New Jersey
New York, New Jersey state police head to Puerto Rico to assist with Fiona recovery
![New York, New Jersey state police head to Puerto Rico to assist with Fiona recovery](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2022/09/24/dd642672-1624-433e-9fd1-69399516c508/thumbnail/1200x630/ed43f7e90348a1437ca65f50314fe062/52381170713-bd7ff8ab3b-o.jpg)
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The previous Hurricane Fiona has now been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.
It made landfall in Canada in a single day.
Saturday morning, a bunch of New York and New Jersey state police headed to Puerto Rico to help native authorities within the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona.
As CBS2’s Christina Fan stories, the primary wave of 75 New Jersey state law enforcement officials boarded buses after which a airplane for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. They had been joined within the mission by 50 members of the New York state police.
The flew out of John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport round 10 a.m. on a flight donated by JetBlue Airways.
Their arrival will present much-needed manpower because the island struggles to beat outages, flooding, and harm to infrastructure.
“It is a great supply of satisfaction for us right here that when catastrophe strikes across the nation, and even off the continental U.S., that they arrive to the New Jersey state police to deploy and help them,” Col. Patrick Callahan of the New Jersey State Police.
HURRICANE FIONA: assist these in want
The 2-week mission will focus totally on humanitarian assist. For a number of the troopers, the journey is deeply private. Many have households who dwell on the island first battered by Hurricane Maria in 2017, the earthquakes of 2020, and now Fiona.
“Overwhelming majority of the site visitors lights are out, so there might be troopers for site visitors lights [in Puerto Rico],” Callahan mentioned.
“New York State Troopers have all the time answered the decision for help wherever it is wanted, from Louisiana within the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to our first help mission in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. Our troopers might be on the bottom helping our companions with the Puerto Rico Police Division with public security and restoration efforts so long as essential,” mentioned New York State Police Superintendent Kevin Bruen.
The Hispanic Federation, based mostly out of Manhattan, can also be on the bottom offering emergency providers and important provides. Since Hurricane Maria hit 5 years in the past, the group has invested over $50 million in environmental sustainability, renewable vitality and housing. The storm proves extra work must be performed.
“If that rebuild of that electrical grid occurs instantly, and that it occurs in a approach that will probably be resilient and will probably be much less depending on fossil gas,” mentioned Hispanic Federation President and CEO Frankie Miranda.
After the primary group of troopers return dwelling, a second group might be despatched to proceed with reduction efforts.
For a lot of households and organizations with boots on the bottom, the scenes really feel like deja vu.
“Persons are having to begin over once more. A few of these are the identical individuals who had been impacted by Hurricane Maria and earthquakes, and they also have began over once more now a number of instances,” mentioned Charlotte Gossett Navarro, the Hispanic Federation’s Puerto Rico chief director.
“We wish to ship in giant quantities of meals and water, however due to the infrastructure harm to roads, there are some areas that we simply cannot ship vehicles into,” Navarro mentioned.
So that they discover other ways to get as shut as they will, then break down the distribution so as to ship them safely.
Those that cannot bodily assist in individual are discovering methods to assist financially. Saturday, the Queens Evening Market might be donating 33 % of its proceeds to reduction efforts.
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New Jersey
A closer look at what's in New Jersey's proposed $56.6 billion budget, from taxes to spending
![A closer look at what's in New Jersey's proposed $56.6 billion budget, from taxes to spending](https://whyy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/New_Jersey_Budget_gov-murphy-ap-2024-06-27.jpg)
What about property taxes?
New Jersey has among the nation’s highest property taxes, levied by local governments to finance services and schools. The state dedicates some income tax revenue to fund local governments, which helps keep property tax rates from growing even higher. This budget calls for increasing state K-12 funding to fully implement an aid formula ratified by the state Supreme Court, raising such aid to more than $11 billion, up nearly $1 billion from the current fiscal year. The budget also has about $2.5 billion for direct property tax relief, continuing programs introduced in 2022 and 2023 to help residents, renters and seniors. The average property tax amount in 2022, which is the most recently available information, is about $9,500, according to the state.
What else is in the budget?
Quite a bit, given it funds all aspects of state government, from the executive departments to public colleges and universities, to the Legislature itself, which this year passed a 67% pay raise for lawmakers, their first since 2002, which goes into effect in 2026. Overall, spending is up just over 4% compared with the current fiscal year budget.
It includes a number of expenditures — sometimes referred to as Christmas tree line items because they’re viewed as gifts for specific constituencies. They include funding for ending homelessness, helping people re-enter society from prison, fire departments, arts programs and one city’s effort to teach life skills through tennis.
Republican lawmakers said they barely had time to review the budget and lamented that they weren’t sure what all was in it. Even Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo said the document is too vast to read line by line, but he supports it overall.
“I could not take a test and be quizzed on every line item because it would take hours and hours and days and months,” Sarlo said. “I try to look at it in totality and that’s where I think we’re at.”
New Jersey
A closer look at what's in New Jersey's proposed $56.6 billion budget, from taxes to spending
TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey lawmakers are poised to send a $56.6 billion fiscal year 2025 budget to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy this week, hiking taxes on high-earning businesses and funding for many state services and programs.
The annual spending plan is expected to get enough votes in the Democrat-led Legislature on Friday to reach Murphy’s desk. The state constitution requires a balanced budget to be enacted by July 1.
Here’s a closer look at what’s in the budget, which would spend 4.2% more than the plan Murphy signed last year.
ARE THERE ANY NEW TAXES?
Yes. The budget calls for increasing the state’s corporation business tax on companies that make more than $10 million a year. The current 9% rate would climb to 11.5%. Business groups say that would give New Jersey the nation’s highest tax rate and punish the state’s best corporate citizens.
WHY ARE TAXES GOING UP?
The higher rate was first proposed by Murphy as part of his budget proposal early this year to help New Jersey Transit. He’s billing the levy as a corporate transit fee to help the beleaguered agency, which has regularly had to use capital funds to help finance projects.
Critics note that the revenue won’t go to transit until next year. The current budget keeps it in the general fund, so when the money goes to transit next year, whatever is being paid for now out of the general would need to be replenished or cut, those critics say.
ARE THERE OTHER TAX CHANGES?
Yes. The budget calls for ending a sales tax holiday on school supplies that had gone into effect around the start of the academic year. That cut was first introduced in 2022 when the Democrats who control state government aimed to show voters they were making the state more affordable. Lawmakers didn’t explain this cut when they unveiled the budget Wednesday, but the additional revenue could help balance the budget.
WHAT ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES?
New Jersey has among the nation’s highest property taxes, levied by local governments to finance services and schools. The state dedicates some income tax revenue to fund local governments, which helps keep property tax rates from growing even higher. This budget calls for increasing state K-12 funding to fully implement an aid formula ratified by the state Supreme Court, raising such aid to more than $11 billion, up nearly $1 billion from the current fiscal year. The budget also has about $2.5 billion for direct property tax relief, continuing programs introduced in 2022 and 2023 to help residents, renters and seniors. The average property tax amount in 2022, which is the most recently available information, is about $9,500, according to the state.
WHAT ELSE IS IN THE BUDGET?
Quite a bit, given it funds all aspects of state government, from the executive departments to public colleges and universities, to the Legislature itself, which this year passed a 67% pay raise for lawmakers, their first since 2002, which goes into effect in 2026. Overall, spending is up just over 4% compared with the current fiscal year budget.
It includes a number of expenditures — sometimes referred to as Christmas tree line items because they’re viewed as gifts for specific constituencies. They include funding for ending homelessness, helping people re-enter society from prison, fire departments, arts programs and one city’s effort to teach life skills through tennis.
Republican lawmakers said they barely had time to review the budget and lamented that they weren’t sure what all was in it. Even Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo said the document is too vast to read line by line, but he supports it overall.
“I could not take a test and be quizzed on every line item because it would take hours and hours and days and months,” Sarlo said. “I try to look at it in totality and that’s where I think we’re at.”
New Jersey
Salem City has finalized the sale of its water supply to New Jersey American Water
![Salem City has finalized the sale of its water supply to New Jersey American Water](https://whyy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-06-06-e-lee-salem-nj-water-privatization-sign.jpeg)
In fewer than six years, water companies across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware have acquired more than two dozen water and sewer systems, as officials in small cities and towns struggle to fund the cost of repairing aging infrastructure and removing toxic PFAS chemicals.
McDonough said New Jersey American Water’s top priority in Salem is to address PFAS by installing a filtration system within 18 months. In 2023, the so-called “forever chemicals” were detected above state standards in one of Salem’s wells, which has since been shut down.
However, some Salem residents fear their water bills may increase in a city where the median annual household income is $26,000. Several states allow investor-owned utilities to consider the future value of a utility, pay above that price and then pass along those costs to consumers.
McDonough said there will be a two-year freeze on rate increases in Salem, and the company offers assistance to people struggling to pay their bills.
“Because we’re a large water operator statewide, we share the costs of capital across our entire footprint, and then, of course, our commercial customers on top of that,” he said. “So, we socialize those costs so that everybody’s bills are more affordable.”
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