Optics Over Opra, Scutari Moves on to Wrecking the Judiciary, Sarlo Ponders Tax Increase, Latino Students Fall Behind, Will Murphy Veto OPRA?

Legislators Worried About Optics As They Destroyed OPRA
NJ Monitor

For Assemblyman Brian Bergen, a Morris County Republican who opposed the bill, the altered votes are indicative of a broken process, one that allows members to vote one way in case a bill is in jeopardy, then change their votes once they know the bill’s approval is not in doubt.

“There’s no doubt it’s anything other than that,” he said. “The speaker knew he needed Republican votes to get it over, but he didn’t know how many he was going to get, so it was an ever-changing thing.” Read More

Scutari Moves on to Politicizing Judicial Appointments
northjersey.com

The legislation would change the process for appointing judges to the Appellate Division by eliminating the division and creating a new and separate Court of Appeals, which would require judges to be nominated by the governor and by the state Senate. The proposed process would mirror the one currently in use for Superior Court judges. Read More

Sarlo Raises Prospect of Raising Sales Tax
Patch

Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-36), the chairman of the New Jersey Senate Budget Committee and a construction industry executive, raised the idea of increasing the sales tax to 7 percent in lieu of Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed billion-dollar tax hike for roughly 600 businesses during a Tuesday budget hearing in Trenton. Read More

Latino Student Achievement Hurled Back to 2012 Levels
New Jersey Education Report

A new report from the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies and the Latino Action Network Foundation calls the academic progress of Latino students in New Jersey “deeply discouraging.” Before 2020, the analysts say, achievement gaps between Latino students, who comprise more than a third of New Jersey public school enrollment, and white or Asian students, had been very slowly narrowing but pandemic school disruption rolled those hard-won gains back to levels not seen since 2012. Read More

The Bill That Destroys OPRA Needs One More Signature
NJ Spotlight News

Sources say the governor’s office is reaching out directly to stakeholders to get a broader perspective, including associations like the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists, where former Trentonian reporter Isaac Avilucea is a board member.

“Is this a legacy issue? I think so and you really have to look at it like this,” Avilucea said. “This is a regressive bill, so if you’re a progressive Democrat, do you want your name on a regressive bill? That’s your decision to make, but when you make it, live with the consequences of how people view you in the state.” Read More

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