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Published in the Washington Post, Thursday, June 22, 2006
Leadership PACs and the Early Line on 2008
By Chris Cillizza | June 22, 2006; 7:00 AM ET
The Fix tends to view leadership political action committees more and more as a thing of the past when it comes to presidential politics (more on that in a future post), but they remain the best window into watching the potential 2008 candidates jockey for early position
Many -- though not all -- of the likely contenders file monthly reports detailing contributions and expenditures made by their leadership PACs. Those reports hit the Federal Election Commission's Web site this past Tuesday night. A chart can be found at the end of this post detailing the basic balance sheets of the nine politicians (four Republicans and five Democrats) widely expected to make a run for the White House.
The Republicans
The most interesting filing of the month came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continued to seed early primary states with cash.
McCain raised $488,000 in the month of May, spent $803,000 and ended the period with $762,000 in the bank. How McCain spent his money is telling. Of the 51 direct donations made by his Straight Talk America PAC, all but two went to candidates or party committees in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Alabama.
McCain sent 15 donations totalling $30,500 to a variety of city and county Republican committees in New Hampshire, the state that will host the first presidential primary. In South Carolina, McCain's PAC made 15 donations -- 13 of which were $1,000 checks to state House candidates. He also gave $3,500 each to the South Carolina House and Senate Republican caucuses.
In Alabama, McCain's PAC made 11 contributions to a variety of local GOP organizations and candidates. Why? In an event largely missed by the national media, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley signed legislation into law in late April that moved the state's 2008 primaries from June 3 to February 5, a move that establishes Alabama -- along with South Carolina -- as a make-or-break Southern state on the road to the nomination. Don't forget that McCain also campaigned in Alabama last fall for George Wallace Jr., who faces businessman Luther Strange in a July 18 runoff for the GOP lieutenant governor nomination.
The Fix has said it before (and The Hotline's Chuck Todd noted in his most recent presidential rankings): McCain and his team are playing the inside game about as well as it can be played at the moment.
None of the other three Republicans who file monthly came close to matching McCain.
Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) continued to raise solid money ($466,000) and use his Volunteer PAC as a clearinghouse for linking up GOP donors with candidates around the country. But VOLPAC only donated $10,000 directly from the PAC in May. Mike McGavick, who is running against Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), got $5,000, as did South Carolina state Rep. Ralph Norman, the GOP candidates against Rep. John Spratt (D).
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani raised $159,000 for his Solutions America PAC but made only one donation to a candidate -- $5,000 to state Sen. Jeff Lamberti, who is the candidate in Iowa's 3rd District.
Where's Mitt Romney? The Massachusetts governor's Commonwealth PAC is incorporated in a handful of states -- all of which have different filing deadlines and requirements. Romney does have a federal arm of the Commonwealth PAC, but it files quarterly instead of monthly.
The Democrats
Ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner continued to rake in donations at a rate that dwarfed his competitors.
Warner raised $1.1 million in May alone and has collected more than $7 million since forming the Forward Together PAC last July. Although he spent $508,000 last month, just $31,000 of that went to candidates or parties.
Forward Together gave $17,000 to the New Hampshire state Senate caucus, $10,000 to the Democratic Party of Georgia and $4,000 to Corey Booker's successful campaign for mayor in Newark, N.J. Warner has made donations to more than 50 candidates in 30 states through Forward Together and is in the midst of an online effort to pick 10 more candidates who will receive $5,000 each from the PAC. In addition, Warner has committed to host a fundraiser for a candidate to be selected by his Web community.
For Warner, raising tons of cash for his leadership PAC and then doling it out to Democrats around the country makes perfect sense from a strategic perspective. A politician who has held only one office in his career, Warner must work extra hard to court party leaders around the country and he lacks the kind of national organization already in place for most of the candidates people he will run against in 2008. The strength of his fundraising through Forward Together also proves that Warner can raise money despite the stricter limits on national PACs -- restrictions he never had to deal with running for office in Virginia.
Sens. John Kerry (Mass.) and Russ Feingold (Wisc.) each raised $271,000 in May for their PACs, and each ended the month with more than $500,000 in the bank. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) continued to draw down her fundraising for HILLPAC even as she continues to raise millions for her main campaign committee. In May HILLPAC raised $122,000 and made $22,500 worth of direct donations to candidates and party committees. HILLPAC closed May with $100,000 in the bank.
And for all the excitement and energy within the so-called "netroots" for retired Gen. Wesley Clark, his WesPAC did little in the way of fundraising last month. It raised $26,000, spent $58,000 and had $16,000 in the bank at the end of the month.
Remember that any money left over in a leadership PAC can't be transferred to a presidential exploratory committee. As such, many of these candidates -- Clinton, Kerry and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana to name three -- have raised the majority of their dollars through Senate campaign accounts, which can moved to a presidential committee.
Here's are two charts listing leadership PAC financials for the nine likely 2008 White House contenders:
Republicans
Candidate PAC Raised Spent COH*
McCain Straight Talk America $488,000 $803,000 $762,000
Giuliani Solutions America 159,000 141,000 241,000
Frist VOLPAC 466,000 449,000 659,000
Hagel Sandhills PAC 19,000 60,000 139,000
Democrats
Candidate PAC Raised Spent COH
Kerry Keeping America's Promise $271,000 $257,000 $502,000
Feingold Progressive Patriots Fund 271,000 112,000 546,000
Clinton HILLPAC 122,000 150,000 100,000
Warner Forward Together 1.1M 508,000 4.1M
Clark WESPAC 26,000 58,000 16,000
* COH = Cash on Hand
By Chris Cillizza | June 22, 2006; 7:00 AM ET | Category: Democratic Party , Eye on 2008 , Republican Party
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/06/leadership_pacs_and_the_early.html#more
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Thursday, June 22, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Getting Menendez '82 tesimonty unsealed wont be easy for Kean
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Published in the Politics NJ, Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Getting Menendez testimony in '82 Musto trial
unsealed won't be an easy lift for Kean
By BILL ALBERS
PoliticsNJ.com
JUNE 20 - Hoping to move past an embarrassing few couple days of media coverage, the campaign of State Senator Thomas H. Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) has reiterated its call for U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-Union City) to release the Grand Jury testimony dating back to the 1982 trial of State Senator, Union City Mayor, and Menendez political mentor William V. Musto.
The bold move first came only twenty-four hours after the Menendez campaign ambushed Kean with a scathing 'those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' attack at a joint event in Atlantic City, hitting the State Senator for voting against a pay-to-play ban and for taking money from the casino industry for his federal campaign when such contributions are banned for state campaigns.
Musto has played a key figure in the messaging of both the Menendez and Kean campaigns. Menendez has taken to invoking Musto's name to tout his anti-corruption credentials – he highlighted his testifying against the Mayor during his campaign kickoff, an act he says he performed because Musto was "betraying everything (Menendez) believed."
The Kean campaign has been using Musto's name to paint a different picture, claiming that Menendez stood by the Mayor in the early days to advance his career, even when Musto's corruption was evident.
"Despite the fact that Mayor Musto had been indicted twice, first in 1977 and again in 1981, Menendez supported him for re-election to the State Senate," noted Kean this past weekend.
The implication or hope on the part of the Kean campaign, of course, is that there's going to be something in the Grand Jury that is seriously damaging to Menendez's campaign and credibility – that Menendez essentially traded his testimony against Musto for a deal with prosecutors.
"Did Bob Menendez stand up to corruption when he saw it, as he says he did? Or was he subpoenaed – an unwilling participant in a trial he now lauds as a cornerstone of his public statements on reform?" asked Kean spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker on Monday.
It's a calculated gamble that the Kean campaign seems happy to make. If something turns up in the testimony that hints at a deal or that Menendez was at one point under investigation, it could be seriously damaging to the image the Senator's campaign likes to paint of the Union City reformer who took on corruption and testified against his own boss because it was the 'right thing to do.'
There are only a small handful of people who know what's in that sealed testimony, but the Menendez campaign has been all too willing to call the Kean Campaign's bluff – if that's what it is, of course – stating that they're willing to make the testimony public record if they can.
"We don't know if it's possible (to unseal it) or if (the testimony) still exists, but we welcome unsealing it if it does," said Matt Miller, spokesman for Senator Menendez.
"Bob Menendez's testimony put a corrupt politician in jail," Miller added, noting that his campaign would be more than eager to continue the discussion about the Senator's involvement in the case.
According to one legal expert, who asked not to be identified because of the political nature of the case, the testimony is all but certain to still exist in storage somewhere, but getting it unsealed could be quite tricky.
"I don't believe that a witness can, on their own, unseal their testimony," the lawyer said, pointing out that testimony can contain sensitive information about other witnesses. "It's not as if it's Menendez's Grand Jury testimony, it's the Grand Jury's testimony."
The fact that the testimony is approximately twenty-five years old, however, and the fact that a number of the key players, Musto included, have passed could make courts more willing to unseal the testimony.
"It really depends on what's in the testimony," the lawyer added.
Getting the records unsealed, even if the Menendez campaign is agreeable to it, could be a lengthy process. But the Menendez and Kean campaigns are more than eager to bash each other over the head with the issue in the meantime.
"There is a crisis of confidence in Mr. Menendez, and New Jerseyans deserve straightforward answers about his early political history that he cites as evidence of his reform credentials," Hazelbaker answered back. "If he's calling for transparency in government, then it's only appropriate that he unseal the grand jury testimony for all twelve of his grand jury visits."
"It's a sleazy attempt to make things up and launch nasty smears," Miller answered back, criticizing Kean for questioning Menendez's ethics and for being unwilling to do it to his face. "He's happy to stand behind surrogates and launch attacks from afar, but when he had the chance to stand behind his words, he runs away."
http://www.politicsnj.com/default0406.asp
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Politics NJ, Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Getting Menendez testimony in '82 Musto trial
unsealed won't be an easy lift for Kean
By BILL ALBERS
PoliticsNJ.com
JUNE 20 - Hoping to move past an embarrassing few couple days of media coverage, the campaign of State Senator Thomas H. Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) has reiterated its call for U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-Union City) to release the Grand Jury testimony dating back to the 1982 trial of State Senator, Union City Mayor, and Menendez political mentor William V. Musto.
The bold move first came only twenty-four hours after the Menendez campaign ambushed Kean with a scathing 'those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' attack at a joint event in Atlantic City, hitting the State Senator for voting against a pay-to-play ban and for taking money from the casino industry for his federal campaign when such contributions are banned for state campaigns.
Musto has played a key figure in the messaging of both the Menendez and Kean campaigns. Menendez has taken to invoking Musto's name to tout his anti-corruption credentials – he highlighted his testifying against the Mayor during his campaign kickoff, an act he says he performed because Musto was "betraying everything (Menendez) believed."
The Kean campaign has been using Musto's name to paint a different picture, claiming that Menendez stood by the Mayor in the early days to advance his career, even when Musto's corruption was evident.
"Despite the fact that Mayor Musto had been indicted twice, first in 1977 and again in 1981, Menendez supported him for re-election to the State Senate," noted Kean this past weekend.
The implication or hope on the part of the Kean campaign, of course, is that there's going to be something in the Grand Jury that is seriously damaging to Menendez's campaign and credibility – that Menendez essentially traded his testimony against Musto for a deal with prosecutors.
"Did Bob Menendez stand up to corruption when he saw it, as he says he did? Or was he subpoenaed – an unwilling participant in a trial he now lauds as a cornerstone of his public statements on reform?" asked Kean spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker on Monday.
It's a calculated gamble that the Kean campaign seems happy to make. If something turns up in the testimony that hints at a deal or that Menendez was at one point under investigation, it could be seriously damaging to the image the Senator's campaign likes to paint of the Union City reformer who took on corruption and testified against his own boss because it was the 'right thing to do.'
There are only a small handful of people who know what's in that sealed testimony, but the Menendez campaign has been all too willing to call the Kean Campaign's bluff – if that's what it is, of course – stating that they're willing to make the testimony public record if they can.
"We don't know if it's possible (to unseal it) or if (the testimony) still exists, but we welcome unsealing it if it does," said Matt Miller, spokesman for Senator Menendez.
"Bob Menendez's testimony put a corrupt politician in jail," Miller added, noting that his campaign would be more than eager to continue the discussion about the Senator's involvement in the case.
According to one legal expert, who asked not to be identified because of the political nature of the case, the testimony is all but certain to still exist in storage somewhere, but getting it unsealed could be quite tricky.
"I don't believe that a witness can, on their own, unseal their testimony," the lawyer said, pointing out that testimony can contain sensitive information about other witnesses. "It's not as if it's Menendez's Grand Jury testimony, it's the Grand Jury's testimony."
The fact that the testimony is approximately twenty-five years old, however, and the fact that a number of the key players, Musto included, have passed could make courts more willing to unseal the testimony.
"It really depends on what's in the testimony," the lawyer added.
Getting the records unsealed, even if the Menendez campaign is agreeable to it, could be a lengthy process. But the Menendez and Kean campaigns are more than eager to bash each other over the head with the issue in the meantime.
"There is a crisis of confidence in Mr. Menendez, and New Jerseyans deserve straightforward answers about his early political history that he cites as evidence of his reform credentials," Hazelbaker answered back. "If he's calling for transparency in government, then it's only appropriate that he unseal the grand jury testimony for all twelve of his grand jury visits."
"It's a sleazy attempt to make things up and launch nasty smears," Miller answered back, criticizing Kean for questioning Menendez's ethics and for being unwilling to do it to his face. "He's happy to stand behind surrogates and launch attacks from afar, but when he had the chance to stand behind his words, he runs away."
http://www.politicsnj.com/default0406.asp
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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State Budget - Ledger - Mulshine: Corzine gives us the business
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Published in the Star Ledger, Tuesday, June 20, 2006
[Column]
Corzine gives us the business
By PAUL MULSHINE
A deal is a deal. A contract is a contract.
So why isn't a promise a promise?
When he was running for governor last year, Jon Corzine promised over and over again that he was going to use his experience as chairman of Goldman-Sachs to run the state like a business.
But who ever heard of a business where the boss takes the side of the unions as the company is going broke?
That was Corzine's stance yesterday afternoon as he spoke to several thousand public employees who were demonstrating outside the Statehouse.
Here's what a good boss would have said:
"Lunch hour's over. How come you're not at work?"
Instead, Corzine parroted the slogans on the placards held up by the workers. Sounding more like a labor organizer than an executive, he told the crowd, "We're gonna fight for a fair contract."
The governor didn't say whom he was going to be fighting against, but everyone knew: Stephen Sweeney.
Sweeney is a state senator from Gloucester County who has committed the unpardonable sin of proposing to deliver on Corzine's campaign promises. Sweeney and two assemblymen -- all Democrats by the way -- proposed a program of pension and benefit reforms that would begin to restore some sort of balance to the pension fund.
Sweeney wasn't at the rally, which was probably good for his health. The former ironworker has a thick neck but probably not thick enough for the fate the seething crowd seemed to envision for him.
But after the crowd had dissipated, Sweeney encountered a few union people in the hall outside the Senate chambers. I watched as he did what the governor should have done: slowly and patiently ex plained why pension and benefit reform is unavoidable. One of the slogans at the rally was an endorsement of the governor's proposed 1-cent increase in the sales tax. "A penny will go a long way," it read.
No, it won't. And Sweeney explained why to the union reps. That 1-cent increase in the sales tax might produce about $1 billion a year in new state revenue. But the deficit in the retirement funds is dozens of times larger than that.
"We have a budget problem, and it's not going away," Sweeney explained in the hallway. "You're talking about a $27 billion pension fund liability. But no one's talking about a $20 billion health care liability."
That penny hike in the sales tax would have little impact on a combined deficit of about $47 billion. Unless pensions and benefits are reduced, Corzine will be asking for another tax increase next year and another one the year after that.
The only way to avoid that, Sweeney told the union reps, is by adopting a two-tiered system. Current employees would keep their scheduled retirement benefits, perhaps with some reasonable reductions. But new hires would have to come in under an entirely new pension system, probably one similar to the 401(k) system popular in the private sector.
You can quibble about the exact structure of those reforms, but simple mathematics says they're needed. Another former Goldman-Sachs exec, Philip Murphy, chaired a commission that recently issued a report on the pension system. That report concluded the state should pump $12 billion into the pension fund right away, perhaps by selling some asset. And that would be just a down payment.
"Everyone's got to give some blood here," said Murphy when I called him last week. "The unions are going to have to come to the table."
Like Sweeney, Murphy is a Democrat. In fact, he's the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But numbers are numbers, and the numbers in his commission's report are depressing.
"It's not a question of blaming anyone," said Murphy. But if any blame is to be assessed, it falls more on the politicians than on the union bosses.
"The state ignored this for too long," he said.
Both parties pandered to public employees while failing to fund the new benefits. In 2001, for example, the Republicans boosted pensions by 9 percent in an attempt to hang on to the Statehouse. It didn't work.
But the Democrats haven't been much better. Last year, for example, they added what will be thousands of domestic partners to the pension rolls with full knowledge of the growing deficit.
That deficit is now so big that it simply can't be funded, says Sweeney.
"You can't put enough money into the pensions and benefits side to make this up," he said.
As Sweeney patiently explained this to those union workers in the hallway, they seemed to be getting the point.
Maybe next, he can explain it to the governor.
Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist. He may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/columns-0/1150779031189360.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Star Ledger, Tuesday, June 20, 2006
[Column]
Corzine gives us the business
By PAUL MULSHINE
A deal is a deal. A contract is a contract.
So why isn't a promise a promise?
When he was running for governor last year, Jon Corzine promised over and over again that he was going to use his experience as chairman of Goldman-Sachs to run the state like a business.
But who ever heard of a business where the boss takes the side of the unions as the company is going broke?
That was Corzine's stance yesterday afternoon as he spoke to several thousand public employees who were demonstrating outside the Statehouse.
Here's what a good boss would have said:
"Lunch hour's over. How come you're not at work?"
Instead, Corzine parroted the slogans on the placards held up by the workers. Sounding more like a labor organizer than an executive, he told the crowd, "We're gonna fight for a fair contract."
The governor didn't say whom he was going to be fighting against, but everyone knew: Stephen Sweeney.
Sweeney is a state senator from Gloucester County who has committed the unpardonable sin of proposing to deliver on Corzine's campaign promises. Sweeney and two assemblymen -- all Democrats by the way -- proposed a program of pension and benefit reforms that would begin to restore some sort of balance to the pension fund.
Sweeney wasn't at the rally, which was probably good for his health. The former ironworker has a thick neck but probably not thick enough for the fate the seething crowd seemed to envision for him.
But after the crowd had dissipated, Sweeney encountered a few union people in the hall outside the Senate chambers. I watched as he did what the governor should have done: slowly and patiently ex plained why pension and benefit reform is unavoidable. One of the slogans at the rally was an endorsement of the governor's proposed 1-cent increase in the sales tax. "A penny will go a long way," it read.
No, it won't. And Sweeney explained why to the union reps. That 1-cent increase in the sales tax might produce about $1 billion a year in new state revenue. But the deficit in the retirement funds is dozens of times larger than that.
"We have a budget problem, and it's not going away," Sweeney explained in the hallway. "You're talking about a $27 billion pension fund liability. But no one's talking about a $20 billion health care liability."
That penny hike in the sales tax would have little impact on a combined deficit of about $47 billion. Unless pensions and benefits are reduced, Corzine will be asking for another tax increase next year and another one the year after that.
The only way to avoid that, Sweeney told the union reps, is by adopting a two-tiered system. Current employees would keep their scheduled retirement benefits, perhaps with some reasonable reductions. But new hires would have to come in under an entirely new pension system, probably one similar to the 401(k) system popular in the private sector.
You can quibble about the exact structure of those reforms, but simple mathematics says they're needed. Another former Goldman-Sachs exec, Philip Murphy, chaired a commission that recently issued a report on the pension system. That report concluded the state should pump $12 billion into the pension fund right away, perhaps by selling some asset. And that would be just a down payment.
"Everyone's got to give some blood here," said Murphy when I called him last week. "The unions are going to have to come to the table."
Like Sweeney, Murphy is a Democrat. In fact, he's the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But numbers are numbers, and the numbers in his commission's report are depressing.
"It's not a question of blaming anyone," said Murphy. But if any blame is to be assessed, it falls more on the politicians than on the union bosses.
"The state ignored this for too long," he said.
Both parties pandered to public employees while failing to fund the new benefits. In 2001, for example, the Republicans boosted pensions by 9 percent in an attempt to hang on to the Statehouse. It didn't work.
But the Democrats haven't been much better. Last year, for example, they added what will be thousands of domestic partners to the pension rolls with full knowledge of the growing deficit.
That deficit is now so big that it simply can't be funded, says Sweeney.
"You can't put enough money into the pensions and benefits side to make this up," he said.
As Sweeney patiently explained this to those union workers in the hallway, they seemed to be getting the point.
Maybe next, he can explain it to the governor.
Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist. He may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/columns-0/1150779031189360.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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State Budget - Gloucester Co. Times - Reactions to Green/Moriarty/Sweeney plan
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Published in the Gloucester County Times, Sunday, June 18, 2006
Sweeney and Moriarty have heavily pushed their plan
to cut state workers' benefits; the local reaction mirrors New Jersey
By Trish Graber
tgraber@sjnewsco.com
Sen. Stephen Sweeney and Assemblyman Paul Moriarty's plan to cut state workers' total compensation by 15 percent to mirror the "real world" is getting mixed local reviews.
The Communications Workers of America Local 1085, which represents the majority of county employees, calls the proposal unfair, while those in the private sector say the legislators' call to raise current public employees' work week from 35 to 40 hours, require benefit contributions and remove pension padding, among other measures, is a step forward.
"I think Sweeney and his cohort have a very good idea to mirror industry," said Carl Helwig, president of Pureland Industrial Group.
Sweeney, D-3 of West Deptford, Moriarty, D-4 of Washington Township and Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-22 of Somerset, launched the package as a way to halt a planned 1 percent sales tax increase.
State unions rallied against the plan in Trenton earlier this month, when Sweeney and Moriarty unveiled their Web site - www.stopspendingmymoney.com - but the lawmakers, each union-affiliated, stood strong.
Amid the state workers' backlash, the three have received support from the those in the private sector who continue to pay rising health care costs and those who represent them.
Helwig, whose Pureland Industrial Group in the Bridgeport section of Logan Township is South Jersey's largest business complex, said the legislators' focus on benefits as a cost-saving measure is a good approach, especially when it reflects the private sector.
"When you do make a co-pay function like that, it (encourages) people to try to minimize their cost and also take preventative measures to take care of their health," he said.
"There's several measures the private sector has taken to overcome the burden of high health care costs -- the public sector has not followed suit," she said. "Businesses provide what they can afford ... but there's not that standing pot of money there to fund it."
In March, Davis testified before the Assembly Budget Committee on Gov. Jon Corzine's proposed budget, where she called on the governor and legislators to "do whatever possible to rein in" the cost of providing health care to public employees.
In testimony, Davis said the Chamber has testified "year after year" and that once again, "it is the growth in the cost of employee benefits that is the major driver in this year's chase for new revenue."
But CWA Local 1085 President Richard Dann said Sweeney's proposal for a compensation cut of 15 percent would be unfair to public employees, and he is skeptical that it would provide the intended relief.
"He's trying to make a point that he's angry and that he's trying to find alternatives to a tax increase," he said. "It's not realistic, it wouldn't bail the state out."
Sweeney says his plan is at least a starting point.
"Changing deductibles and adjusting little things can add up to a lot of money," he said. "For us, it's strictly about taxpayers now, we can't afford the government we have."
Dann countered that state workers are already plagued by high taxes, and that Sweeney's proposed compensation cuts would lay a heavier burden on them.
"He talks about sharing the pain. In fact, state workers share the pain already because they're taxpayers just like everyone else," he said. "What he's actually asking state workers to do is take the lion's share of the pain."
The plan introduced by Sweeney, Gloucester County freeholder director and treasurer with the Ironworkers Union Local 399 in Westville; Moriarty, Washington Township mayor; and Green aims to scale back government costs by $700 million.
The total plan would reduce 15 percent of state employees' total compensation, which includes salaries, benefits and pension.
Some of the recommendations would require re-negotiation of state workers' contracts before they expire in 2007.
Sweeney, Moriarty and Green recently called on Corzine to advise the unions to re-open those contracts. Likewise, Sweeney proposed that he and other state legislators take a 15 percent pay cut, a savings of $7,350 per lawmaker.
But, speaking on the proposals last week, a spokesman for Corzine said re-opening contracts would not make an impact on the current budget. And as for Sweeney's pay cut for legislators, Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said it "falls far short of providing immediate tax relief in next year's budget.
"To plug a $4.5 billion budget gap, you need far-reaching ideas with tangible savings. This does not reflect that," he added.
Sweeney said Friday that he would continue to work toward reform, even if the proposals do not take effect before the July 1 deadline for the passage of the state budget, currently proposed at $30.9 billion.
"If it doesn't happen today, it's got to happen in the future," he said. "Within the next 18 months we're going to have a lot of changes in the way we do state government."
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-1/115061496244800.xml&coll=8
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Gloucester County Times, Sunday, June 18, 2006
Sweeney and Moriarty have heavily pushed their plan
to cut state workers' benefits; the local reaction mirrors New Jersey
By Trish Graber
tgraber@sjnewsco.com
Sen. Stephen Sweeney and Assemblyman Paul Moriarty's plan to cut state workers' total compensation by 15 percent to mirror the "real world" is getting mixed local reviews.
The Communications Workers of America Local 1085, which represents the majority of county employees, calls the proposal unfair, while those in the private sector say the legislators' call to raise current public employees' work week from 35 to 40 hours, require benefit contributions and remove pension padding, among other measures, is a step forward.
"I think Sweeney and his cohort have a very good idea to mirror industry," said Carl Helwig, president of Pureland Industrial Group.
Sweeney, D-3 of West Deptford, Moriarty, D-4 of Washington Township and Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-22 of Somerset, launched the package as a way to halt a planned 1 percent sales tax increase.
State unions rallied against the plan in Trenton earlier this month, when Sweeney and Moriarty unveiled their Web site - www.stopspendingmymoney.com - but the lawmakers, each union-affiliated, stood strong.
Amid the state workers' backlash, the three have received support from the those in the private sector who continue to pay rising health care costs and those who represent them.
Helwig, whose Pureland Industrial Group in the Bridgeport section of Logan Township is South Jersey's largest business complex, said the legislators' focus on benefits as a cost-saving measure is a good approach, especially when it reflects the private sector.
"When you do make a co-pay function like that, it (encourages) people to try to minimize their cost and also take preventative measures to take care of their health," he said.
"There's several measures the private sector has taken to overcome the burden of high health care costs -- the public sector has not followed suit," she said. "Businesses provide what they can afford ... but there's not that standing pot of money there to fund it."
In March, Davis testified before the Assembly Budget Committee on Gov. Jon Corzine's proposed budget, where she called on the governor and legislators to "do whatever possible to rein in" the cost of providing health care to public employees.
In testimony, Davis said the Chamber has testified "year after year" and that once again, "it is the growth in the cost of employee benefits that is the major driver in this year's chase for new revenue."
But CWA Local 1085 President Richard Dann said Sweeney's proposal for a compensation cut of 15 percent would be unfair to public employees, and he is skeptical that it would provide the intended relief.
"He's trying to make a point that he's angry and that he's trying to find alternatives to a tax increase," he said. "It's not realistic, it wouldn't bail the state out."
Sweeney says his plan is at least a starting point.
"Changing deductibles and adjusting little things can add up to a lot of money," he said. "For us, it's strictly about taxpayers now, we can't afford the government we have."
Dann countered that state workers are already plagued by high taxes, and that Sweeney's proposed compensation cuts would lay a heavier burden on them.
"He talks about sharing the pain. In fact, state workers share the pain already because they're taxpayers just like everyone else," he said. "What he's actually asking state workers to do is take the lion's share of the pain."
The plan introduced by Sweeney, Gloucester County freeholder director and treasurer with the Ironworkers Union Local 399 in Westville; Moriarty, Washington Township mayor; and Green aims to scale back government costs by $700 million.
The total plan would reduce 15 percent of state employees' total compensation, which includes salaries, benefits and pension.
Some of the recommendations would require re-negotiation of state workers' contracts before they expire in 2007.
Sweeney, Moriarty and Green recently called on Corzine to advise the unions to re-open those contracts. Likewise, Sweeney proposed that he and other state legislators take a 15 percent pay cut, a savings of $7,350 per lawmaker.
But, speaking on the proposals last week, a spokesman for Corzine said re-opening contracts would not make an impact on the current budget. And as for Sweeney's pay cut for legislators, Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said it "falls far short of providing immediate tax relief in next year's budget.
"To plug a $4.5 billion budget gap, you need far-reaching ideas with tangible savings. This does not reflect that," he added.
Sweeney said Friday that he would continue to work toward reform, even if the proposals do not take effect before the July 1 deadline for the passage of the state budget, currently proposed at $30.9 billion.
"If it doesn't happen today, it's got to happen in the future," he said. "Within the next 18 months we're going to have a lot of changes in the way we do state government."
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-1/115061496244800.xml&coll=8
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Monday, June 19, 2006
State Budget - Ledger Blog - Unions rally in support of Corzine budget
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Published in the Star-Ledger blog, Monday, June 19, 2006
Corzine addresses thousands at union rally
Thousands of public workers rallied outside the Statehouse Annex yesterday in support of a state budget that recommends the largest boost to their pension funds in more than a decade.
In a brief but passionate address to the cheering crowd, Gov. Jon Corzine, who is recommending the $1.1 billion increase, quoted President John F. Kennedy in praising the labor movement as a force for democracy and social good.
Corzine pointed out that as a U.S. Senator, he opposed efforts by President Bush to privatize Social Security, and he pledged to work just as hard to put the state's public pension funds on better financial footing.
Even with his proposed increase, the long-range health of the fund remains in jeopardy, though it currently has enough money to meet its obligations.
"I stand with you and I want to tell you again: I believe in collective bargaining,'' said Corzine, who is resisting a call by three lawmakers to seek $700 million in voluntary givebacks to help avoid a sales tax increase.
State Police estimated the crowd at 5,000, though union officials said it was twice that number. It was believed to be the largest rally since 25,000 public workers crowded State Street in June 1994 to protest Gov. Christie Whitman's budget cuts.
Workers yesterday carried signs such as "Obey the Law -Fund Our Pensions" and "Public Employees are not the Problem." Union leaders said they are lobbying feverishly -- through e-mails, telephone calls, postcards and face-to-face meetings -- to build support in a Democratically run Legislature for Corzine's budget.
"We can't continue with the gimmicks and the one-shots that continually put us in these crises year after year,'' said Bob Master, legislative and political director for Communications Workers of America District 1.
Added Joyce Powell, president of the New Jersey Education Association: "We're concerned about where they are going to find the revenue. It shouldn't come from the backs of public workers." Colleen Randazzo of Vineland, vice president of CWA Local 1034 and a worker at the Vineland Developmental Center, said the health of the pension fund is a "very very big concern" for most public workers.
Contributed by Joe Donohue
http://www.nj.com/newslogs/starledger/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_ledgerupdate/archives/2006_06.html#152728
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Star-Ledger blog, Monday, June 19, 2006
Corzine addresses thousands at union rally
Thousands of public workers rallied outside the Statehouse Annex yesterday in support of a state budget that recommends the largest boost to their pension funds in more than a decade.
In a brief but passionate address to the cheering crowd, Gov. Jon Corzine, who is recommending the $1.1 billion increase, quoted President John F. Kennedy in praising the labor movement as a force for democracy and social good.
Corzine pointed out that as a U.S. Senator, he opposed efforts by President Bush to privatize Social Security, and he pledged to work just as hard to put the state's public pension funds on better financial footing.
Even with his proposed increase, the long-range health of the fund remains in jeopardy, though it currently has enough money to meet its obligations.
"I stand with you and I want to tell you again: I believe in collective bargaining,'' said Corzine, who is resisting a call by three lawmakers to seek $700 million in voluntary givebacks to help avoid a sales tax increase.
State Police estimated the crowd at 5,000, though union officials said it was twice that number. It was believed to be the largest rally since 25,000 public workers crowded State Street in June 1994 to protest Gov. Christie Whitman's budget cuts.
Workers yesterday carried signs such as "Obey the Law -Fund Our Pensions" and "Public Employees are not the Problem." Union leaders said they are lobbying feverishly -- through e-mails, telephone calls, postcards and face-to-face meetings -- to build support in a Democratically run Legislature for Corzine's budget.
"We can't continue with the gimmicks and the one-shots that continually put us in these crises year after year,'' said Bob Master, legislative and political director for Communications Workers of America District 1.
Added Joyce Powell, president of the New Jersey Education Association: "We're concerned about where they are going to find the revenue. It shouldn't come from the backs of public workers." Colleen Randazzo of Vineland, vice president of CWA Local 1034 and a worker at the Vineland Developmental Center, said the health of the pension fund is a "very very big concern" for most public workers.
Contributed by Joe Donohue
http://www.nj.com/newslogs/starledger/index.ssf?/mtlogs/njo_ledgerupdate/archives/2006_06.html#152728
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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State Budget - Ledger - Pension underfunded over a decade
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Monday, June 19, 2006
State's budget headaches took shape over a decade
Workers will rally for Corzine plan today
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Star-Ledger Staff
Thousands of public employees will stage a Statehouse rally today to support Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to contribute more than $1 billion to the long underfunded state pension system as part of his controversial $30.9 billion budget.
At the same time, several lawmakers want Corzine to push for cutting state worker pay and pension benefits as a way to scrap his plan to increase the sales tax a penny on the dollar.
The fiscal mess that prompted this heated budget debate has been 15 years in the making.
Governors consistently have used the pension funds as a source of relief for state budget shortfalls. At the same time, lawmakers currying favor with the state's powerful public employees and teachers unions dramatically have boosted the retirement benefits bankrolled by the funds.
"It's fairly easy to understand," former Gov. Jim Florio said. "If you're putting no contributions in and you're increasing payments out, at some point you have to pay the piper."
In the midst of a recession in 1992, Florio realized a $600 million budget savings by restating the value of the pension funds to reflect then-robust stock market earnings. Then a parade of Democratic and Republican governors sidestepped scheduled contributions no matter how good the economy got. They skipped more than $10 billion in total.
For a time in the 1990s, soaring stock market returns compensated for the state's skipped payments. But that didn't last. And in 2001, pension benefits were boosted 9 percent across the board, prompting soaring payouts from the funds.
Since 1992, when the total tab for benefits first hit $1 billion, the annual bill for pension payouts has increased nearly six times. The pension funds are now at least $18 billion behind the amount actuaries say they need.
In his March budget address, Corzine said the bill has come due.
"Make no mistake -- our unfunded pension obligation is a real bill," Corzine told lawmakers. "It has been deferred far too long."
Corzine's proposed $1.5 billion contribution would exceed the total payments governors made to the retirement funds over the preceding nine years. But it would total only 70 percent of the amount actuaries say the state should have put into the fund to meet its mounting long-term obligations this year.
Lawmakers looking for a way to dodge a proposed hike in the state sales tax are eyeing the huge pension contribution as a ripe source of savings.
State Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) wants Corzine to ask state workers to voluntarily give up some of their pension benefits, which he says have grown too generous. Sweeney has proposed cutting them in several ways, including increasing the retirement age basing pensions on an employee's highest five years of salary rather than three.
But Corzine administration officials say they can't cut benefits because of changes made during one of the past pension maneuvers: a 1997 pension bond sale by then-Gov. Christie Whitman that freed nearly $600 million for her budget.
In that deal, state workers quietly received a major concession when lawmakers granted them a "non-forfeitable right to receive benefits" except for post-retirement health insurance. What this means, Corzine administration officials say privately, is that after an employee reaches five years of service and becomes vested in the pension system, the state cannot alter their benefits. Any changes, they said, would apply only to new workers who are not vested.
Carla Katz, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1034, the largest state workers union, said public employees are fighting for pensions that were "promised at the beginning of a career" and should not be yanked or reduced "because the system has been so underfunded."
She said the pensions help retirees "live a middle-class lifestyle. They're not living high on the hog."
Staff writers Jeff Whelan and Joe Donohue contributed to this report. Dunstan McNichol covers state government. He may be reached at (609) 989-0341 or dmcnichol@starledger.com.
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-7/1150692429190150.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Monday, June 19, 2006
State's budget headaches took shape over a decade
Workers will rally for Corzine plan today
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Star-Ledger Staff
Thousands of public employees will stage a Statehouse rally today to support Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to contribute more than $1 billion to the long underfunded state pension system as part of his controversial $30.9 billion budget.
At the same time, several lawmakers want Corzine to push for cutting state worker pay and pension benefits as a way to scrap his plan to increase the sales tax a penny on the dollar.
The fiscal mess that prompted this heated budget debate has been 15 years in the making.
Governors consistently have used the pension funds as a source of relief for state budget shortfalls. At the same time, lawmakers currying favor with the state's powerful public employees and teachers unions dramatically have boosted the retirement benefits bankrolled by the funds.
"It's fairly easy to understand," former Gov. Jim Florio said. "If you're putting no contributions in and you're increasing payments out, at some point you have to pay the piper."
In the midst of a recession in 1992, Florio realized a $600 million budget savings by restating the value of the pension funds to reflect then-robust stock market earnings. Then a parade of Democratic and Republican governors sidestepped scheduled contributions no matter how good the economy got. They skipped more than $10 billion in total.
For a time in the 1990s, soaring stock market returns compensated for the state's skipped payments. But that didn't last. And in 2001, pension benefits were boosted 9 percent across the board, prompting soaring payouts from the funds.
Since 1992, when the total tab for benefits first hit $1 billion, the annual bill for pension payouts has increased nearly six times. The pension funds are now at least $18 billion behind the amount actuaries say they need.
In his March budget address, Corzine said the bill has come due.
"Make no mistake -- our unfunded pension obligation is a real bill," Corzine told lawmakers. "It has been deferred far too long."
Corzine's proposed $1.5 billion contribution would exceed the total payments governors made to the retirement funds over the preceding nine years. But it would total only 70 percent of the amount actuaries say the state should have put into the fund to meet its mounting long-term obligations this year.
Lawmakers looking for a way to dodge a proposed hike in the state sales tax are eyeing the huge pension contribution as a ripe source of savings.
State Sen. Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) wants Corzine to ask state workers to voluntarily give up some of their pension benefits, which he says have grown too generous. Sweeney has proposed cutting them in several ways, including increasing the retirement age basing pensions on an employee's highest five years of salary rather than three.
But Corzine administration officials say they can't cut benefits because of changes made during one of the past pension maneuvers: a 1997 pension bond sale by then-Gov. Christie Whitman that freed nearly $600 million for her budget.
In that deal, state workers quietly received a major concession when lawmakers granted them a "non-forfeitable right to receive benefits" except for post-retirement health insurance. What this means, Corzine administration officials say privately, is that after an employee reaches five years of service and becomes vested in the pension system, the state cannot alter their benefits. Any changes, they said, would apply only to new workers who are not vested.
Carla Katz, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1034, the largest state workers union, said public employees are fighting for pensions that were "promised at the beginning of a career" and should not be yanked or reduced "because the system has been so underfunded."
She said the pensions help retirees "live a middle-class lifestyle. They're not living high on the hog."
Staff writers Jeff Whelan and Joe Donohue contributed to this report. Dunstan McNichol covers state government. He may be reached at (609) 989-0341 or dmcnichol@starledger.com.
http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-7/1150692429190150.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Recall - Ledger - Support hits target in Mt. Olive
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Morris County edition, Sunday, June 18, 2006
Support for recall tells the story in Mt. Olive
For a recall petition process to be successful, New Jersey Statute 19:27A-5 requires that signatures be obtained from at least 25 percent of registered voters -- a difficult hurdle under any circumstances. This threshold was set high by lawmakers to ensure that this tool of democracy is used sparingly, not frivolously.
As a political veteran, I can assure you that going door-to-door is time-consuming and exhausting. Each signature requires a conversation; some just a few minutes, but others can last 15 minutes, or even longer. That said, collecting hundreds of signatures is just not easy, and collecting thousands of signatures is an outright daunting task.
But somehow, the Bipartisan Committee to Recall the Mayor of Mount Olive Township has done just that: collected thousands of signatures representing more than 25 percent. This impressive number -- greater than the 3,543 required -- grows daily as the committee continues canvassing. It is almost as many as the votes cast for Mayor Richard De La Roche and his opponent combined, and is awfully close to double the number of votes the mayor received when elected in 2003.
Homeowners, alienated business leaders, seniors, supporters of sport organizations, almost every group or individual in our community who has had significant contact with him -- signed. It's over. Therefore, the recall will happen and be on the November ballot. The people have spoken loudly by signing the petition. Any political veteran would hear the call and begin an orderly transition now, or face recall in November. Regardless, De La Roche is out. If he has an ounce of common sense or a shred of decency, he will do the right thing and resign now.
-- Richard Kamin, Mount Olive
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/morris/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1150606580320180.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Star-Ledger, Morris County edition, Sunday, June 18, 2006
Support for recall tells the story in Mt. Olive
For a recall petition process to be successful, New Jersey Statute 19:27A-5 requires that signatures be obtained from at least 25 percent of registered voters -- a difficult hurdle under any circumstances. This threshold was set high by lawmakers to ensure that this tool of democracy is used sparingly, not frivolously.
As a political veteran, I can assure you that going door-to-door is time-consuming and exhausting. Each signature requires a conversation; some just a few minutes, but others can last 15 minutes, or even longer. That said, collecting hundreds of signatures is just not easy, and collecting thousands of signatures is an outright daunting task.
But somehow, the Bipartisan Committee to Recall the Mayor of Mount Olive Township has done just that: collected thousands of signatures representing more than 25 percent. This impressive number -- greater than the 3,543 required -- grows daily as the committee continues canvassing. It is almost as many as the votes cast for Mayor Richard De La Roche and his opponent combined, and is awfully close to double the number of votes the mayor received when elected in 2003.
Homeowners, alienated business leaders, seniors, supporters of sport organizations, almost every group or individual in our community who has had significant contact with him -- signed. It's over. Therefore, the recall will happen and be on the November ballot. The people have spoken loudly by signing the petition. Any political veteran would hear the call and begin an orderly transition now, or face recall in November. Regardless, De La Roche is out. If he has an ounce of common sense or a shred of decency, he will do the right thing and resign now.
-- Richard Kamin, Mount Olive
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/morris/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1150606580320180.xml&coll=1
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Saturday, June 17, 2006
FY2007 Budget - Courier - Lawmakers eye pensions
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Published in the Courier News, Saturday, June 17, 2006
Lawmakers eye pensions as way to ease budget crisis
By JONATHAN TAMARI
Gannett State Bureau
TRENTON -- As Assembly Democrats line up against a proposed sales tax increase, the state's payment to public employees' retirement funds could be on the chopping block, according to four people familiar with discussions among lawmakers and Gov. Jon S. Corzine's administration.
Assembly Democrats seeking alternatives to the tax will try to find some savings by cutting Corzine's pension contribution, the sources said. But one legislative source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the payment to public workers' retirement plans would still exceed $1 billion, which would be larger than the past 10 payments from the state's general fund combined.
Corzine has called for paying $1.3 billion into the system, which faces an $18 billion long-term deficit after years in which required contributions weren't made.
Even the contribution Corzine recommends is only about 70 percent of what is required, and any reduction will likely draw the wrath of public employee unions, who plan to rally at the Statehouse today.
Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-Plainfield, said last Thursday that Corzine's proposed contribution would be too much of an increase this year.
"To do it all at one time, we just can't afford to do that," Green said.
Corzine's proposed pension contribution is $1.1 billion larger than the state paid during the current budget. The state would raise the same amount of money by increasing the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent.
Lawmakers in both houses have vowed to kill several proposed taxes, but there is no consensus yet on the sales tax increase.
Assembly Democrats said last Friday that a budget that includes the sales tax hike "would be unachievable," potentially setting up a conflict with the Democrat-controlled state Senate, where the plan has more support.
"The breadth of opposition to the current sales tax proposal was extensive, and it was spread among the entire caucus," Assembly leaders said in a statement Friday.
As the two houses head into the final two weeks of negotiations, Senate President Richard J. Codey, D-West Orange, said through a spokeswoman that he looks forward to meeting with Corzine and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Camden, today.
Corzine has called for a significant reduction in the use of "one-shot" revenue streams that only temporarily plug budget holes but aren't available the following year, as well as for making a "good-faith" effort to fund the state's retirement system.
"It's time for the state to start fulfilling its obligations," Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said. "It's time for us to start matching recurring revenues with recurring expenses and stop relying on one-time revenue sources."
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060617/NEWS/606170311
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Courier News, Saturday, June 17, 2006
Lawmakers eye pensions as way to ease budget crisis
By JONATHAN TAMARI
Gannett State Bureau
TRENTON -- As Assembly Democrats line up against a proposed sales tax increase, the state's payment to public employees' retirement funds could be on the chopping block, according to four people familiar with discussions among lawmakers and Gov. Jon S. Corzine's administration.
Assembly Democrats seeking alternatives to the tax will try to find some savings by cutting Corzine's pension contribution, the sources said. But one legislative source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the payment to public workers' retirement plans would still exceed $1 billion, which would be larger than the past 10 payments from the state's general fund combined.
Corzine has called for paying $1.3 billion into the system, which faces an $18 billion long-term deficit after years in which required contributions weren't made.
Even the contribution Corzine recommends is only about 70 percent of what is required, and any reduction will likely draw the wrath of public employee unions, who plan to rally at the Statehouse today.
Assemblyman Jerry Green, D-Plainfield, said last Thursday that Corzine's proposed contribution would be too much of an increase this year.
"To do it all at one time, we just can't afford to do that," Green said.
Corzine's proposed pension contribution is $1.1 billion larger than the state paid during the current budget. The state would raise the same amount of money by increasing the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent.
Lawmakers in both houses have vowed to kill several proposed taxes, but there is no consensus yet on the sales tax increase.
Assembly Democrats said last Friday that a budget that includes the sales tax hike "would be unachievable," potentially setting up a conflict with the Democrat-controlled state Senate, where the plan has more support.
"The breadth of opposition to the current sales tax proposal was extensive, and it was spread among the entire caucus," Assembly leaders said in a statement Friday.
As the two houses head into the final two weeks of negotiations, Senate President Richard J. Codey, D-West Orange, said through a spokeswoman that he looks forward to meeting with Corzine and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Camden, today.
Corzine has called for a significant reduction in the use of "one-shot" revenue streams that only temporarily plug budget holes but aren't available the following year, as well as for making a "good-faith" effort to fund the state's retirement system.
"It's time for the state to start fulfilling its obligations," Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said. "It's time for us to start matching recurring revenues with recurring expenses and stop relying on one-time revenue sources."
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060617/NEWS/606170311
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Friday, June 16, 2006
Green/Moriarty/Sweeney Proposal - PoliticsNJ - Campaigning for and against the budget
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Published in PoliticsNJ, June 11, 200t6
Campaigning for and against the budget
by David P. Rebovich
An unusual story on this spring's budget process ran in New Jersey's newspapers last week. The Associated Press reported that not only was a group planning a demonstration against Gov. Jon Corzine's budget proposal for the next fiscal year, others were preparing to rally in support of it. Now protests about a budget proposal occur almost every year, since there is always someone who is upset about spending cuts, smaller than desired funding increases, or hikes in taxes and fees. While many budgets do satisfy certain groups and citizens, rarely does anyone demonstrate in favor of a spending plan. And running television and radio ads asking the general public to get behind a Governor's budget proposal is all but unheard of.
But this year New Jersey will have demonstrations for and against the Governor's budget proposal and, yes, some ads, too. Currently the NJEA, AFSCME and the CWA are sponsoring television and radio ads that praise Gov. Corzine for taking the "right way" in dealing with the state's fiscal situation. The ads call on New Jerseyans to tell legislators, "No more gimmicks. Pass Corzine's budget. Clean up Trenton." These unions, along with others representing police officers and firefighters and private sector employees, will also conduct a rally on June 19th at the State House. On June 15th some 50 nonprofit and advocacy organizations will have their own demonstration in support of the Governor's budget. An anti-tax group will rally against the plan this month as well.
The interesting question is why there is aggressive campaigning for a budget proposal that, frankly, has caused Gov. Corzine's approval rating to drop to a paltry 35 percent, consternation among Democratic legislators, and conflict between the Administration and legislators of both parties? In fact, public officials at all levels of government and citizens throughout the state have several complaints about the Governor's austere plan. The specific recommendations that have met the most criticism are the one-point increase in the sales tax, cuts to higher education that could lead to big tuition increases, and freezes in state aid to schools and towns that will lead to higher property taxes. The Governor claims that these admittedly painful measures are necessary to bring state spending in line with recurring revenues and to avoid relying on any gimmicks to balance the budget.
While Gov. Corzine is asking for what he calls "shared sacrifice" from citizens to balance the budget, state government workers are being spared. Although New Jersey has to fill a $4 billion hole in next year's spending plan, he has not recommended layoffs for any merit system personnel. In addition, he has proposed a $1.3 billion payment into the government workers' pension fund to help shore up a retirement system that lawmakers have previously raided and then allowed to remain under-funded.
The Governor has also tried to remain true to his campaign promise to help the "truly needy." While his generosity is limited by the state's revenue problems, Corzine nonetheless put increases for child welfare, food programs, and programs for the homeless, as well as tax relief for more low income workers, in his budget proposal. Thus, compared to most other groups and individuals in New Jersey, state workers and anti-poverty advocates believe that they and their causes will do reasonably well if the Governor's budget proposal is approved as is.
However, with less than a month to go before a new budget must be signed, it is unlikely that the Governor's proposal will be approved without changes, including some fairly big ones. Legislators remain concerned about raising the sales tax rate and how voting for such a measure may be used against them in their reelection bids in 2007. While polls show that a majority of New Jerseyans prefer a sales tax hike to other tax increases, they also indicate that most folks want lawmakers to pursue cuts in state spending before raising any tax rates. And, property tax relief is a priority for most citizens, one that takes precedence over payment into a pension fund or, alas, additional programs for the needy.
Then there is the state's changing revenue situation which, according to Treasurer Barry Abelow, has changed for the worse. As painful as Corzine's original budget proposal is, he and the Democratic-controlled legislature will have to find an additional $400 million to $500 million in some combination of more cuts or more revenues to balance next year's budget. Both the Governor and Democrats in the legislature have ruled out any more taxes or fee hikes. Corzine has already announced plans to pare back some spending on new initiatives, including some for the needy.
Even with the poorer revenue picture, Republican legislators continue to argue that a sales tax hike can be avoided by making more cuts in wasteful spending and low priority programs. A group called the Americans for Prosperity, headed by Bogota Mayer Steve Lonegan, who sought the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year, will also hold a rally in Trenton against any new tax hikes before the month is out. While no one expects this event to resemble the massive, rowdy anti-tax rally on West State Street in Jim Florio's first year as governor, Steve Lonegan cannot be underestimated. His quick wit, keen speaking ability, and steadfast commitment to his cause may enable him to garner more attention than GOP legislators who are also arguing against any new taxes in the next year's budget.
But no sooner were the dates for rallies announced and the pro-budget ads on the airwaves than some Democratic legislators presented their own ideas about how to avoid a sales tax hike. State Senator Steve Sweeney (3rd district) and Assemblymen Jerry Green (22nd district) and Paul Moriarty (4th district) announced a bold plan to save the state $700 million by cutting state workers' salaries and benefits by 15 percent. These lawmakers said they want to bring public sector compensation packages in line with the private sector as a matter of equity - taxpayers should not have to pay for benefits others that they don't receive themselves - and to save money during these tough times.
State employee union officials immediately expressed outrage at this proposal. They rejected any call for give-backs in salaries or fringe benefits while contracts are in effect. The Corzine Administration and Democratic legislative leaders announced that they had every intention of honoring those contracts. But the real question is, what about the future? Well, Sweeney, himself a union leader, Green and Moriarity have to know that their proposals have no chance of being acted on by the end of the month. But they have put it on the record that Democrats are willing to take on state workers in the name of the average New Jersey taxpayer. If the sales tax increase is approved - smart money says it will be -, these three legislators have provided themselves with political cover, since they can tell their constituents that they supported a taxpayer friendly alternative.
But, the Sweeney-Green-Moriarity proposal is more than just a self-serving political ploy. After all, Gov. Corzine himself has publicly stated his interest in looking at state employee retirement and health benefits plans with an eye toward saving money. As such, state workers, and public employees at all levels of government in New Jersey, should not be surprised if in their next round of contract negotiations, they will be asked to accept small salary increases and to give back some benefits. For the Corzine-era Democratic Party, populism apparently means being more responsive to the views and concerns of private citizens who, after all, far outnumber government employees. Who will government employees then look to for sympathy, the Republicans? Heck, most GOP legislators either looking to sign on to the Sweeney-Green-Moriarty proposal or are grumbling that these Democrats stole one of their best planks for GOP's campaign platform next year.
David P. Rebovich, Ph.D., is Managing Director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics (www.rider.edu/institute). He also writes a regular column, "On Politics," for NEW JERSEY LAWYER and monthly reports on New Jersey for CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS Magazine and is a member of CQPolitics.com's Board of Advisors that offers weekly commentary on national political developments.
Posted by Wally Edge on June 5, 2006 01:52 PM | Permalink
http://politics.nexcess.net/rebovich/2006/06/campaigning_for_and_against_th.html
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in PoliticsNJ, June 11, 200t6
Campaigning for and against the budget
by David P. Rebovich
An unusual story on this spring's budget process ran in New Jersey's newspapers last week. The Associated Press reported that not only was a group planning a demonstration against Gov. Jon Corzine's budget proposal for the next fiscal year, others were preparing to rally in support of it. Now protests about a budget proposal occur almost every year, since there is always someone who is upset about spending cuts, smaller than desired funding increases, or hikes in taxes and fees. While many budgets do satisfy certain groups and citizens, rarely does anyone demonstrate in favor of a spending plan. And running television and radio ads asking the general public to get behind a Governor's budget proposal is all but unheard of.
But this year New Jersey will have demonstrations for and against the Governor's budget proposal and, yes, some ads, too. Currently the NJEA, AFSCME and the CWA are sponsoring television and radio ads that praise Gov. Corzine for taking the "right way" in dealing with the state's fiscal situation. The ads call on New Jerseyans to tell legislators, "No more gimmicks. Pass Corzine's budget. Clean up Trenton." These unions, along with others representing police officers and firefighters and private sector employees, will also conduct a rally on June 19th at the State House. On June 15th some 50 nonprofit and advocacy organizations will have their own demonstration in support of the Governor's budget. An anti-tax group will rally against the plan this month as well.
The interesting question is why there is aggressive campaigning for a budget proposal that, frankly, has caused Gov. Corzine's approval rating to drop to a paltry 35 percent, consternation among Democratic legislators, and conflict between the Administration and legislators of both parties? In fact, public officials at all levels of government and citizens throughout the state have several complaints about the Governor's austere plan. The specific recommendations that have met the most criticism are the one-point increase in the sales tax, cuts to higher education that could lead to big tuition increases, and freezes in state aid to schools and towns that will lead to higher property taxes. The Governor claims that these admittedly painful measures are necessary to bring state spending in line with recurring revenues and to avoid relying on any gimmicks to balance the budget.
While Gov. Corzine is asking for what he calls "shared sacrifice" from citizens to balance the budget, state government workers are being spared. Although New Jersey has to fill a $4 billion hole in next year's spending plan, he has not recommended layoffs for any merit system personnel. In addition, he has proposed a $1.3 billion payment into the government workers' pension fund to help shore up a retirement system that lawmakers have previously raided and then allowed to remain under-funded.
The Governor has also tried to remain true to his campaign promise to help the "truly needy." While his generosity is limited by the state's revenue problems, Corzine nonetheless put increases for child welfare, food programs, and programs for the homeless, as well as tax relief for more low income workers, in his budget proposal. Thus, compared to most other groups and individuals in New Jersey, state workers and anti-poverty advocates believe that they and their causes will do reasonably well if the Governor's budget proposal is approved as is.
However, with less than a month to go before a new budget must be signed, it is unlikely that the Governor's proposal will be approved without changes, including some fairly big ones. Legislators remain concerned about raising the sales tax rate and how voting for such a measure may be used against them in their reelection bids in 2007. While polls show that a majority of New Jerseyans prefer a sales tax hike to other tax increases, they also indicate that most folks want lawmakers to pursue cuts in state spending before raising any tax rates. And, property tax relief is a priority for most citizens, one that takes precedence over payment into a pension fund or, alas, additional programs for the needy.
Then there is the state's changing revenue situation which, according to Treasurer Barry Abelow, has changed for the worse. As painful as Corzine's original budget proposal is, he and the Democratic-controlled legislature will have to find an additional $400 million to $500 million in some combination of more cuts or more revenues to balance next year's budget. Both the Governor and Democrats in the legislature have ruled out any more taxes or fee hikes. Corzine has already announced plans to pare back some spending on new initiatives, including some for the needy.
Even with the poorer revenue picture, Republican legislators continue to argue that a sales tax hike can be avoided by making more cuts in wasteful spending and low priority programs. A group called the Americans for Prosperity, headed by Bogota Mayer Steve Lonegan, who sought the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year, will also hold a rally in Trenton against any new tax hikes before the month is out. While no one expects this event to resemble the massive, rowdy anti-tax rally on West State Street in Jim Florio's first year as governor, Steve Lonegan cannot be underestimated. His quick wit, keen speaking ability, and steadfast commitment to his cause may enable him to garner more attention than GOP legislators who are also arguing against any new taxes in the next year's budget.
But no sooner were the dates for rallies announced and the pro-budget ads on the airwaves than some Democratic legislators presented their own ideas about how to avoid a sales tax hike. State Senator Steve Sweeney (3rd district) and Assemblymen Jerry Green (22nd district) and Paul Moriarty (4th district) announced a bold plan to save the state $700 million by cutting state workers' salaries and benefits by 15 percent. These lawmakers said they want to bring public sector compensation packages in line with the private sector as a matter of equity - taxpayers should not have to pay for benefits others that they don't receive themselves - and to save money during these tough times.
State employee union officials immediately expressed outrage at this proposal. They rejected any call for give-backs in salaries or fringe benefits while contracts are in effect. The Corzine Administration and Democratic legislative leaders announced that they had every intention of honoring those contracts. But the real question is, what about the future? Well, Sweeney, himself a union leader, Green and Moriarity have to know that their proposals have no chance of being acted on by the end of the month. But they have put it on the record that Democrats are willing to take on state workers in the name of the average New Jersey taxpayer. If the sales tax increase is approved - smart money says it will be -, these three legislators have provided themselves with political cover, since they can tell their constituents that they supported a taxpayer friendly alternative.
But, the Sweeney-Green-Moriarity proposal is more than just a self-serving political ploy. After all, Gov. Corzine himself has publicly stated his interest in looking at state employee retirement and health benefits plans with an eye toward saving money. As such, state workers, and public employees at all levels of government in New Jersey, should not be surprised if in their next round of contract negotiations, they will be asked to accept small salary increases and to give back some benefits. For the Corzine-era Democratic Party, populism apparently means being more responsive to the views and concerns of private citizens who, after all, far outnumber government employees. Who will government employees then look to for sympathy, the Republicans? Heck, most GOP legislators either looking to sign on to the Sweeney-Green-Moriarty proposal or are grumbling that these Democrats stole one of their best planks for GOP's campaign platform next year.
David P. Rebovich, Ph.D., is Managing Director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics (www.rider.edu/institute). He also writes a regular column, "On Politics," for NEW JERSEY LAWYER and monthly reports on New Jersey for CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS Magazine and is a member of CQPolitics.com's Board of Advisors that offers weekly commentary on national political developments.
Posted by Wally Edge on June 5, 2006 01:52 PM | Permalink
http://politics.nexcess.net/rebovich/2006/06/campaigning_for_and_against_th.html
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Budget Reform - CIANJ - Controlling state employee benefits essential to reform
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Published in COMMERCE magazine, June 2006
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Published in COMMERCE magazine, June 2006
Controlling State Employee Benefits
is Essential to Budget Reform
BY JEANETTE ISSENMAN
CIANJ VICE PRESIDENT OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
AND COMMUNICATIONS
AS THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE branches continue to debate how to best solve the state's budget crisis, one thing remains clear-New
Focusing on state employee pensions and health benefits, Acting Governor Codey in last year's budget address cited some staggering statistics regarding the growing costs. According to the Treasurer's Office, the total cost of healthcare benefits for state employees has risen by 50 percent over the last four years, and the cost of healthcare benefits for retired state teachers, school personnel and college employees has more than doubled. In Fiscal Year 2006, employee benefit costs consumed 14 percent of the state's overall budget, compared to 8.8 percent just four years ago. Codey's office projected that by the year 2010, state employee benefit costs will constitute 20 percent of the state budget.
Recognizing these out-of-control entitlement packages could eventually bankrupt the state, the Acting Governor established the New Jersey Benefits Review Task Force last May. The Task Force, composed of the State Treasurer, the Commissioner of Labor, and six public members, was charged with making recommendations to control the costs of benefit packages, while ensuring the state's public employees receive a fair and equitable benefit system. CIANJ Board Member David Alai, vice president of corporate human resources for Sharp Electronics Corporation, was one of the private sector experts chosen by the Acting Governor to serve on this Task Force.
In December, the Task Force released a series of formal recommendations to help the state get control of this massive spending program by reforming the structure of the benefit programs and restoring integrity to the system. CIANJ supports the Task Force's recommendations as an important first step in reforming the state's budget process.
The Task Force stated unequivocally that government must fulfill its commitment to fund the pension system and make annual payments without relying upon fiscal gimmickry and borrowing. For seven of the past nine years, the state enjoyed a "pension holiday" in which no payments were made, resulting in the fund's current $12.1 billion deficiency.
In addition, the Task Force proposed major structural reforms to the system, including extending the state employee retirement age from 55 to 60, and ensuring pensions are more reflective of an employee's salary by calculating benefits based on the average of the five highest salaries (as opposed to the current three) or the highest three years of income (rather than one). Other reforms include greater cost-sharing of healthcare expenses through additional co-pays and deductibles-something many private sector companies have implemented in order to contain skyrocketing healthcare costs.
While the Task Force's recommendations represent long-term structural changes, flagrant abuses of the state's pension system must be curtailed immediately to stop the fleecing of taxpayer dollars. A recent report from the State Commission of Investigation illustrated examples of local school superintendents receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in sick leave reimbursement. This report, and other accounts of abuse, has sparked the introduction of several legislative reform initiatives deserving immediate consideration.
One such measure, sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Panter, prohibits compensation for unused sick leave for public school employees with an annual salary of $100,000 or more. Another common-sense bill prohibits individuals convicted of a crime from receiving pension benefits.
The Benefits Review Task Force also proposed eliminating pension padding by restricting end-of-career salary hikes, and ending the practice of pension tacking by requiring employees to designate a single job for pension purposes. The Task Force also recommended that state jobs paying less than $5,000 per year should not receive credit towards pension benefits.
Finally, the Task Force proposed to strengthen the review process for benefit enhancement bills passed by the New Jersey Legislature. Every bill that enhances the state employee pension or healthcare system would be required to have a price tag, as well as a specific revenue source to pay for it.
These and other reforms sought by the Benefits Review Task Force are not likely to be adopted without heated debate and serious opposition from entrenched special interests in
The legislature has yet to take up these reform initiatives, and Governor Corzine has conceded that many of the bigger issues involving unionized employees will have to be negotiated at the bargaining table. However, like payments to the under-funded pension system, this reform issue is one the state cannot afford to defer for much longer.
CIANJ - June 2006 - Legislative Update
http://www.cianj.org/news/default.aspx?n_ID=93
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)*
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Plainwood Square 2006 Summer Concert Series
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Plainwood Square 2006 Summer Concert Series
The Summer Concert series takes place at Plainwood Square Park on South Avenue, near Terrill Road. All concerts start at 6:00 PM sharp. Parking available at nearby merchants. Founded by Plainwood Square Merchants Association, the concerts now have many co-sponsors among Plainfield's business community as well as support from the City of Plainfield and the Cultural & Heritage Commission.
June 15
The Persuaders and Bryson Jenkins Band (the first Plainfield Idol winner)
July 20
Yesterday's News and The Poni Tails
August 3 (Special National Night Out Concert)
Valarie Adams & Dimension Band and Sound Investment
August 17
The Son Bacanos (Golden Boy) and David Alen
More information about the concerts and applications for the Plainfield Idol competition are available from concerts coordinator Pat Fields at (908) 369-1152 or pat@meetingsoftheminds.com
-- Dan Damon
Not getting your own CLIPPINGS email daily? Click here to get started.
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Plainwood Square 2006 Summer Concert Series
The Summer Concert series takes place at Plainwood Square Park on South Avenue, near Terrill Road. All concerts start at 6:00 PM sharp. Parking available at nearby merchants. Founded by Plainwood Square Merchants Association, the concerts now have many co-sponsors among Plainfield's business community as well as support from the City of Plainfield and the Cultural & Heritage Commission.
June 15
The Persuaders and Bryson Jenkins Band (the first Plainfield Idol winner)
July 20
Yesterday's News and The Poni Tails
August 3 (Special National Night Out Concert)
Valarie Adams & Dimension Band and Sound Investment
August 17
The Son Bacanos (Golden Boy) and David Alen
More information about the concerts and applications for the Plainfield Idol competition are available from concerts coordinator Pat Fields at (908) 369-1152 or pat@meetingsoftheminds.com
-- Dan Damon
Not getting your own CLIPPINGS email daily? Click here to get started.
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Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Immigrants - NY Times - Immigrants as prey
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Published in the New York Times, Sunday, June 11, 2006
Dollars and Dreams: Immigrants as Prey
By GARY RIVLIN
SAN FRANCISCO
IT was when his immigration attorney asked him for $3,000 several years ago that Celso Lima Mejia started to wonder whether his lawyer was taking him for a very costly ride. Mr. Mejia, a Guatemalan immigrant who was residing illegally in the United States, said he had already paid Miguel Gadda $3,600 to help him apply for asylum. Mr. Mejia recalled in a recent interview that Mr. Gadda promised him that the legal fees — a large chunk of his annual pay of about $20,000 as a handyman — would land him a coveted prize: a green card allowing him to come out from the shadows and live in the United States as a permanent resident.
But immigration authorities rejected the application, and Mr. Mejia said Mr. Gadda pressed him for the extra $3,000 to appeal the decision. Until that point, Mr. Mejia said, Mr. Gadda had done virtually no work on the case — "He hadn't even done any prep work with me before my hearing" — but his asylum application had revealed him to immigration authorities. Mr. Mejia, who is now 29, felt that he had to keep fighting, so he scrounged up the money. And that was the last time he saw Mr. Gadda.
When Mr. Mejia found a deportation order in his mail in 2001, he rushed in panic to his lawyer's office. "But the office wasn't there anymore, and there was nowhere to find him," said Mr. Mejia, who gained permanent resident status — his green card — after turning to a second lawyer he described as "my angel."
Mr. Mejia wasn't Mr. Gadda's only victim. When the State Bar of California disbarred Mr. Gadda in 2002, it cited him for professional misconduct and legal incompetence involving eight illegal immigrants he had advised. (Mr. Mejia's case was not among them.)
Mr. Gadda is hardly alone. As the number of illegal immigrants in the country has swollen to what the Department of Homeland Security conservatively estimates at nine million, so have the ranks of those who inhabit the immigration business's underbelly, posing as well-meaning advisers to those in search of a new job, a new home and a green card if not full citizenship. Immigrants, strangers in a foreign land for whom a green card means a ticket to a fuller life, are ideal prey for con artists and would-be consultants out for a quick buck.
ANALYSTS, lawyers and immigration specialists say that the current debate over immigration reform is also providing a perfect business environment for those who prey on the undocumented in the Chinatowns, barrios and other immigrant enclaves around the country.
"Every time there's talk of a new law passing, these scammers basically pop up" and aim at immigrants, said Victor D. Nieblas, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles who teaches at Loyola Law School there. "It's big business."
The worst offenders, Mr. Nieblas and others said, tend to be immigration consultants, or "notarios" — nonlawyers who, whether or not they are qualified to do so, are in the business of helping aliens negotiate the immigration system. Even the name "notarios" rankles immigrant advocates: in many Latin American countries, a "notario público" is a professional licensed to represent people in legal matters.
"For unscrupulous attorneys and other practitioners, a change in the law represents a kind of open season on aliens," said Jennifer J. Barnes, the general counsel for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a unit of the Justice Department. "That's what's happened in the past when we've enacted changes in immigration law, and I'm sure if a new law passes this time, we'll see people out there trying to take advantage of the situation."
Yet that seems to be happening already. People who closely monitor the national immigration debate may know that the House of Representatives and the Senate are so far apart on their immigration bills that no new amnesty laws may be enacted — but that information reaches illegal immigrants only in fractured pieces. Even then, immigrant advocates say, some notarios and others milking the process for financial gain warp and bend the true parameters of asylum opportunities to take advantage of legions of hopefuls.
Mr. Nieblas, who is a host of a weekly immigration advice program on a Spanish-language radio station in Southern California, said he was already hearing from callers who contended that local notarios were "asking them for money so they can start processing people under the new law, though there is no new law."
Lori A. Nessel, an associate professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law who runs its Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, has picked up on the same chatter on the East Coast.
"The concern is that you have these notarios out there saying, 'Pay now and get your applications in now for the amnesty,' when there's no reason to be taking people's money until there's a law," Professor Nessel said.
Nelly Reyes is a well-regarded immigration consultant in San Francisco who has spent the last 15 years helping her Spanish-speaking clients fill out forms, translate documents and navigate the federal bureaucracy. She earns roughly $60,000 a year, and says that she could make several times that amount if she emulated the practices of some of her more nefarious competitors. "I've gotten two or three calls over the last month from people saying, 'Let's go into business together, this is the time to start making a lot of money,' " Ms. Reyes said.
By her estimation, more than half her counterparts should be put out of business, because they are either scam artists or incompetents selling skills they do not possess.
"What's scary right now," Ms. Reyes said, "is that people are saying, 'Whatever it takes, whatever I must pay to become legal.' "
"It's that attitude that people can take advantage of," she added.
Over the past three years, Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, has secured judicial orders to shut down a dozen notarios around the state. That includes the Aplicación de Oro, a large immigration consulting firm in West Texas that a judge ordered closed in January after Mr. Abbott said that its two owners had "scammed" hundreds of immigrants out of thousands of dollars each, according to a press release. In California, the state attorney general, Bill Lockyer, has obtained civil judgments against roughly two dozen immigration consultants since 2000, a department spokesman said.
But advocates for immigrants say that California and Texas are the exception to the rule, and that most local district attorneys, who are also charged with monitoring consumer fraud, contend that their resources are too thinly stretched to devote much — if any — time to investigating immigration consultants. Moreover, advocates say, the problem is so widespread in California, Texas, New York and other states where illegal immigrants tend to live that even the most well-meaning efforts seem futile.
"The authorities will close down one of these shops, and a couple of weeks later they'll open up someplace else," said Mr. Nieblas, who is also an officer in the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "There are literally hundreds of these businesses in the Los Angeles area alone that are targeting the community."
At the moment, the most common fraud perpetuated on illegal immigrants — and certainly the most lucrative — is the kind that Mr. Mejia and his new lawyer believe almost had him sent back to Guatemala. "There are any number of immigration scams, but the asylum scam is by far and away the most popular right now," said Nora Privitera, a lawyer for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. The brilliance of asylum fraud, at least from the perspective of the perpetrator, is that the federal government ends up sending most of the casualties back to their lands of origin.
"Their victims are typically deported and can't rat on them," Ms. Privitera said.
There are two general versions of the asylum scheme. The more simple of the two has a lawyer or notario convincing an illegal immigrant to pay the going rate of about $5,000 — more if a client is willing to pay for appeals — to apply for asylum. The payment changes hands, even though the illegal immigrant is unlikely to secure asylum status, which is meant for those who would face persecution back in their home country if they were deported.
That is among the accusations that the State Bar of California was leveling at Walter Pineda, an immigration lawyer, in a San Francisco hearing room last week. According to immigration experts, people typically emigrate from Mexico to search for better economic opportunities, not because they fear for their safety. Even so, Mr. Pineda routinely encouraged his Mexican clients to file "meritless" asylum applications, according to the state bar, which has accused him of more than two dozen counts of incompetence and five counts of moral turpitude for what it called "repeatedly and knowingly" lying to his clients.
The bar association contends that Mr. Pineda would routinely "take client money to file frivolous applications, spend no time actually trying to develop a viable position for the clients to stay legally in the United States, lose the applications for asylum and take more money to file frivolous appeals."
Doron Weinberg, Mr. Pineda's lawyer, said, "We admit to the general facts, but as you can imagine, we deny every judgment that has my client doing something reprehensible."
An immigration lawyer typically works hard for a $5,000 fee — assembling evidence, prepping witnesses, drawing up arguments to convince a skeptical immigration hearing officer that a client deserves asylum. Then there are cases like those of Mr. Mejia, the Guatemalan handyman who lost $6,600 pursuing his asylum case.
Guatemalan rebels kidnapped Mr. Mejia, the son of a government employee, when he was 7 years old and the country was in the midst of a prolonged civil war; two years after securing his release, his family fled Guatemala for the United States. Like so many illegal immigrants, Mr. Mejia and his parents did their best to live their lives out of the view of the authorities — until a family friend referred Mr. Gadda to them a half-dozen years ago.
Another lawyer might have been able to make a credible case that Mr. Mejia deserved asylum. But Mr. Gadda apparently was unwilling or unable to do so. Mr. Mejia says he believes his own experience reflects the accusations that the California bar made against Mr. Gadda: that he proved willing to collect fees but not to do the work for which he was paid.
"This was a lawyer who took money from his clients and repeatedly failed to perform legal services," said Sherrie B. McLetchie, the lead lawyer for the California bar in the disbarment proceedings against Mr. Gadda. And the undocumented "are among the most vulnerable clients any lawyer can represent," she said.
Despite his travails, Mr. Mejia stayed the course. It would eventually cost him over $10,000 more in legal fees beyond what he paid Mr. Gadda, but Ilyce Shugall, a local immigration lawyer, was able to secure him a green card in April. "I worked after work, and I worked on weekends," to pay the added fees, Mr. Mejia said.
Ms. Shugall said that Mr. Gadda "had made such a mess out of the asylum claim that we decided to drop it." Instead, Ms. Shugall, who works for the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale in San Francisco, pursued an alternative claim known as a "cancellation-of-removal" order. Such orders grant green cards to anyone who has lived in the United States for at least 10 years and can demonstrate that a parent or a child in the country legally would suffer "exceptional and unusual hardship" if the applicant was deported. Mr. Mejia, who arrived here in the late 1980's and later became the primary care provider for his ailing parents, met that criteria and won his green card.
MR. MEJIA was fortunate to have an advocate like Ms. Shugall, because cancellation-of-removal orders are often central to the other type of fraud involving an asylum claim. In it, a deceitful notario or lawyer tells potential clients that they qualify for a cancellation order, but does not disclose a crucial prerequisite: that even if they are care providers for a legal but ailing resident who is a parent or child, they must still prove that a loved one would suffer extreme hardship if the authorities deported the caregiver.
"That's a very difficult standard to meet, but people are not told that part of it," said Ms. Privitera of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The most insidious aspect of this unfortunate legal strategy, Ms. Privitera said, is that first the lawyer or immigration consultant must get someone into the system, because only if there is a removal order in place can someone petition to have the order rescinded, which would lead to a green card. The simplest way to do this is to request asylum, so the client will typically pay thousands of dollars for a futile asylum claim and, after the loss, will spend thousands of dollars more to pursue a legalization strategy that is far more likely to snare a deportation order than a green card.
"Once you're in immigration court, there's only two ways out," Ms. Privitera said. "You get granted something, or you get told to leave. There's no prosecutorial discretion for people who come into court because they've been defrauded."
Illegal immigrants who escape this trap are those who find a capable lawyer willing to take on their botched cases before they are deported — immigrants like Silvia Castillo of San Jose, Calif. Ms. Castillo, along with four other plaintiffs, has filed a suit accusing Rose Ann Martinez, an immigration consultant, and several San Francisco Bay Area lawyers of conspiring "on a fraudulent immigration scheme." Ms. Castillo, a housekeeper and single mother of two, said the process cost her about $10,000.
"My mother basically spent her entire life's savings," said Glancy Robles, her 16-year-old daughter.
According to the complaint, filed earlier this year in California, Ms. Martinez persuaded Ms. Castillo and her fellow plaintiffs, all of them illegal immigrants from Mexico, to pursue the cancellation-of-removal strategy. But, court papers say, Ms. Martinez never informed her clients that they also had to file an asylum application, which would put them in peril of deportation. The victims also contend that Ms. Martinez failed to tell them that a cancellation-of-removal order was rare and that they would be successful only if they also proved that their deportation would cause extreme hardship for a parent or child. Ms. Martinez declined to comment.
Because both of Ms. Castillo's children were born in the United States, they are citizens. But both are healthy. Ms. Castillo lost her case — and her family would have been forced to move back to Mexico if not for the intervention of Vaughan de Kirby, a San Francisco lawyer.
Mr. de Kirby was able to convince a judge that sending Ms. Castillo back to Mexico also meant deporting her two children, both of whom were in school at the time. He also was able to prove that her two daughters would experience extreme hardship if they were forced to leave the country, thereby clearing up the mess that he said Ms. Martinez — and the outside law firm she commissioned — had made of Ms. Castillo's case.
"Immigration consultants serve a valuable function, because they can operate at a cost factor for people who can't afford an attorney," Mr. de Kirby said. "But unfortunately they're not well regulated, and there are abuses."
Mr. Nieblas, the Los Angeles immigration lawyer, is not nearly so generous in his comments about notarios. He estimates that he meets with as many as 20 people a month who have shown up in his office after an immigration consultant has botched a case through incompetence or malfeasance. If it were up to him, he said, he would outlaw immigration consultants altogether.
Another Los Angeles immigration lawyer, Alan R. Diamante, says that "70 to 80 percent of my clients have either been victims of a notario, or a lawyer working together with a notario." He, too, says he does not believe that notarios play a legitimate role in handling the legal mechanics of immigration.
LIKE other lawyers interviewed for this article, both Mr. Nieblas and Mr. Diamante said that they would never advise clients to reveal their residency status to authorities on the chance that they might secure a cancellation-of-removal order. He said that the stakes were very high, and the chances of winning low.
"I've had clients come to me and say, 'I've got a son who is suffering from this disease or that disease, let me turn myself in,' " Mr. Nieblas said. "I always tell them no. But some then just find someone else to handle the case. They've heard from people on the streets that this is the perfect opportunity to get a green card, and they don't want to believe me — and they can always find a notario who'll take their case."
The undocumented are not always on the losing end of immigration schemes. In Chinatown in San Francisco, for instance, an immigrant can spend $20,000 to $40,000 over six to seven years fighting to secure a green card, said Steve W. Baughman, a local immigration lawyer. Alternatively, he said, the same person can find an unscrupulous consultant who, for roughly $5,000, "will teach you how to lie and cheat your way into a bogus asylum claim."
For example, the granting of asylum is nearly automatic for a Chinese expatriate who claims religious and political persecution because he or she is a member of the Falun Gong spiritual sect. So some immigration consultants, Mr. Baughman said, maintain libraries of materials and videos about the group so that illegal immigrants can fake membership in Falun Gong when an asylum officer quizzes them.
"I can hardly blame people for doing it," he said. "It's the supply side that needs to be dealt with."
The federal government's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman, does what it can to spread the word that illegal immigrants must be careful about whom they turn to when seeking legal assistance. "If people snuck in the country illegally, we still don't want them to be taken by someone hanging out a shingle on a street corner, claiming they're an immigration expert when they're not," Mr. Bentley said.
Yet the abuses of immigration consultants are hardly a top priority, Mr. Bentley acknowledged, for an agency now tucked inside the Department of Homeland Security.
The San Francisco district attorney's office will "vigorously prosecute any complaints we receive" about immigration consultants, said an assistant district attorney, June Cravett. Her office, she said, is trying to spread the word that it offers a haven for illegal immigrants who feel that they have been fleeced by a scam artist.
BUT limited resources mean that her office does not set up sting operations or the like, Ms. Cravett said. "Unfortunately, we haven't received that many complaints," she said.
The local authorities in Los Angeles have adopted a similar approach, said Mr. Diamante, a former president of the local Mexican American Bar Association. "They do one major token case every five years, it gets a lot of attention, and then that's it," he said.
Immigrant advocates and law enforcement officials in California point to the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a model enforcement program. But they say that while county officials have taken impressive steps to crack down on unscrupulous notarios, the office's experiences and limited resources still underscore how hard it is to rein in the problem.
"There are so many of them it's really hard to go after every single one," said Martha J. Donohoe, a deputy district attorney in the county who oversees her office's efforts to monitor immigration consultants. "Basically our focus has had to have been going after the really bad actors."
When she has a law clerk, Ms. Donohoe says, her office can monitor the immigration consultant industry more proactively. Otherwise, her office must wait until it receives complaints from local advocacy groups that represent illegal immigrants, she said.
"I hate to say it, but by the time we go after someone, they've typically hurt so many people," Ms. Donohoe said. "Typically it takes years to bring one of these cases, and the word has to really spread that someone is a bad, bad actor before we get people who are here illegally to bring a complaint."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/yourmoney/11migrate.html?pagewanted=print
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the New York Times, Sunday, June 11, 2006
Dollars and Dreams: Immigrants as Prey
By GARY RIVLIN
SAN FRANCISCO
IT was when his immigration attorney asked him for $3,000 several years ago that Celso Lima Mejia started to wonder whether his lawyer was taking him for a very costly ride. Mr. Mejia, a Guatemalan immigrant who was residing illegally in the United States, said he had already paid Miguel Gadda $3,600 to help him apply for asylum. Mr. Mejia recalled in a recent interview that Mr. Gadda promised him that the legal fees — a large chunk of his annual pay of about $20,000 as a handyman — would land him a coveted prize: a green card allowing him to come out from the shadows and live in the United States as a permanent resident.
But immigration authorities rejected the application, and Mr. Mejia said Mr. Gadda pressed him for the extra $3,000 to appeal the decision. Until that point, Mr. Mejia said, Mr. Gadda had done virtually no work on the case — "He hadn't even done any prep work with me before my hearing" — but his asylum application had revealed him to immigration authorities. Mr. Mejia, who is now 29, felt that he had to keep fighting, so he scrounged up the money. And that was the last time he saw Mr. Gadda.
When Mr. Mejia found a deportation order in his mail in 2001, he rushed in panic to his lawyer's office. "But the office wasn't there anymore, and there was nowhere to find him," said Mr. Mejia, who gained permanent resident status — his green card — after turning to a second lawyer he described as "my angel."
Mr. Mejia wasn't Mr. Gadda's only victim. When the State Bar of California disbarred Mr. Gadda in 2002, it cited him for professional misconduct and legal incompetence involving eight illegal immigrants he had advised. (Mr. Mejia's case was not among them.)
Mr. Gadda is hardly alone. As the number of illegal immigrants in the country has swollen to what the Department of Homeland Security conservatively estimates at nine million, so have the ranks of those who inhabit the immigration business's underbelly, posing as well-meaning advisers to those in search of a new job, a new home and a green card if not full citizenship. Immigrants, strangers in a foreign land for whom a green card means a ticket to a fuller life, are ideal prey for con artists and would-be consultants out for a quick buck.
ANALYSTS, lawyers and immigration specialists say that the current debate over immigration reform is also providing a perfect business environment for those who prey on the undocumented in the Chinatowns, barrios and other immigrant enclaves around the country.
"Every time there's talk of a new law passing, these scammers basically pop up" and aim at immigrants, said Victor D. Nieblas, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles who teaches at Loyola Law School there. "It's big business."
The worst offenders, Mr. Nieblas and others said, tend to be immigration consultants, or "notarios" — nonlawyers who, whether or not they are qualified to do so, are in the business of helping aliens negotiate the immigration system. Even the name "notarios" rankles immigrant advocates: in many Latin American countries, a "notario público" is a professional licensed to represent people in legal matters.
"For unscrupulous attorneys and other practitioners, a change in the law represents a kind of open season on aliens," said Jennifer J. Barnes, the general counsel for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a unit of the Justice Department. "That's what's happened in the past when we've enacted changes in immigration law, and I'm sure if a new law passes this time, we'll see people out there trying to take advantage of the situation."
Yet that seems to be happening already. People who closely monitor the national immigration debate may know that the House of Representatives and the Senate are so far apart on their immigration bills that no new amnesty laws may be enacted — but that information reaches illegal immigrants only in fractured pieces. Even then, immigrant advocates say, some notarios and others milking the process for financial gain warp and bend the true parameters of asylum opportunities to take advantage of legions of hopefuls.
Mr. Nieblas, who is a host of a weekly immigration advice program on a Spanish-language radio station in Southern California, said he was already hearing from callers who contended that local notarios were "asking them for money so they can start processing people under the new law, though there is no new law."
Lori A. Nessel, an associate professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law who runs its Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, has picked up on the same chatter on the East Coast.
"The concern is that you have these notarios out there saying, 'Pay now and get your applications in now for the amnesty,' when there's no reason to be taking people's money until there's a law," Professor Nessel said.
Nelly Reyes is a well-regarded immigration consultant in San Francisco who has spent the last 15 years helping her Spanish-speaking clients fill out forms, translate documents and navigate the federal bureaucracy. She earns roughly $60,000 a year, and says that she could make several times that amount if she emulated the practices of some of her more nefarious competitors. "I've gotten two or three calls over the last month from people saying, 'Let's go into business together, this is the time to start making a lot of money,' " Ms. Reyes said.
By her estimation, more than half her counterparts should be put out of business, because they are either scam artists or incompetents selling skills they do not possess.
"What's scary right now," Ms. Reyes said, "is that people are saying, 'Whatever it takes, whatever I must pay to become legal.' "
"It's that attitude that people can take advantage of," she added.
Over the past three years, Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general, has secured judicial orders to shut down a dozen notarios around the state. That includes the Aplicación de Oro, a large immigration consulting firm in West Texas that a judge ordered closed in January after Mr. Abbott said that its two owners had "scammed" hundreds of immigrants out of thousands of dollars each, according to a press release. In California, the state attorney general, Bill Lockyer, has obtained civil judgments against roughly two dozen immigration consultants since 2000, a department spokesman said.
But advocates for immigrants say that California and Texas are the exception to the rule, and that most local district attorneys, who are also charged with monitoring consumer fraud, contend that their resources are too thinly stretched to devote much — if any — time to investigating immigration consultants. Moreover, advocates say, the problem is so widespread in California, Texas, New York and other states where illegal immigrants tend to live that even the most well-meaning efforts seem futile.
"The authorities will close down one of these shops, and a couple of weeks later they'll open up someplace else," said Mr. Nieblas, who is also an officer in the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "There are literally hundreds of these businesses in the Los Angeles area alone that are targeting the community."
At the moment, the most common fraud perpetuated on illegal immigrants — and certainly the most lucrative — is the kind that Mr. Mejia and his new lawyer believe almost had him sent back to Guatemala. "There are any number of immigration scams, but the asylum scam is by far and away the most popular right now," said Nora Privitera, a lawyer for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. The brilliance of asylum fraud, at least from the perspective of the perpetrator, is that the federal government ends up sending most of the casualties back to their lands of origin.
"Their victims are typically deported and can't rat on them," Ms. Privitera said.
There are two general versions of the asylum scheme. The more simple of the two has a lawyer or notario convincing an illegal immigrant to pay the going rate of about $5,000 — more if a client is willing to pay for appeals — to apply for asylum. The payment changes hands, even though the illegal immigrant is unlikely to secure asylum status, which is meant for those who would face persecution back in their home country if they were deported.
That is among the accusations that the State Bar of California was leveling at Walter Pineda, an immigration lawyer, in a San Francisco hearing room last week. According to immigration experts, people typically emigrate from Mexico to search for better economic opportunities, not because they fear for their safety. Even so, Mr. Pineda routinely encouraged his Mexican clients to file "meritless" asylum applications, according to the state bar, which has accused him of more than two dozen counts of incompetence and five counts of moral turpitude for what it called "repeatedly and knowingly" lying to his clients.
The bar association contends that Mr. Pineda would routinely "take client money to file frivolous applications, spend no time actually trying to develop a viable position for the clients to stay legally in the United States, lose the applications for asylum and take more money to file frivolous appeals."
Doron Weinberg, Mr. Pineda's lawyer, said, "We admit to the general facts, but as you can imagine, we deny every judgment that has my client doing something reprehensible."
An immigration lawyer typically works hard for a $5,000 fee — assembling evidence, prepping witnesses, drawing up arguments to convince a skeptical immigration hearing officer that a client deserves asylum. Then there are cases like those of Mr. Mejia, the Guatemalan handyman who lost $6,600 pursuing his asylum case.
Guatemalan rebels kidnapped Mr. Mejia, the son of a government employee, when he was 7 years old and the country was in the midst of a prolonged civil war; two years after securing his release, his family fled Guatemala for the United States. Like so many illegal immigrants, Mr. Mejia and his parents did their best to live their lives out of the view of the authorities — until a family friend referred Mr. Gadda to them a half-dozen years ago.
Another lawyer might have been able to make a credible case that Mr. Mejia deserved asylum. But Mr. Gadda apparently was unwilling or unable to do so. Mr. Mejia says he believes his own experience reflects the accusations that the California bar made against Mr. Gadda: that he proved willing to collect fees but not to do the work for which he was paid.
"This was a lawyer who took money from his clients and repeatedly failed to perform legal services," said Sherrie B. McLetchie, the lead lawyer for the California bar in the disbarment proceedings against Mr. Gadda. And the undocumented "are among the most vulnerable clients any lawyer can represent," she said.
Despite his travails, Mr. Mejia stayed the course. It would eventually cost him over $10,000 more in legal fees beyond what he paid Mr. Gadda, but Ilyce Shugall, a local immigration lawyer, was able to secure him a green card in April. "I worked after work, and I worked on weekends," to pay the added fees, Mr. Mejia said.
Ms. Shugall said that Mr. Gadda "had made such a mess out of the asylum claim that we decided to drop it." Instead, Ms. Shugall, who works for the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale in San Francisco, pursued an alternative claim known as a "cancellation-of-removal" order. Such orders grant green cards to anyone who has lived in the United States for at least 10 years and can demonstrate that a parent or a child in the country legally would suffer "exceptional and unusual hardship" if the applicant was deported. Mr. Mejia, who arrived here in the late 1980's and later became the primary care provider for his ailing parents, met that criteria and won his green card.
MR. MEJIA was fortunate to have an advocate like Ms. Shugall, because cancellation-of-removal orders are often central to the other type of fraud involving an asylum claim. In it, a deceitful notario or lawyer tells potential clients that they qualify for a cancellation order, but does not disclose a crucial prerequisite: that even if they are care providers for a legal but ailing resident who is a parent or child, they must still prove that a loved one would suffer extreme hardship if the authorities deported the caregiver.
"That's a very difficult standard to meet, but people are not told that part of it," said Ms. Privitera of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. The most insidious aspect of this unfortunate legal strategy, Ms. Privitera said, is that first the lawyer or immigration consultant must get someone into the system, because only if there is a removal order in place can someone petition to have the order rescinded, which would lead to a green card. The simplest way to do this is to request asylum, so the client will typically pay thousands of dollars for a futile asylum claim and, after the loss, will spend thousands of dollars more to pursue a legalization strategy that is far more likely to snare a deportation order than a green card.
"Once you're in immigration court, there's only two ways out," Ms. Privitera said. "You get granted something, or you get told to leave. There's no prosecutorial discretion for people who come into court because they've been defrauded."
Illegal immigrants who escape this trap are those who find a capable lawyer willing to take on their botched cases before they are deported — immigrants like Silvia Castillo of San Jose, Calif. Ms. Castillo, along with four other plaintiffs, has filed a suit accusing Rose Ann Martinez, an immigration consultant, and several San Francisco Bay Area lawyers of conspiring "on a fraudulent immigration scheme." Ms. Castillo, a housekeeper and single mother of two, said the process cost her about $10,000.
"My mother basically spent her entire life's savings," said Glancy Robles, her 16-year-old daughter.
According to the complaint, filed earlier this year in California, Ms. Martinez persuaded Ms. Castillo and her fellow plaintiffs, all of them illegal immigrants from Mexico, to pursue the cancellation-of-removal strategy. But, court papers say, Ms. Martinez never informed her clients that they also had to file an asylum application, which would put them in peril of deportation. The victims also contend that Ms. Martinez failed to tell them that a cancellation-of-removal order was rare and that they would be successful only if they also proved that their deportation would cause extreme hardship for a parent or child. Ms. Martinez declined to comment.
Because both of Ms. Castillo's children were born in the United States, they are citizens. But both are healthy. Ms. Castillo lost her case — and her family would have been forced to move back to Mexico if not for the intervention of Vaughan de Kirby, a San Francisco lawyer.
Mr. de Kirby was able to convince a judge that sending Ms. Castillo back to Mexico also meant deporting her two children, both of whom were in school at the time. He also was able to prove that her two daughters would experience extreme hardship if they were forced to leave the country, thereby clearing up the mess that he said Ms. Martinez — and the outside law firm she commissioned — had made of Ms. Castillo's case.
"Immigration consultants serve a valuable function, because they can operate at a cost factor for people who can't afford an attorney," Mr. de Kirby said. "But unfortunately they're not well regulated, and there are abuses."
Mr. Nieblas, the Los Angeles immigration lawyer, is not nearly so generous in his comments about notarios. He estimates that he meets with as many as 20 people a month who have shown up in his office after an immigration consultant has botched a case through incompetence or malfeasance. If it were up to him, he said, he would outlaw immigration consultants altogether.
Another Los Angeles immigration lawyer, Alan R. Diamante, says that "70 to 80 percent of my clients have either been victims of a notario, or a lawyer working together with a notario." He, too, says he does not believe that notarios play a legitimate role in handling the legal mechanics of immigration.
LIKE other lawyers interviewed for this article, both Mr. Nieblas and Mr. Diamante said that they would never advise clients to reveal their residency status to authorities on the chance that they might secure a cancellation-of-removal order. He said that the stakes were very high, and the chances of winning low.
"I've had clients come to me and say, 'I've got a son who is suffering from this disease or that disease, let me turn myself in,' " Mr. Nieblas said. "I always tell them no. But some then just find someone else to handle the case. They've heard from people on the streets that this is the perfect opportunity to get a green card, and they don't want to believe me — and they can always find a notario who'll take their case."
The undocumented are not always on the losing end of immigration schemes. In Chinatown in San Francisco, for instance, an immigrant can spend $20,000 to $40,000 over six to seven years fighting to secure a green card, said Steve W. Baughman, a local immigration lawyer. Alternatively, he said, the same person can find an unscrupulous consultant who, for roughly $5,000, "will teach you how to lie and cheat your way into a bogus asylum claim."
For example, the granting of asylum is nearly automatic for a Chinese expatriate who claims religious and political persecution because he or she is a member of the Falun Gong spiritual sect. So some immigration consultants, Mr. Baughman said, maintain libraries of materials and videos about the group so that illegal immigrants can fake membership in Falun Gong when an asylum officer quizzes them.
"I can hardly blame people for doing it," he said. "It's the supply side that needs to be dealt with."
The federal government's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman, does what it can to spread the word that illegal immigrants must be careful about whom they turn to when seeking legal assistance. "If people snuck in the country illegally, we still don't want them to be taken by someone hanging out a shingle on a street corner, claiming they're an immigration expert when they're not," Mr. Bentley said.
Yet the abuses of immigration consultants are hardly a top priority, Mr. Bentley acknowledged, for an agency now tucked inside the Department of Homeland Security.
The San Francisco district attorney's office will "vigorously prosecute any complaints we receive" about immigration consultants, said an assistant district attorney, June Cravett. Her office, she said, is trying to spread the word that it offers a haven for illegal immigrants who feel that they have been fleeced by a scam artist.
BUT limited resources mean that her office does not set up sting operations or the like, Ms. Cravett said. "Unfortunately, we haven't received that many complaints," she said.
The local authorities in Los Angeles have adopted a similar approach, said Mr. Diamante, a former president of the local Mexican American Bar Association. "They do one major token case every five years, it gets a lot of attention, and then that's it," he said.
Immigrant advocates and law enforcement officials in California point to the district attorney's office in Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, as a model enforcement program. But they say that while county officials have taken impressive steps to crack down on unscrupulous notarios, the office's experiences and limited resources still underscore how hard it is to rein in the problem.
"There are so many of them it's really hard to go after every single one," said Martha J. Donohoe, a deputy district attorney in the county who oversees her office's efforts to monitor immigration consultants. "Basically our focus has had to have been going after the really bad actors."
When she has a law clerk, Ms. Donohoe says, her office can monitor the immigration consultant industry more proactively. Otherwise, her office must wait until it receives complaints from local advocacy groups that represent illegal immigrants, she said.
"I hate to say it, but by the time we go after someone, they've typically hurt so many people," Ms. Donohoe said. "Typically it takes years to bring one of these cases, and the word has to really spread that someone is a bad, bad actor before we get people who are here illegally to bring a complaint."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/yourmoney/11migrate.html?pagewanted=print
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Schools - Courier - High School athletic director on hot seat over omission
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Published in the Courier News, Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Omission on application puts focus on athletic director
By CHAD WEIHRAUCH
Staff Writer
The Plainfield school district's athletic director failed to disclose on his job application that he previously was fired for hosting two parties for high-school girls' basketball players at which alcohol was available and for falling asleep in bed with teenage girls after both parties.
Asked in 2001 if he had "ever been dismissed, asked to resign or have any contract of employment not renewed," John Ahern, who is also the district's supervisor of physical education and health, checked a box saying "No."
But Ahern had been fired from one job in New Jersey -- and was nearly terminated from another in New York -- because of public backlash stemming from the parties involving alcohol and female high-school students 20 years ago at his former home in Brick.
His hiring in Plainfield in 2001 points to possible gaps in the system used to check the backgrounds of prospective district employees.
The incidents came to light again recently after parents upset with Ahern over high-school sports issues sent an unsigned letter March 18 to the school board detailing his past and asking why he had been hired.
"More importantly, how many more people do we have in our district who you have not done careful background checks on?" said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Courier News.
"Until this information came out, they felt like there was nothing the board could do," said Ron Feldhun, a former assistant football coach at the high school who has been involved in a dispute with the athletic director over coaching issues.
Ahern declined to comment on his job application or the anonymous letter.
Middletown job lost
Ahern has lost at least one job -- and was blasted years later by New York school officials -- because of a 1985 incident that occurred during his time as a math instructor at a Monmouth County high school.
According to accounts published in the Asbury Park Press, he was a teacher and girls basketball coach at High School South in Middletown in 1985 when he hosted two parties for his players that involved alcohol at his home in Brick.
There were several other coaches and instructors at the parties in February and March 1985, along with about 15 girls. A few underage players testified they drank beer at Ahern's home, but teachers said they did not directly serve it to students, the newspaper reported.
Ahern, then about 30 years old, also was accused of falling asleep in his bed with teenage girls after the gatherings -- but he denied any inappropriate behavior and was never charged with any crime, the newspaper reported.
He said afterward that he had possibly allowed himself to get too close to his students, but he said they continued to support him despite the allegations, according to the articles.
"Nobody outside the clique would understand. In retrospect, I guess it would be tough to say I'd do the same thing again. Maybe there was poor judgment," he said in an interview published in November 1985.
According to the Asbury Park Press, more than half a dozen other school district employees, including an assistant basketball coach who admitted kissing two 17-year-old girls at the parties, also were disciplined or fired after the incidents.
Ahern was fired from his post in Middletown, and according to newspaper reports, his New Jersey teaching credentials were revoked a few years later.
Teaching license revoked
In August 1986, Ahern filed an application to teach in New York City and was hired at New Dorp High School in Staten Island. State education officials said he indicated on the employment form that he had never been in trouble with a previous employer, The New York Post reported.
The school board in Staten Island found out about the New Jersey charges a year later. He was not terminated, but the New York Department of Education revoked his teaching license in 1989.
The New York Post reported that in 1987, New York City Board of Education employees did not need a state license to teach in the city; that policy changed in 1992.
Ahern continued working in New York schools for about a decade, ending up as a dean at Wingate High School in Brooklyn in 1998.
When the incident came to light that year, he was removed from his teaching position and placed in an administrative position.
Edward Stancik, New York's special schools investigator, reportedly investigated Ahern after the educator's ex-wife told officials of his past. Stancik excoriated school officials for their lack of oversight.
"As a result of the board's incomprehensible refusal to act, a teacher who engaged in completely unacceptable behavior, who was fired as a result, who lied to conceal this fact and whose credentials have been revoked in two states, is now a tenured teacher and dean in the New York City school system," Stancik said.
According to Rich Vespucci, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education, Ahern regained his teaching certification in the Garden State in 1998, after a state agency "reviewed evidence of rehabilitation."
After a brief stint as athletic director at Belvidere High School, he applied for the same job in Plainfield in 2001.
At that point, he again checked a box on his application denying he had ever been dismissed or asked to resign from any job. He was hired the same year.
No official comment
Last week, Plainfield school administrators declined to comment on Ahern's employment or the district's hiring policies.
District spokesman Louis Rivera said Ahern was approved by the school board under former Superintendent Larry Leverett -- and therefore the current schools chief, Paula Howard, who arrived in the district in 2003, could not talk about it.
"She really can't comment on it," Rivera said.
A labor attorney for the district, Mark Tabenkin, also declined comment, citing the matter as a personnel issue.
Board of Education President Agurs Linward Cathcart Jr. declined comment on Ahern's employment or whether officials were considering taking action because of the omission on his application.
The district job application signed by Ahern indicates an employee can be discharged for providing an "incorrect, incomplete or false statement."
But Cathcart acknowledged school board members have received questioning letters that contained news articles about Ahern's past.
"We did receive some information, but this is a personnel matter, so I can't comment on it right now," he said.
Feldhun, who was an assistant football coach at Plainfield High School from 1994 to 1998, said parents initially were upset with Ahern about a coaching spat last year. Some administrators, Ahern among them, advocated hiring another head football coach to replace Clinton Jones, leading to vocal protest at several school board meetings.
The board voted to keep Jones as coach for 2005-06.
Feldhun added he went to the school board about the perception Ahern played favorites or displayed "potential racism" toward some coaches beginning in 2004.
After the Jones flap last year, Feldhun said angry parents tracked down information about Ahern and brought it to the board. But he said it is "beyond his understanding" that officials so far have taken no action.a"
Chad Weihrauch can be reached at (908) 707-3137 or cweihrau@gannett.com
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060614/NEWS/606140312
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Courier News, Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Omission on application puts focus on athletic director
By CHAD WEIHRAUCH
Staff Writer
The Plainfield school district's athletic director failed to disclose on his job application that he previously was fired for hosting two parties for high-school girls' basketball players at which alcohol was available and for falling asleep in bed with teenage girls after both parties.
Asked in 2001 if he had "ever been dismissed, asked to resign or have any contract of employment not renewed," John Ahern, who is also the district's supervisor of physical education and health, checked a box saying "No."
But Ahern had been fired from one job in New Jersey -- and was nearly terminated from another in New York -- because of public backlash stemming from the parties involving alcohol and female high-school students 20 years ago at his former home in Brick.
His hiring in Plainfield in 2001 points to possible gaps in the system used to check the backgrounds of prospective district employees.
The incidents came to light again recently after parents upset with Ahern over high-school sports issues sent an unsigned letter March 18 to the school board detailing his past and asking why he had been hired.
"More importantly, how many more people do we have in our district who you have not done careful background checks on?" said the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Courier News.
"Until this information came out, they felt like there was nothing the board could do," said Ron Feldhun, a former assistant football coach at the high school who has been involved in a dispute with the athletic director over coaching issues.
Ahern declined to comment on his job application or the anonymous letter.
Middletown job lost
Ahern has lost at least one job -- and was blasted years later by New York school officials -- because of a 1985 incident that occurred during his time as a math instructor at a Monmouth County high school.
According to accounts published in the Asbury Park Press, he was a teacher and girls basketball coach at High School South in Middletown in 1985 when he hosted two parties for his players that involved alcohol at his home in Brick.
There were several other coaches and instructors at the parties in February and March 1985, along with about 15 girls. A few underage players testified they drank beer at Ahern's home, but teachers said they did not directly serve it to students, the newspaper reported.
Ahern, then about 30 years old, also was accused of falling asleep in his bed with teenage girls after the gatherings -- but he denied any inappropriate behavior and was never charged with any crime, the newspaper reported.
He said afterward that he had possibly allowed himself to get too close to his students, but he said they continued to support him despite the allegations, according to the articles.
"Nobody outside the clique would understand. In retrospect, I guess it would be tough to say I'd do the same thing again. Maybe there was poor judgment," he said in an interview published in November 1985.
According to the Asbury Park Press, more than half a dozen other school district employees, including an assistant basketball coach who admitted kissing two 17-year-old girls at the parties, also were disciplined or fired after the incidents.
Ahern was fired from his post in Middletown, and according to newspaper reports, his New Jersey teaching credentials were revoked a few years later.
Teaching license revoked
In August 1986, Ahern filed an application to teach in New York City and was hired at New Dorp High School in Staten Island. State education officials said he indicated on the employment form that he had never been in trouble with a previous employer, The New York Post reported.
The school board in Staten Island found out about the New Jersey charges a year later. He was not terminated, but the New York Department of Education revoked his teaching license in 1989.
The New York Post reported that in 1987, New York City Board of Education employees did not need a state license to teach in the city; that policy changed in 1992.
Ahern continued working in New York schools for about a decade, ending up as a dean at Wingate High School in Brooklyn in 1998.
When the incident came to light that year, he was removed from his teaching position and placed in an administrative position.
Edward Stancik, New York's special schools investigator, reportedly investigated Ahern after the educator's ex-wife told officials of his past. Stancik excoriated school officials for their lack of oversight.
"As a result of the board's incomprehensible refusal to act, a teacher who engaged in completely unacceptable behavior, who was fired as a result, who lied to conceal this fact and whose credentials have been revoked in two states, is now a tenured teacher and dean in the New York City school system," Stancik said.
According to Rich Vespucci, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education, Ahern regained his teaching certification in the Garden State in 1998, after a state agency "reviewed evidence of rehabilitation."
After a brief stint as athletic director at Belvidere High School, he applied for the same job in Plainfield in 2001.
At that point, he again checked a box on his application denying he had ever been dismissed or asked to resign from any job. He was hired the same year.
No official comment
Last week, Plainfield school administrators declined to comment on Ahern's employment or the district's hiring policies.
District spokesman Louis Rivera said Ahern was approved by the school board under former Superintendent Larry Leverett -- and therefore the current schools chief, Paula Howard, who arrived in the district in 2003, could not talk about it.
"She really can't comment on it," Rivera said.
A labor attorney for the district, Mark Tabenkin, also declined comment, citing the matter as a personnel issue.
Board of Education President Agurs Linward Cathcart Jr. declined comment on Ahern's employment or whether officials were considering taking action because of the omission on his application.
The district job application signed by Ahern indicates an employee can be discharged for providing an "incorrect, incomplete or false statement."
But Cathcart acknowledged school board members have received questioning letters that contained news articles about Ahern's past.
"We did receive some information, but this is a personnel matter, so I can't comment on it right now," he said.
Feldhun, who was an assistant football coach at Plainfield High School from 1994 to 1998, said parents initially were upset with Ahern about a coaching spat last year. Some administrators, Ahern among them, advocated hiring another head football coach to replace Clinton Jones, leading to vocal protest at several school board meetings.
The board voted to keep Jones as coach for 2005-06.
Feldhun added he went to the school board about the perception Ahern played favorites or displayed "potential racism" toward some coaches beginning in 2004.
After the Jones flap last year, Feldhun said angry parents tracked down information about Ahern and brought it to the board. But he said it is "beyond his understanding" that officials so far have taken no action.a"
Chad Weihrauch can be reached at (908) 707-3137 or cweihrau@gannett.com
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060614/NEWS/606140312
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Schools - Courier - Plainfield hopes rise with Emerson school groundbreaking
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Published in the Courier News, Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Plainfield hopes rise with school groundbreaking
$14 million Emerson Elementary project moves ahead
By CHAD WEIHRAUCH
Staff Writer
PLAINFIELD -- City officials and children came out to an empty lot in the city's East End on Tuesday evening to celebrate the long-awaited groundbreaking for the new Emerson Elementary School.
District officials received the approval late last month from the state Schools Construction Corp. that finally allowed them to go ahead with the estimated $14 million project.
"Ultimately, I guess the message was this is one school out of many," said district spokesman Louis Rivera, pointing to other building efforts the district would like to fund. "The swing schools are state-of-the-art buildings, but there's nothing like coming home and going back to your school."
Several years ago, the district outfitted the former National Starch headquarters building on West Front Street to accept students from two elementary schools. Students attend classes temporarily at the "swing school" building while repairs and construction are performed at their original school.
Clinton Elementary students were shifted to the swing school for about 18 months but returned to their renovated building last year. Students from Emerson Elementary have been at the swing school since their building was demolished in January 2005, said Michelle Curry, president of the school's parent-teacher association.
Curry said she looks forward to the completion of the new building, which is slated for September 2007.
"It's going to be good for the kids and the neighborhood to see it go up. It's going to be progress," she said.
The Schools Construction Corp. is the agency in charge of funding projects in districts across the state. It announced last July that it had run out of money and would not be able to pay for hundreds of proposed construction efforts.
But Emerson Elementary -- at about 100 years old and one of Plainfield's oldest schools -- made the cut.
Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs said finally seeing construction begin sparks new hope other projects might see the light of day. For example, the district was denied funding for a new middle-school building, something many officials have said is sorely needed because of increased enrollment.
"It means quite a bit to the district. It shows we are still working for the kids and that something positive is happening for the community," she said.
There are symbolic hopes invested in Emerson Elementary, and then there are the smaller, more direct ones.
Curry has two children, one of whom attends Emerson, and said it will be nice to have kids attend classes in their own neighborhood, instead of being bused to the swing school on the other side of the city.
"It's going to mean a lot for them to go back to their school and be close to home," she said.
Chad Weihrauch can be reached at (908) 707-3137 or cweihrau@gannett.com
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060614/NEWS/606140310
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Published in the Courier News, Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Plainfield hopes rise with school groundbreaking
$14 million Emerson Elementary project moves ahead
By CHAD WEIHRAUCH
Staff Writer
PLAINFIELD -- City officials and children came out to an empty lot in the city's East End on Tuesday evening to celebrate the long-awaited groundbreaking for the new Emerson Elementary School.
District officials received the approval late last month from the state Schools Construction Corp. that finally allowed them to go ahead with the estimated $14 million project.
"Ultimately, I guess the message was this is one school out of many," said district spokesman Louis Rivera, pointing to other building efforts the district would like to fund. "The swing schools are state-of-the-art buildings, but there's nothing like coming home and going back to your school."
Several years ago, the district outfitted the former National Starch headquarters building on West Front Street to accept students from two elementary schools. Students attend classes temporarily at the "swing school" building while repairs and construction are performed at their original school.
Clinton Elementary students were shifted to the swing school for about 18 months but returned to their renovated building last year. Students from Emerson Elementary have been at the swing school since their building was demolished in January 2005, said Michelle Curry, president of the school's parent-teacher association.
Curry said she looks forward to the completion of the new building, which is slated for September 2007.
"It's going to be good for the kids and the neighborhood to see it go up. It's going to be progress," she said.
The Schools Construction Corp. is the agency in charge of funding projects in districts across the state. It announced last July that it had run out of money and would not be able to pay for hundreds of proposed construction efforts.
But Emerson Elementary -- at about 100 years old and one of Plainfield's oldest schools -- made the cut.
Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs said finally seeing construction begin sparks new hope other projects might see the light of day. For example, the district was denied funding for a new middle-school building, something many officials have said is sorely needed because of increased enrollment.
"It means quite a bit to the district. It shows we are still working for the kids and that something positive is happening for the community," she said.
There are symbolic hopes invested in Emerson Elementary, and then there are the smaller, more direct ones.
Curry has two children, one of whom attends Emerson, and said it will be nice to have kids attend classes in their own neighborhood, instead of being bused to the swing school on the other side of the city.
"It's going to mean a lot for them to go back to their school and be close to home," she said.
Chad Weihrauch can be reached at (908) 707-3137 or cweihrau@gannett.com
http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060614/NEWS/606140310
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff and Clippings have no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these articles nor are Plainfield Today, Plainfield Stuff or Clippings endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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