“New York City wants this because they want cash in their pockets,” Menendez said. “We’re going to keep fighting the cash-grabbing MTA.”
The congestion tax shifts money from the Port Authority to the MTA, Menendez said, which could threaten the Port Authority’s ability to improve the PATH service and add more riders.
New York’s plan also includes no expansion of New York City subway’s seven line to Secaucus Junction, a proposed solution that would provide a commuting alternative and get cars off the road, Menendez said.
Gottheimer, who co-chairs the Congressional Anti-Congestion Tax Caucus, called the tax plan “absurd” and “anti-environment.” He said a full environmental study should be done and he intends to submit a comment during the 30-day review period demanding the Biden administration reconsider the decision.
The MTA hasn’t determined how much to charge drivers, but options include fares ranging from $9 to $23 for passenger vehicles.
Gottheimer has introduced legislation in the meantime intended to aid commuters, which includes laborers, nurses and restaurant workers who can’t afford the added costs.
“It’s not right to suddenly drop a $23 dollar-a-day, or $5,000-a-year bill, on top of the $17 dollars they pay to enter this tunnel every day, not including gas or nearly $35 dollars to park,” Gottheimer said.
The environmental assessment of the plan found that the congestion tax, if implemented this year, would increase pollutants in the Bronx, Staten Island, Nassau and Bergen Counties. It also showed there would be increases in particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide in Bergen County this year.
“New York’s congestion pricing plan stands to push traffic and pollution to our communities,” Menendez said. “While New York is funding environmental mitigation in the Bronx, they refuse to do so for our communities.”
The MTA plans to spend $130 million in revenue to mitigate environmental impacts in New York, but will not do so in New Jersey.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called the Biden administration’s approval of the plan “unfair and ill-advised.” Murphy said his administration is looking into legal options to fight the plan.
“Everyone in the region deserves access to more reliable mass transit, but placing an unjustified financial burden on the backs of hardworking New Jersey commuters is wrong,” Murphy said in a statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
During oral arguments in March, justices were clearly willing to allow New Jersey to exit the deal; they were only trying to figure out how to do so without creating precedent that might disrupt other multistate deals, like those setting boundaries and setting water rights.
In a short, 11-page ruling, Kavanaugh distinguishes this deal, known as a compact, from such water rights cases and ruled “it would not make much sense to conclude that each State implicitly conferred on the other a perpetual veto of withdrawal” in this deal.
After the oral arguments, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, had their staffs start meeting to figure out how to maintain ongoing investigations, enforcement actions and operations in anticipated of a ruling in New Jersey’s favor.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“I’m launching my campaign now because I believe that New Jersey can become an even better place for all of us, and I will be sharing my vision over the coming months for how we will make it happen,” he added. “I’ve never backed down from a fight before, and I’m ready to work hard for all the people of our great state to deliver the results New Jersey deserves.”
An accompanying announcement video opens with images of the World Trade Center attack on 9/11 and recounts how Fulop left his job as an analyst for Goldman Sachs to join the Marines, and it includes interviews with several veterans Fulop served with. It then highlights his policies in Jersey City, like paid sick leave requirements for many businesses and a $15 minimum wage for city workers.
Jersey City, which is directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, has seen a huge development boom under Fulop. Fulop boasted of helping attract major developments more inland from the city’s waterfront, which has seen periodic post-industrial building booms since the 1980s.
In his State of the City speech last month, Fulop highlighted the city’s efforts to make healthy food available in poor neighborhoods, a city program to resettle refugees, and deals that require developers to include affordable housing units in their projects. He’s also presided over an expansion of bike lanes.
Fulop’s candidacy itself is far from a surprise. He announced he would not seek reelection as mayor in January in what was widely viewed as a pre-gubernatorial announcement.
But it is a surprise that he announced his candidacy two years before the Democratic primary. Prospective candidates often hold off on formally announcing their candidacies because, if they accept public financing as most do, they’re be limited to $7.3 million ahead of the primary. However, a super PAC that’s run by his wife’s business partner called Coalition for Progress, which is all but officially considered Fulop’s, has $6.2 million in the bank.
Fulop spokesperson Phil Swibinski said that he does plan to pursue public financing.
Fulop, who grew up in Edison and whose parents owned a deli in Newark, was on the precipice of running for governor in 2017. He traveled the state to meet with power brokers, but suddenly backed off in the fall of 2016 to endorse Murphy, who will not be able to seek reelection due to term limits.
Fulop had been considered a top-tier candidate, and his sudden withdrawal from the race alienated and mystified some political allies at the time while boxing out then-Senate President Steve Sweeney, who was also expected to run.
Other frequently-mentioned potential Democratic candidates for governor in 2025 include Sweeney, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer.
Former 2021 gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has also said he intends to run again, though he’s likely to face other Republicans for the nomination.
Fulop’s political career began as a no-hope candidate for Congress in the Democratic primary against then-U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, who at the time was feuding with then-Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham, who recruited Fulop. Though Fulop lost that race badly, he shocked the city’s political establishment in 2005 by winning a council seat in the city’s quickly-gentrifying Ward E.
Fulop became a critic of the city’s Democratic machine, annoying then-Mayor Jerramiah Healy and gaining some prominence as a critic of Hudson County’s all-too-frequent corruption scandals. But after defeating Healy in 2013, Fulop took the reins of the political machine and became the target of critics who questioned his ethics.
Coalition for Progress, which was founded ahead of Fulop’s expected 2017 gubernatorial run, faced several complaints from ethics watchdog groups over a $1 million donation it received from a Delaware trust that appeared designed to hide the donor’s identity. The trust was formed on December 23, 2015 and made the donation the following day.
Seven months later, in an amended campaign finance report, the super PAC revealed the donor to be Vivek Garipalli, then the owner of the for-profit hospital chain CarePoint Health, which owns a hospital in Jersey City that Fulop once recommended for an ambulance contract.
In 2014, Fulop’s then-chief of staff, Muhammed Akil, was caught on tape in what sounded like an effort to try to steer a city energy consulting contract to a specific company, circumventing a public bidding process.
“What I don’t like about this, see, f—ing straight up this is the kind of s— where motherf—ers go to jail,” Akil said on the recording, which POLITICO obtained in 2017. Fulop heard the recording, according to a deposition, but Akil remained his chief of staff for nearly a year after and even after it became public, Fulop did not completely cut ties with Akil.
Fulop’s future opponents will likely raise some of those controversies, but so far they’re not commenting.
“OK,” Sweeney, who frequently butted heads with Fulop in the lead-up to the 2017 gubernatorial election, said in a phone interview when asked about Fulop’s candidacy. “That’s not really a shock, is it?
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
After a year of waiting, Nadia Kahf, a family law and immigration attorney from Wayne, has become the first headscarf-wearing woman to serve as a state Superior Court judge in the Passaic County, United States (US) of New Jersey.
After being appointed to her new position in New Jersey, Kahf took an oath on Tuesday, March 21, by pressing her hand on the Holy Quran inherited from her grandmother.
‘New Jersey’nin ilk başörtülü hakimi’ haberi Türkiye’de gündem oldu
Avukat Nadia Kahf’ın atanacağını 1 yıl önce paylaşmıştık
Uzun bir süreç sonrasında 21 Mart Salı günü resmen başladı
1800’lerden kalma büyük annesinden miras el yazması Kuran-ı Kerim’e el basarak yemin etti 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/P6olwDg2ts
“I am proud to represent the Muslim and Arab communities in New Jersey in the United States (US). I want the younger generation to see that they can practice their religion without fear that they can be who they are. Diversity is our strength, it is not our weakness,” Nadia said during a sworn-in ceremony.
Watch the video below
American attorney Nadia Kahf, appointed to the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey, became the first hijab-wearing judge on the bench.
Kahf’s nomination, which came a year ago but was delayed by Senator Kristen Corrado. She was confirmed earlier this month.
Know more about Nadia Kahf
Nadia Kahf immigrated to the United States (US) from Syria when she was 2-year-old.
She has been working in the country’s Islamic foundations for a long time.
Since 2003, she has been a member of the board of directors for the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights organization where she now serves as chair of the board.
Kahf serves as president of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, one of the state’s largest mosques.
She is also legal counsel for Wafa House, a nonprofit domestic violence and social service agency based in Clifton.
In 2020, New Jersey’s Insider newspaper ranked her among the top Muslims for influence in academia and business, government, law and politics, religion, social justice, and more.
Nadia is not the first Muslim judge
Kahf became the first state judge in the US to wear a headscarf, but she is not the first Muslim judge.
There are Muslim women judges working in different parts of the United States.
Nadia Kahf will be the third Muslim woman to serve on the New Jersey Supreme Court, which hears both criminal and civil cases.
Sharifa Salaam serves as Supreme Court justice in Essex and Kalimah Ahmad in Hudson.
With this achievement, Kahf follows in the footsteps of other Muslim women who have achieved success in the legal field.
In June 2022, Laila Ikram made history by taking the bench as the first female Muslim judge in the state of Arizona.
In January 2023, US President Joe Biden selected eight judicial candidates, including Nusrat Chaudhry who will be the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge.
At another point, the chief justice seemed to reverse course and asked how easy it would truly be to divide up the Waterfront Commission’s buildings, bank accounts and investigations. Roberts wondered if it made sense to let New Jersey “just walk away.”
But the chief justice’s question was one of the few skeptical questions the justices had for New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum or assistant to federal solicitor general Austin Raynor.
The two states created the Waterfront Commission in 1953 to go after mobs and corrupt labor practices at the New York-New Jersey container port. The agreement between the two states, known as a compact, lacks language on what happens when either side wants to leave the commission, which New Jersey now wants to do. Disputes between states head straight to the high court.
The shipping industry, the powerful union that represents dock workers and nearly every New Jersey politician — including current Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy — all argue the commission has outlived its useful life by choking off harbor business and causing labor shortages. They argue the commission does more to keep alive old and outdated stereotypes of violent thuggery than it does to actually clean up the port.
New York has warned New Jersey is heading down a path that would invite violence and enable corruption by threatening to return the waterfront to the dark ways of the past and would worsen conditions at the port, creating yet another crisis in the American supply chain.
What the justices asked
In other questions Wednesday, the justices mostly seemed to be checking to see how they could side with New Jersey without affecting multistate deals setting boundary lines or dividing up water rights.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said water rights were like property rights — you can’t sell a house then take it back — and those disputes could be distinguished from New Jersey and New York’s dispute, which involves continuing performance by each state of certain tasks, like licensing workers.
She and other justices kept turning back to basics of contract law: Unless an agreement says how it will end, one party can end it.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor kept saying she wanted to find the “simplest rule” for dealing with such disputes and said it “doesn’t make any sense” to assume one state should be able to hold another to an agreement like this forever.
Justice Samuel Alito likewise wondered what an “extraordinary thing” it would be to allow one state to lock another into an agreement like this against the other state’s will.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also wondered if simple rules of basic contract law would allow the court to side with New Jersey without creating complications in other cases that reach the court — especially water rights cases, some of which have consumed the court’s attention for decades.
New York’s Vale said the commission remains vital and the states even modified the agreement in 2006, an indication they believed the problems it was meant to solve — creating a fair way to license workers and keep crime off the waterfront — remained a problem.
The case reached the court last spring, just as New Jersey was finalizing long-awaited plans to exit the commission thanks to a law former Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed on his last day in office after having vetoed a previous version of it. Under the 2018 law, the state would quit the commission and put the New Jersey State Police in charge of policing the waterfront.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul surprised Murphy when she decided to sue to save the commission. Not only that, but New York began a bitter fight that drew on history — some would say stereotypes — of organized crime in New Jersey.
However, the mob was barely mentioned Wednesday and debates about how much crime there is doesn’t seem likely to play into the justices’ ultimate decision. Unlike other cases, where facts are in dispute, the court didn’t appoint a special master to try to get to the bottom of that argument. Instead, the justices are expected to decide by interpreting the decades-old agreement that formed the commission.
This isn’t the first time the high court has been asked to consider the issue. A previous case in lower courts held up New Jersey’s exit for several years.
In late 2021, the court handed New Jersey a victory by declining to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that sided with New Jersey’s argument that the commission didn’t have standing to sue the state to save itself. At the time, New York was still on the sidelines but everyone agreed New York would have standing if it wanted to take New Jersey to court. So the court’s decision not to hear the previous case intensified the standoff between New York and New Jersey that led to the case justices now must decide.
A ruling is expected by the end of the court’s term in June.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Murphy plans to start New Jersey on the path pioneered by California with a requirement that all new cars sold in the state have zero emissions by 2035.
The governor is also directing the state Board of Public Utilities to open a proceeding on “the future of the natural gas utility.” It would be similar to other states looking for an orderly way to reduce the burning of natural gas.
“These bold targets and carefully crafted initiatives signal our unequivocal commitment to swift and concrete climate action today,” Murphy will say, according to prepared remarks of the speech. “We’ve turned our vision for a greener tomorrow into a responsible and actionable roadmap to guide us, and it’s through that pragmatic, evidence-based approach that we will ultimately arrive at our destination.”
The governor will also:
— Set a target to electrify 400,000 residential buildings and 20,000 commercial buildings by 2030, which generally means retrofitting them to switch from natural gas to electric heat.
— Spend $70 million from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to help companies and local governments buy electric medium and heavy duty trucks, a category that includes school buses, semi-trucks and heavy duty loaders.
— Move forward on the next phase of climate changed-related rules, particularly ones related to flooding known as the “resilient environments and landscapes” or REAL.
The governor’s new 100 percent clean energy by 2035 plan is similar to a bill from Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), chair of the state Senate Environment and Energy Committee, that began circulating widely a few weeks ago. While the governor can set his own target without legislation, the administration plans to keep working with Smith on the bill.
A clean energy law might ultimately have more staying power in a state where the governor’s office tends to go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.
Many of the goals that were once nearly unthinkable and are now fast approaching. But they also stretch well beyond the time that Murphy, a two-term governor, has left in office.
Whether the announcements will be enough to revive the governor’s flagging reputation among environmentalists remains to be seen. In 2017, he campaigned on a 100 percent clean energy by 2050 goal. In the years since, environmental activists in the state have questioned his commitment and, last month, one prominent group said they no longer considered him America’s “greenest governor.”
Just a few weeks ago, the state changed its timeline for redoing its Clean Energy Master Plan, delaying it until 2024 because of the time needed for a more robust planning process. Now, though, Murphy is moving ahead on more aggressive targets, like those outlined by Smith’s bill.
Even though success of the 2035 goals will can’t be measured for years, the administration has compared energy policy to a moving ship. If someone doesn’t put the state on a clean energy course, it may never get there.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
It’s impossible to predict how many trials these suspensions will affect, said Pete McAleer, a spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the Courts. While many trials will face indefinite delays, the courts will still address applications for child support, custody and visitation, McAleer said.
There are currently 69 vacancies throughout the trial courts, Rabner said, more than one out of every six positions statewide. The court system has operated with an average of more than 50 vacancies for the past three years.
“That imposes heightened responsibilities on sitting judges who handle thousands of proceedings and motions each month,” Rabner said. “That situation, along with the effects of the COVID crisis, has contributed to delays in handling individual cases and substantial increases in backlog.”
There are five vacancies out of a total of 20 judicial positions in Vicinage 13 and nine vacancies out of 28 positions in Vicinage 15.
The judiciary prioritizes cases that concern an individual’s liberty, like criminal or juvenile delinquency matters, and cases that present potential emergencies such as domestic violence complaints.
“There are simply not enough judges at this time to conduct civil and matrimonial trials in either vicinage,” Rabner said. “Without additional relief, we may well face the same situation in other vicinages in the near future.”
Jeralyn Lawrence, president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, said the ongoing situation has reached crisis levels. “The court does not operate properly with more than 25 to 30 vacancies,” she said in an interview with POLITICO. “The executive and legislative branches have known about this for months and they’ve done nothing.”
Natalie Hamilton, a spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy, said the administration is working to fill the vacancies. “Governor Murphy has remained committed to ensuring vacancies in New Jersey’s courts are filled by highly qualified individuals,” she said. “Since he took office in 2018, 101 judges have been nominated and confirmed, including 45 in the 2022 calendar year.”
Lawrence said the governor is not moving quickly enough.
“The judiciary can’t solve this problem,” Lawrence said. “There’s only two branches of government that can solve this problem. Our governor and our legislature cannot figure out who to put on the bench.”
“Time is of the essence, and it has been of the essence,” Lawrence said. “They shouldn’t work on anything else other than this.”
There is no shortage of qualified candidates for the vacancies, Lawrence added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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