Briefs
Unemployment benefits, intended to offset pandemic impact, to end this weekend
Federal unemployment benefits expanded during the coronavirus pandemic will expire Saturday in New Jersey. The benefits, which supplemented regular unemployment assistance and were extended to those who typically were ineligible, were established under the federal CARES Act in March 2020 and renewed twice, in December 2020 and again in March. Programs that will expire are: […]
Courts begin to hear long-stalled eviction cases
New Jersey’s eviction moratorium for middle-income renters ended Wednesday, with courts starting to hear some of the 83,800-plus residential eviction cases landlords have filed since the start of the pandemic. But there is no tidal wave of people losing their homes and getting booted onto the street. Yet. Instead, the process started with settlement conferences. […]
Newark ordered to negotiate vaccine mandate provisions with unions
Newark is permitted to mandate its employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, but the city must negotiate portions of the order with unions that filed to block the directive, per a Public Employment Relations Commission decision released Wednesday. The decision is a partial win for police and firefighter unions, who along with other Newark municipal worker unions […]
Judges deny school districts’ appeal for changes to funding formula
A three-judge panel shot down an appeal lodged by school boards in three shore counties seeking to tweak the school funding formula lawmakers approved in 2018. The school boards — including those in Brick, Jackson, Freehold, and others — sought to regain state aid lost under the funding formula changes. But the appellate panel denied the […]
New Jersey could start administering vaccine boosters in September
New Jersey could begin administering booster shots of the two-dose Pfizer and Modern COVID-19 vaccines on Sept. 20, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday. The booster push will see New Jersey re-open its vaccine megasites, which closed in June and July as health officials turned more of their attention to localized vaccination efforts. How many individuals […]
State won’t extend expiring unemployment benefits, Murphy says
Roughly half-a-million jobless New Jerseyans will see their unemployment benefits lapse next week, and the state doesn’t plan to extend them, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday. The so-called unemployment cliff comes with the Sept. 6 expiration of federal unemployment benefits that have provided residents with hundreds of dollars each week during the pandemic. “We recognize […]
Criminal charges for Passaic surrogate over estate dispute involving friend
This story was updated with comment from an attorney for Toledo at 4:03 p.m. on Aug. 27. State authorities lodged a criminal charge against Passaic County Surrogate Bernice Toledo claiming she falsified a judgement during an estate dispute to benefit a personal friend. Toledo, 51, a Democrat, faces a single count of fourth-degree falsifying or […]
Groups demand protections for transgender inmates in county jails
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Garden State Equality on Thursday urged officials running jails in New Jersey’s 21 counties to house inmates by their gender identity, not the gender they were assigned at birth. The civil rights groups, which made their plea in a letter to the state’s jail wardens, noted […]
Judiciary plan calls for demographic data collection, better access to court records
The New Jersey Supreme Court unveiled its plan for reducing bias in the state’s judiciary branch on Wednesday. The nine-point plan includes a call for partnerships between lawmakers, state agencies, and jurists to increase job opportunities and training for drug court participants and those on probation, plus mandatory bias training for all court employees. “The […]
Gas tax to drop 8.3 cents in first automatic decline
New Jersey’s gas tax rate will fall for the first time since a 2016 law coupled the rate to collections, the state Treasury announced Tuesday. The total tax on gasoline will decline by 8.3 cents, falling from 50.6 cents to 42.4 cents per gallon after new projections showed fuel consumption for the current fiscal year […]
NYC congestion tax delay gives commuters temporary reprieve
New Jerseysans who commute into Manhattan by car are getting a temporary reprieve from a new congestion tax that will hit motorists with a roughly $13 fee for driving below Central Park. The Metropolitan Transit Authority announced a potential two-year timeline to implement the long-stalled plan on Friday. New York officials blasted the MTA for the […]
Murphy won’t say if N.J. will extend extra unemployment benefits
As the expiration date for pandemic-related unemployment benefits looms for over 500,000 New Jerseyans still relying on the weekly payments, Gov. Phil Murphy won’t say whether the state plans on extending those benefits. “No news on the unemployment extension,” he said during his weekly coronavirus press briefing Monday. The state Department of Labor also declined […]