Red Bank Councilman and NJ Turnpike Authority Treasurer Michael Dupont told Red Bank Green that he is still the Borough Attorney in Sayreville and that he’s humbled that he got the appointment.
Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O’Brien saysthat Brian Nelson is the Borough Attorney for the duration of the temporary 30 day appointment that O’Brien made on February 14th. The Sayreville mayor intends to appoint Nelson for the remainder of the year.
O’Brien also said that the reported savings of $115 thousand that Sayreville taxpayers would enjoy due to DuPont’s appointment at $7500 per month, compared to the prior attorney’s $19,000 per month fee is exaggerated because DuPont’s fee does not include the costs of litigation. Nelson’s bid of $12,500 per month does include litigation.
O’Brien said that DuPont was ineligible to be appointed because his pay to pay paperwork was not submitted on time. DuPont told RedBankGreen that his paper work was fine and that he personally reviewed it.
MMM has calls into DuPont and Nelson. More to follow as we pull of the threads of this tangled web.
Achieves New Normal in Budgeting By Maintaining Fiscal Discipline and Funding Key Priorities for New Jerseyans
Trenton, NJ – Advancing his vision for a New Normal in state budgeting, Governor Chris Christie today presented a $29.4 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2012 that cuts real spending for a second consecutive year. The Governor’s Budget proposal includes $200 million in focused tax cuts, provides additional property tax relief, increases school aid and funds a reformed state pension system, while preserving or increasing funding to protect our state’s most vulnerable citizens. The Fiscal Year 2012 Budget marks a departure from the Trenton tradition of budgeting to meet deficit projections that embrace wish-list spending by legislators and assume continuous funding increases that irresponsibly ignore actual revenue sources and the fiscal health of the state.
The Governor’s Budget – which reduces real spending by 2.6 percent from the current fiscal year – hits the reset button on the state budgeting process and starts with the refreshing assumption that budgeting and spending must be reality-based and zero-based. The New Normal means developing a bottom-up approach – establishing priorities and funding them based on revenue that is actually available and predictable versus the old approach of assuming every line item and program will automatically be funded at the same or higher level than prior years.
“The old way of budgeting and thinking must be stricken from our collective minds if we are to successfully emerge from this fiscal crisis with permanently reformed budgeting and spending habits,” Governor Chris Christie said. “This is a new paradigm for state government – a New Normal – that cuts and spends responsibly, incentivizes our local governments to do better with what our taxpayers entrust to them, and causes businesses to feel welcome and want to stay and expand or relocate to our state.”
The Governor’s Budget proposal adheres to necessary spending and budgeting discipline, but also meets New Jersey’s most vital spending priorities. Among those priorities in the budget:
·Increases education aid to every school district in New Jersey by a total of $250 million;
·Fulfills the statutory commitment to make a $506 million payment to a reformed state pension fund, representing the first funding to the defined benefit plans since fiscal year 2009;
·Provides $200 million in job-creating, strategic tax cuts that are responsible and sustainable;
·Doubles funding for the Homestead Rebate to provide direct property tax relief in the form of a property tax credit under the newly named Homestead Benefit program;
·Protects municipal aid and keeps funding at fiscal year 2011 levels to help towns meet the new 2 percent property tax cap (while decreasing by 10 percent the category of Special Transitional Aid to cities, in keeping with the Governor’s pledge to end cities’ reliance on the aid as they adopt best-practices budgeting to improve fiscal and management reforms); and
·Increases and secures New Jersey hospital funding by a total of $20 million, and increases funding for student financial aid by the same amount.
The Governor’s Budget takes all possible steps to maintain the safety net for New Jersey’s most vulnerable and at-need individuals and families. From prescription drug aid for seniors to helping low-income tenants stay in their homes, the Governor’s Budget includes billions of dollars and:
·Preserves critical spending and fully funds the fiscal year 2011 increases to the Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled (PAAD) and Senior Gold Prescription Assistance Programs without increases in co-pays or eligibility – keeping it one of the most generous such benefit programs in the nation;
·Allocates $20.4 million to help the developmentally disabled lead richer, happier lives through new community placement and services, and funds day programs and other services; similarly, the budget continues and expands funding for the requirement that the state expand the number of residential and community settings for New Jersey’s mentally ill;
·Preserves the current level of support for higher education, after years of cuts, while increasing student aid programs by $20 million and providing $15 million for capital improvements at community colleges;
·Provides resources to keep 4,300 low-income citizens in their homes and apartments, including $25 million from the New Jersey Affordable Housing Agency Trust Fund and $9 million from the Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency; and
·Avoids an increase in NJ Transit fares and expands bus service to select growth markets.
The damage caused by years of fiscal mismanagement, coupled with the lingering effects of the national recession, will continue to restrain state spending for years to come. The reality is that the New Normal of the current economic and fiscal climate necessitates more painful choices in how the state allocates finite taxpayer dollars. Facing up to those realities, the proposed budget continues on the path of making difficult, often painful choices in nearly every department. Funding in even worthwhile, popular programs is reduced or eliminated in order to fund priorities.
Governor Christie will continue to insist that the shared sacrifice be spread among state employees as well, including in payment of a fair share of medical costs. By increasing co-payments and premiums to levels still below what federal employees pay, the state will save $323 million that will be used to pay for other critically important programs – and prevent increases in some of the highest sales, income and property taxes in the nation.
Finally, to pave the way for the best possible outcome for our state and its people as we deal with the New Normal and emerge from recession, the Governor intends to better position our businesses and attract new ones with tax cuts, reform and incentives to spur job growth and business expansion. To that end, he proposes a comprehensive but phased-in program of $2.5 billion in job-creation incentives over the next five years. As part of the program, Governor Christie is proposing for Fiscal 2012 tax cuts and reforms resulting in approximately $200 million in savings for businesses.
The package outlined by the Governor increases the state’s competitiveness in a responsible and sustainable manner by providing critical tax reform and incentives across a variety of tax-policy areas, including: loss carry-forward relief for small businesses, a reduction of the S-corporation minimum tax, increasing the credit allowed for research and development investments, exemptions for business software technology reinvestment, increasing funding for economic development programs, and the phasing-out of the Technology Energy Facility Assessment to provide needed relief from New Jersey’s already-high energy costs.
Governor Christie has committed to only putting in place tax cuts and incentives that are paid for within the context of a Constitutionally-balanced state budget. By providing for a phase-in of the program, the fiscal impact rises with the expected expansion of the state’s economy while minimizing the impact on the state budget each year.
The budget proposal, a representation of the Governor’s commitment to maintain fiscal discipline, also outlines a bold reform agenda to take on the big issues facing New Jersey, including the Governor’s comprehensive reform plans to restore fiscal sanity to out-of-control pension and health benefits systems, make 2011 the Year of Education Reform to bring the opportunity of a high-quality education to every child, and the pro-growth, responsible package of tax reforms and incentives to create Jersey Jobs and increase New Jersey’s competitiveness, as outlined above.
Wisconsin public employees will join their New Jersey comrades in Trenton on Friday to protest fiscal discipline, representative government, and the right to work.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Meany, the first president of the AFL-CIO, warned of the dangers of public employee collective bargaining. From Daniel DiSalvo’s The Trouble with Public Sector Unions:
The emergence of powerful public-sector unions was by no means inevitable. Prior to the 1950s, as labor lawyer Ida Klaus remarked in 1965, “the subject of labor relations in public employment could not have meant less to more people, both in and out of government.” To the extent that people thought about it, most politicians, labor leaders, economists, and judges opposed collective bargaining in the public sector. Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: “Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.” Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
In New Jersey, the unions run our governments on the state, county and municipal levels. Fortunately, Governor Chris Christie is fighting to correct some of the economic imbalances the unions have imposed upon the people with the cooperation of their lap dogs…previous governors and legislatures that the unions elected and shared the largess with. Yet Christie is fighting to only tame the beast while killing the beast is appropriate.
Examples of unions dictating government policy, spending and even risking public safety are so prevalent that we don’t even notice. The unions tyranny is so complete that we just surrender rather than fight.
A minor example is Christie choosing not to layoff government workers during the current budget cycle. Governor Corzine signed a no layoff contract with the unions just prior to his reelection campaign kickoff. Vice President Joe Biden told Corzine that he wouldn’t cross a union picket line to appear at Corzine’s event. Corzine caved to the unions demands and signed a deal that tied his successor’s hands.
Much more serious examples come from our cities of Newark and Camden. Both cities are in serious fiscal trouble. Both cities, already high crime areas, are experiencing increases in violent crime. In both cities unions forced police layoffs. The most senior and highest paid members of the police department got to keep their jobs while younger junior officers were let go. The younger officers are being recruited to join police departments in other states for less pay. The unions didn’t even give them the option of accepting less pay to keep working at home. Our leaders, the governor and the cities mayors accepted this situation because they had no choice.
The police situation in Newark and Camden is insane. It is not government of the people, by the people and for the people. It is government of the unions, by the unions and for the unions.
Unions, and their lap dog lawmakers have designed a system that trumps the economic law of supply and demand. There is a huge supply of labor available. Millions of those people are getting by with checks from the government. The government can’t put these people to work, as police officers or in other functions, because of union rules and contracts. This situation is insane. We are living it.
This is not a system that protects the middle class, as the unions are protesting. This is a system that rewards the few at the expense of, and literally to the detriment to the safety of us, the many.
Is there any doubt that Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Camden Mayor Dana Reed would hire as many police officers as they could and pay them the wages they could afford if “the system” allowed them to? Is there any doubt that those jobs would be filled and that there would be a waiting list to fill vacancies? I think not.
Newark and Camden are extreme but real examples of unions controlling our government and public safety. There are less extreme but just as real examples all over New Jersey. Our elected leaders throughout the state on all levels of government are constrained primarily by union contracts and civil service rules in their efforts to reform their jurisdictions and deliver government services efficiently.
It is insanity and we are living it. It is tyranny and we are subject to it.
That’s a shame because public employee unions are as serious a threat to Americans’ freedom as is radical Islam. Maybe more so.
In many states throughout the union, including New Jersey, public employee unions have more power and influence over government policy, operations and spending than our elected representatives. From our governor down to the councilman and school board member, elected office holders ability to manage and govern their jurisdictions are constrained by laws and contracts that protect employees from the public will.
Walker’s proposal in Wisconsin to remove unions ability to negotiate for pensions and benefits and Governor Christie’s reform agenda in New Jersey are considered bold because over the last 50 years unions have systematically and gradually taken over our governments. Their political power was extreme and unchecked. Before Christie took on the NJEA over the last year and thrived, no politician dared take on such a powerful special interest. Sure there where those who tried, but you don’t remember who they are and neither do I, because the unions destroyed them. Christie, and now apparently Walker, could be the right men at the right time to lead America back to a truly representative form of government in the States.
Yet, as bold and radical as the governors seem in the context of the last 50 years of growing union power, their proposals are relatively modest. Far from really “turning Trenton(or Madison) upside down” or doing “big things” Christie and Walker are modestly tinkering with the existing systems.
Christie has created a big storm, in part because of his aggressive style. But what he’s proposed is not that controversial. It leaves intact the entire collective bargaining structure. Yes, he would impose short-term pain, but the Walker plan goes to the root of the problem.
Walker’s plan might go to the root of the problem, but it only exposes the root, it doesn’t cut it:
Q. Is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker really proposing to end collective bargaining?
A. Not exactly. He’ll retain it for police, firefighters and state troopers. But he is proposing a drastic rollback for teachers and other public employees. They will retain the right to bargain over wages, but not benefits.
Politically, Christie’s success over the last year and Walker’s anticipated success could well be due to the moderateness of their proposals being sold to the public with bold rhetoric. Christie took on the NJEA last year by calling for wage freezes and health care contributions of only 1.5% of teacher salaries in order to save jobs. The union looked petty in their vocal opposition and the public sided with the Governor by overwhelmingly rejecting school budgets at the ballot boxes. The public continues to support Christie’s agenda and now the debate in Trenton is over how much spending to cut, not whether to cut. That’s a big change, but it is not systematic change.
But systematic change was not politically possible a year ago. It is becoming possible, but it won’t be swift. The unions took over our governments incrementally over a period of a half century. We, the people, did not notice it happening for the most part. Now that the public is waking up to the relative largess of public employee compensation and benefits, systematic change becomes increasingly possible, but it will have to be accomplished incrementally.
DiSalvo makes the case why public employee unions must be broken in his National Affairs article published last fall. Every political leader should take the time to read the article.
On Monday while the Red Bank Council was discussing whether or not to change their meeting dates to accommodate Councilman Michael DuPont’s $90K part time job as the Borough Attorney of Sayreville, there was real drama in the the Middlesex County town over DuPont’s appointment.
Greater Media’s Suburban newspaper has the story of what happened in Sayreville, including the Mayor and some Council members walking out of their meeting over DuPont’s appointment.
Lots more dots to connect and questions to ask. Stay tuned.
WALL TOWNSHIP – Wall Township Committeeman and former Mayor George K. Newberry announced that he is seeking the Republican nomination for Monmouth County Freeholder.
“Being born and growing up in Monmouth County, I know first-hand what a tremendous jewel Monmouth County is. It is with that value in my heart for this County that I announce my candidacy for Freeholder,” he says.
“I believe I demonstrated as Mayor and as a Wall Township Committee member that I have the experience, knowledge and values to be an effective member of our Freeholder team, and I ask for the support of my party to place my name on the ballot,” he adds.
Newberry says that thanks to many decades of Republican leadership, Monmouth County is envied for having a high bond rating, low county taxes and the finest parks, recreational programs and library services. He says he plans to continue on the strong foundation laid by previous administrations and use his many years of business experience overseeing multi-million dollar budgets and large commercial projects as a member of the Freeholder Board.
“Today’s tough economic times call for vision and experience in controlling spending and waste. In continually controlling costs the Freeholder Board must keep in their vision what Monmouth County has become and make sure the high level of regard many have for Monmouth will remain. I promised the people of Wall and will promise the residents and businesses of Monmouth County that as I work toward efficiencies in budgets and they look in the future at the town they know and the County they love those places will be no less than what they envision them to be today. As a senior project manager for a large contracting company, I have hands-on experience negotiating contracts, budgeting, managing a large staff and making a dollar go further,” he says.
Living in Wall Township and working for 25 years in the Bay Shore area, as well as assisting his Father, who until his recent passing, lived in Cream Ridge, has given Newberry a bird’s eye view of the County on a daily basis for many years.
Newberry, age 55, traces his heritage back at least five generations in Monmouth County. He has been married to his wife Jeanne, formerly of Rumson, for 35 years. They have a son, Bill, and daughter, Beth.
Mr. Newberry has been a member of the Wall Fire Company #1 since 1988 and served as Chief for five years. A member of Wall Kiwanis, he was named VFW Citizen of Merit in 1996 and Wall Township Citizen of the Year in 2005. He was the second gentleman to serve as president of his local PTA in his 120 year old elementary school and is a participant of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association as well as St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Ocean Grove. He has volunteered with The National Park service in West Orange and served as a member on the Wall Township planning board as well as rent stabilization board. Newberry has been a member of IBEW Local 400 electrical workers union since 1977.
Why would a politician/lawyer give up a $90,000 per year part time job to keep a $3200 a year part time job as a Red Bank councilman?
That’s what Red Bank Councilman Michael Dupont says he’s considering if his colleagues on the Red Bank governing body don’t go along with his request that they change their meeting dates so that he can continue “serving” as the Middlesex County Borough of Sayreville’s borough attorney for $7,500 per month, according to Red Bank Green. Sayreville and Red Bank have the council meetings on the same nights.
So why not ask Sayreville to change its meeting day?
“I did that,” DuPont tells redbankgreen. No go.
But he tells redbankgreenthat if the Red Bank meeting schedule remains unchanged, “I’d probably have to give up Sayreville.”
DuPont says the Sayreville gig pays a flat $7,500 per month for all legal services.
Could be he doesn’t need the money, but he tells RBG otherwise.
“I’m just trying to make a living, in addition to being a public servant,”
Couldn’t/shouldn’t Dupont have resolved this before taking the Sayreville job? He’s been a Red Bank Councilman a long time.
Maybe it has something to do with the pension system or health benefits.
Sayreville is home to Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Chairman of the Assembly Transportation, Public Works and Independent Authorities Committee. Wisniewski is also chairman of the NJ Democratic Party and Co-Chair of the Legislative Redistricting Commission.
Lot’s of questions and dots to connect. Especially if Dupont runs for Senate or Assembly as has been rumored.
Community college is seeking an 8.2 percent tuition increase
FREEHOLD, NJ – Freeholder Deputy Director John P. Curley today called for a public review of Brookdale Community College’s 2011-12 budget after learning about expensive memberships and a housing allowance for college President Peter F. Burnham.
“While I am appalled at the contract Dr. Burnham was given, I can’t help but wonder what other extravagances are in that budget,” said Curley, liaison to Brookdale. “It’s time we go through Brookdale’s budget line by line to see not just what the president is spending, but the other departments as well. A good hard look at waste in all public colleges and universities is long overdue.”
Last week, Brookdale’s Board of Trustees approved a $99,166,064 budget that contains an 8.2 percent tuition increase. Burnham blamed the need for the increase on a Board of Chosen Freeholders’ decision to reduce funding to Brookdale this year by $6 million. The freeholders had understood that Brookdale would be able to achieve the cut without resorting to a tuition increase.
Brookdale operates on a fiscal-year. Its budget, for 2011-12, must be approved by the freeholders when the Board of School Estimate meets sometime in March.
Burnham receives an annual salary of $216,000, but is allotted another $39,000 for annual memberships, an $18,000 housing allowance and a $27,000 vehicle.
“I will be voting no on Brookdale’s budget if it contains a tuition increase,” said Curley, who sits on the Brookdale Board of School Estimate. “It is offensive to me that Dr. Burnham is seeking a tuition increase or more county funding when taxpayers are subsidizing his housing costs and private club memberships. I don’t know how he can look students in the eyes and ask for more money.”
Curley noted that the freeholders are trying to get the county budget down to a point where there will be no tax increase this year. The county budget is separate from Brookdale’s budget.
“Freeholders and staff have been squeezing savings out of budgets in each of the last three years, and we are always looking for new revenue sources or alternate methods of paying for county services,” Curley said. “Brookdale, however, has chosen to raise tuition and blame the county for cutting its funding when the college is sitting on $13.8 million in surplus. It’s disgraceful.”
