New Jersey voters won’t just be choosing the next president on Election Day—the state has two questions on the ballot that could have an impact on your wallet.
The referendum questions deal with extra funding for colleges’ infrastructure and benefits payments for judges.
The public questions are:
#1: Do you approve the “Building Our Future Bond Act”? This bond act authorizes the State to issue bonds in the aggregate principal amount of $750 million to provide matching grants to New Jersey’s colleges and universities. Money from the grants will be used to build, equip and expand higher education facilities for the purpose of increasing academic capacity.
#2: Do you approve an amendment to the New Jersey Constitution, as agreed to by the Legislature, to allow contributions set by law to be taken from the salaries of Supreme Court Justices and Superior Court Judges for their employee benefits?
Question #1 would provide additional funding to New Jersey’s 31 public colleges and universities, 19 county colleges and some private higher education institutions for long-term facilities needs.
Question #2 would, if approved, become a state constitutional amendment. Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill into law mandating that judges contribute to their benefits. A lawsuit followed and New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled the law was unconstitutional. Approval of the question would override that ruling.
The League of Women Voters of New Jersey prepared a pros and cons list for each question for voters to consider.
Both questions appear on their way to approval, if a Rutgers-Eagleton poll holds true. A poll released in October indicates 62 percent support and 27 percent oppose the education bond. Seventy percent of voters support the judicial benefits question, with 18 percent opposed. At the time of the poll, the undecided voters would not change either outcome.
Courier Post "Gloucester Twp. rule won't do much WHERE WE STAND: Township voters aren't getting a strong pay-to-play ordinance to consider". http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20121028/OPINION03/310270003/Gloucester-Twp-rule-won-t-do-much
The question was asked to benefit all readers where is appears.
Will a 'Yes' outcome (which is extremely likely) hinder future efforts to institute REAL pay-to-play reform in GT, in your opinion?
Let me be clear: passing or rejecting this ordinance will have no impact to us or anyone else putting another pay to play ordinance on next years ballot. It if passes, council cannot enact real reform for three years but they were not going to do that anyway unless the Republicans get control over council. It also means the Dems cannot put up this measure to compete with any citizen led reform since this ordinance would already be enacted. By law, you cannot have an initiative or referendum for something that is already in place. If we place the "real" pay to play on the 2013 (or later) ballot, it would trump this one passed in 2012. The Dems could put this identical measure back on the ballot in 2014 if they wanted to. I think this is going to pass so I will not address the case if it fails. In my opinion, the Dems should have withdrawn this ordinance once we lost our appeal because now they have no future defense. To be clear: this has no effect on future citizen led real reform. In fact passing it makes it easier.
With this passed, the party has no defense against a future ballot initiative since they could not put up a competing ballot question. According to NJ law you cannot have a local ballot question for something already in effect. A "yes" vote makes it easier for future petitions, but a "no" vote sends a strong message the people saw through this ordinance. Either way, this has no negative effect on future pay to play initiatives. We could have easilly blocked this from the ballot but chose not to because of how it helps us in 2013.
This is not about specific party ideologies or personal affiliation. At a state or national level, neither party owns good government or corruption. Both have good and bad in them. This is down to the local GT Dem party versus reformers. In North Jersey, it is Dems who are pushing for real reform and Republicans who are fighting it. Locally, think of this as the "entrenched" trying to maintain the large sums of money vendors donate to get and keep contracts. Politically, this turned into a "Dem / GOP" battle in the press, but the reality is that most rank and file people of both parties support pay to play reform. The most common reaction people gave us when we described pay to play was "how is this still legal".
Thanks for the two informative responses. This whole process both intrigues me, and disheartens me. Follow-up technical question for you (motivated simply by my curiosity of the process)...What could you have done to "easily block this from the ballot"?
But, please, going forward, don't let your group get it the habit of too often responding with phrases such as "not at liberty", "no comment" and the like. Your group is supposed to be a beacon of transparency/disclosure, reform, good government, etc. So too many responses like that and you risk becoming, to people like me, just more of the shadowy noise of questionable motives and trustworthiness..
sorry