading in to the Fourth of July weekend working toward an agreement that both sides could support. Christie — whose family planned to stay at Island Beach State Park, which will be closed in a shutdown — suggested earlier in the day that he was ready to call the 120-member Legislature back to Trenton this weekend.

“If my weekend’s going to be ruined and the people of New Jersey’s weekend is going to be impacted, you can bet for sure that I’m not giving 120 other people the weekend off,” Christie said.


Read the full story here


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As shutdown looms, Christie still railing against Horizon

Christie_hours_before_possible_state_shutdown_-_June_30_2017Anjalee Khemlani reports for NJBIZ:
The state has about six hours before it shuts down, but Gov. Chris Christie said he is still willing to work on passing a budget before midnight if the Legislature brings him a majority-approved compromise from both houses.
Christie blamed the budget impasse on Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Secaucus), who refuses to introduce a bill to reorganize Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey that Christie wants as part of a package deal for him to pass the $35.5 billion budget.
Christie called for a meeting with legislative leaders at 2 p.m., which included Prieto, state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-West Deptford), Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Wood-Ridge), and Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic), which ended after roughly 1.5 hours and no agreement.
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Learn how to preserve your farm in the Garden State


News release from the New Jersey Department of Agriculture:

Applications Sought for Farmland Preservation Program;
Interested Landowners Invited to Regional Meetings
Agriculture Secretary Douglas H. Fisher today announced that the State Agriculture Development Committee (SADC) is seeking applications for the Farmland Preservation Program and will hold a series of regional meetings for interested landowners who want to learn more about the process.
“Farmland preservation can help landowners meet certain financial goals while ensuring that the land will be permanently protected for agriculture,” said Secretary Fisher. “Anyone considering farmland preservation, now or in the future, is encouraged to attend one of the upcoming meetings to learn about the application, selection and preservation process.”
The meetings will be held at the following times and locations:
Cumberland County Regional Meeting
Wednesday, July 12, 7 p.m.
Cumberland County Administration Building
164 W. Broad Street, Bridgeton

Warren County Regional Meeting
Thursday, July 20, 6 p.m.

County Department of Land Preservation
500 Mount Pisgah Ave., Oxford
Hunterdon County Regional Meeting
Wednesday, July 26, 4 p.m.
Farmers and Businessman’s Picnic
Bob Ribbans Farm
101 Manners Road, Ringoes
Monmouth County Regional Meeting
Wednesday, August 9, 7 p.m.
Upper Freehold Township Municipal Building
314 Route 539, Cream Ridge
Salem County Regional Meeting
Wednesday, August 23, 6:30 p.m.
Salem County Agricultural Complex
51 Cheney Road, Woodstown

Interested landowners who are unable to attend one of the meetings may contact the SADC directly at (609) 984-2504 or sadc@ag.state.nj.us.

The SADC administers New Jersey’s Farmland Preservation Program and promotes innovative approaches to maintaining the viability of agriculture. More than 2,400 farms covering approximately 226,000 acres have been preserved to date under the program.

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Green program funding loses again under new Pa budget


Matt Stepp reports in PennFuture‘s blog: 

At the 11th hour, the House, Senate, and Governor’s office agreed to a General Appropriations budget for FY2017-18 that continues a funding crisis for environmental protection that started more than a decade ago. 
 
The chief environmental protection agencies – Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) – have been systematically underfunded. Under the auspices of tough budget times and belt tightening, key programs have been cut or eliminated. Staffing has been reduced, putting public health at even greater risk. Yet, the environmental challenges impacting Pennsylvania continue to grow.
 
For example, the Commonwealth’s water pollution challenges are growing in every corner of the state, yet the DEP’s Operational Budget, which supports water programs, was cut another 3.85 percent from the previous year. Since 2002-03, DEP’s Operations Budget is down nearly 34 percent. Growing Greener investments through the Environmental Stewardship Fund have decreased by 75 percent. And the budget deal cut the critical water commissions, including the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), by a whopping 50 percent.
 
There is truly only one way to describe the overall budget deal: it’s awful for Pennsylvania’s environment. It ensures that the biggest challenges facing our public lands, water, air, and climate will not be addressed for at least another year, and probably longer.
 
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Supreme Court defines ‘the parcel’ in regulatory takings

Gibbons attorneys Jacob J. Franchino and Cameron W. MacLeod write in the firm’s Real Property and Environmental Law Alert:
 On March 22, 2017, we blogged about the importance of the United States Supreme Court’s looming decision in Murr v. Wisconsin – a regulatory takings case that was poised to resolve a key question long left unanswered by the Court’s takings jurisprudence: how do you define the relevant parcel in determining a regulation’s impact on “the parcel as a whole?” On June 23, 2017, the Court issued its ruling, and in a 5-3 decision answered definitively that it depends.
Sometimes a regulation may go so far as to effect a “taking” of one’s property. In determining when a regulation has gone so far, the Court has previously instructed that reviewing courts must consider the regulation’s interference with property rights “in the parcel as a whole.” But the precise boundaries of “the parcel” are not always clear and, in many cases, may prove to be dispositive of whether there was a taking at all. The Court described the problem in Keystone Bituminous Coal Assn. v. DeBenedictis, explaining that because the regulatory takings analysis requires a comparison between the value taken from the property to the value which remains, “one of the critical questions is determining how to define the unit of property whose value is to furnish the denominator.”
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Warren Buffet on GOP healthcare bill: ‘Relief for the Rich’

[Editor’s note: For all you Republican congressmen still pretending that your reprehensible health care bill is anything but a massive tax break for the rich, please heed this message from Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world.]

Billionaire Warren Buffet

Rebecca Savransky reports today
in The Hill:

Warren Buffett is attacking the Republican Party’s plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare, claiming bills in the House and Senate would provide tax cuts for the rich.
Legislation passed by the House, he said, should be called “Relief for the Rich Act.”
Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the country, claimed his tax bill would have been reduced by $679,999, or 17 percent, from the House bill.
“There’s nothing ambiguous about that. I will be given a 17 percent tax cut. And the people it’s directed at are couples with $250,000 or more of income. You could entitle this, you know, Relief for the Rich Act or something,” he said in an interview with PBS.

Buffett made the comments are a question about the GOP plan to do away with an ObamaCare surcharge on people earning a higher income.
Buffett also suggested that the bill would give many lawmakers a tax cut.
The annual salaries for lawmakers are much lower, he noted, at around $174,000 a year.
“But most of them have — if you look at the disclosures, they have substantial other income,” he said.
“If they get to higher than $250,000, as a married couple, or $200,000 as a single person, they have given themselves a big, big tax cut, if they — if they voted for this.”
The Senate on Tuesday decided to delay action on their draft healthcare bill until after the July 4 recess following criticism from conservatives and centrists in the conference.

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