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FEC Questions Pallone Too

By Art Gallagher

The Federal Election Commission is requiring that Pallone for Congress amend its 30 Day Post General disclosure, to address discrepancies with previously filed reports and apparent inaccuracies in the reporting the aggregate contributions of two donors during the 2010 election cycle.

Pallone has until January 18, 2011 to submit the amended report, and any other reports that must be corrected as a result of the errors.

During the 2010 election cycle, Pallone raised $2,247,629.82 and spent $1,951,239.11.  He had $3,229,847.56 on hand on November 22, according to his post general report.

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FEC Questions Little’s Campaign Contributions

By Art Gallagher

The Federal Election Commission has requested that Anna Little’s congressional campaign clarify their post election disclosure over contributions that were received after the conclusion of the general election. FEC regulations state that contributions for the general election be accepted after the polls close only to the extent that the a campaign is in debt.

Little’s November 22 “30 Day Post General Report” indicated that the campaign had $9,677.38 cash on hand.  $14,600 in contributions were received in the three days immediately after the election.  FEC regulations permit campaigns to keep contributions that were mailed and postmarked prior to the conclusion of the election.  Contributions that were hand delivered after the polls closed, if any, would have to be returned to the donors.

The FEC requires that the Little campaign answer their inquiry by January 11, 2012.

MMM has received an inquiry about a rumour that the Little campaign retained over $100,000 in contributions after the election.  That rumour is obviously false.

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Gifts For Trenton Dems, Rivera-Soto and The NJEA

By Art Gallagher

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce simultaneously played the roles of Scrooge and Santa Claus this week.

With his inartful comments about people receiving unemployment benefits, and his equally ignoble apology wherein he tried to deflect the attention to the dual office holding of the Legislature’s Democratic leadership and accused Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver of playing the race card in her criticism of his remarks, DeCroce appeared as Scrooge to “these people” on the unemployment dole and Santa to the Trenton Democrats, Supreme Court Justice Rivera-Soto and the NJEA.

While the Legislature should be focused on reforming civil service and COAH before the 2 % property tax increase cap takes effect on January 1, the leadership was engaged in what Governor Christie called a “food fight” over DeCroce’s gaffes.

Rather than drawing attention to dual office holding and Oliver’s willingness to play the race card, DeCroce deflected media attention away from the controversy over Rivera-Soto’s unwillingness to participate in State Supreme Court decisions so long as a temporary justice is sitting on the court.  The NJEA was really let off the hook by DeCroce’s remarks as the main stream media apparently completely missed the explosive videosreleased by citizen journalist James O’Keefe that expose union leaders promising to protect teachers who engage in sexual behavior with students.

The gift that DeCroce gave the Democrats may well keep giving throughout 2011 when the entire legislature will be on the November ballot.  

If the Legislative Redistricting Commission draws an equitable map New Jersey should have the first competitive legislative elections in 12 years. For most of the last decade New Jersey cast more Republican votes than Democratic votes for legislators, yet Democrats have dominated the Senate and the Assembly due to gerrymandering of the districts.  A new district map is due this coming winter.

If the coming election appears to be competitive and if DeCroce is effectively running for Assembly Speaker, count on the New Jersey Democratic machine running against DeCroce in much the same way the GOP ran against Nancy Pelosi in the recent national election.

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Unemployment “Insurance” Needs To Be Reformed

By Art Gallagher

Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce raised an important issue this week—the insolvency of the Unemployment Trust Fund which is in debt to the federal government for almost $2 billion–and then promptly torpedoed his message with a poor choice of words when he called those collecting “those people.”

Now the story in the media has become DeCroce’s insensitivity, his apology, the six figures he and his wife are collecting from their state jobs and their pensions.   My friend Bob Ingle points out that DeCroce is taking the heat from his Democratic colleagues by attempting to change the subject to dual office holding.

My experience as beneficiary of unemployment insurance is very limited.  In the late 80’s, the last time the economy was this bad, I lost a high paying job “through no fault of my own.”  I went to the unemployment office, was interviewed and filled out forms.  This was my first, and only to date, experience seeking any government assistance.  I didn’t like it.  Fortunately I was young and single with responsibilities for no one but myself.

Rather than take the handout, even though I had paid into it, I downsized my lifestyle by moving into a smaller apartment and took a low paying job that I was over qualified for.  

I didn’t consider that a major decision at the time, but in retrospect it was a pivotal decision in my life.  I never went back to “the corporate world.”  I was happy and thriving in the “small business world.”  It took a long time to get my income back to the level I enjoyed in “the corporate world.”   When I realized I was tapped out and wasn’t so happy any longer working at the small business I was employed by I found that I couldn’t go back to the corporate world.  I was a “stray cat.” Even if I could have gotten such a job, I would have hated it.  So I started my own small business.

As an employer I became acquainted with the unemployment fund again.  I was paying into it.  For the first 8-10 years of I didn’t even notice it.  Business was great and growing.  I was hiring, rarely firing.  Contributions to the unemployment fund were an insignificant portion of my quarterly payments to the State.

Toward the end of the boom, my most valuable employee informed me she was pregnant.  The news was not as life changing to me as it was to her, yet it was a significant and unexpected development.  She had not had a child in 20 years and was not planning another.  I relied heavily on her.   She knew the administrative aspects of my business better than I did.  I didn’t know them at all!  This major personal development in my trusted employee’s life exposed a major weakness in my business that would require an expensive adjustment.

Assuming the economy would continue to boom and that business would continue to thrive, my plan was for my most valuable employee to spend her pregnancy training her replacement while herself training for the new job that I invented for her to come back to after her pregnancy leave.  It was an expensive plan, but it worked.  The administrative aspects of my business became documented with a manual that my new hire referred to often as she mastered her job. My long term employee spent months answering questions, documenting answers and taking business courses from Brookdale online, preparing for her return.

Given that I was expecting her back, and given that business remained strong, I carried the cost of my long term employee’s health care during her pregnancy leave.  It was a good thing I did, as there were major complications, the baby (who is now a brilliant and delightful 4 year old who is terribly disruptive when she comes to visit the business) needed surgery and a long quarantine period.  The maternity costs and the baby’s early care cost almost $400,000.  The care they received probably wouldn’t have been as good and the taxpayers would have picked up the tab had I not carried the heath care premiums.

But the downside for me was that a 3 month maternity leave turned into an 8 month maternity leave.  When my employee came back to work, she said she could only handle part time.  The truth was she probably wasn’t ready to work, but the pregnancy disability benefits had run out. 

After a couple of months on part time, I told my employee I needed her full time.  She quit.  This gets me back to the Unemployment Trust Fund and its management. 

Unbelievably to me, and over my objections, she was granted unemployment benefits.  Why did I object?  Because I had offered her a full time job, the offer was still on the table, but the folks managing the Unemployment Trust Fund gave her benefits instead.

A quarter, two or three later I noticed that my payment to the State had increased substantially.  Figuring it was a mistake, I asked my bookkeeper for an explanation.  No mistake, my unemployment insurance premiums had skyrocketed due to claims history.  A large portion of the cost was the premium on my own salary.  As the owner of a corporation I couldn’t collect on “insurance” I was paying for.  This would be illegal in the private market.

Now, a few years later with an even higher claims history, my contribution to the Unemployment Trust Fund is 3-4 X higher than the quarterly payroll taxes I pay to the State, though the actual number is a great deal lower.   This cost is a major impediment to me hiring new employees, as it is for hundreds, if not thousands of other small business owners.

There are legal and illegal ways around having to pay high unemployment premiums. The legal way, starting a new company with no history to pay employees is probably the option I’ll follow, if I decide to grow the business again. Employee leasing is also an option.  Both options are unproductive and costly, but probably not as costly as paying 5+% of payroll into the insolvent Unemployment Trust Fund. Closing the existing corporation is not an easy option for me, and many other businesses, as the existing corporation owns assets that could not be transferred without costly legal, accounting and tax consequences.  Small businesses owners are confronted with a choice of having to create complicated and costly corporate structures in order to grow, not to grow, or to cheat.  Many will choose to cheat, which is an impediment to growth in the long run, and costly to the State treasury in the short and long run.

Cheating is a major issue on the beneficiary side of the unemployment equation that no one wants to talk about.  There is no accountability for those receiving unemployment benefits.  There may be no way of knowing how many people are gaming the system, working “off the books” while collecting.  We all know it is happening.

As indelicate as DeCroce’s words were, he point was accurate. We need to give the unemployed more incentives to make the difficult but inevitable lifestyle choice decisions and find ways to survive economically either by accepting jobs they once never would have considered or starting businesses.  We also need to remove the disincentives from businesses who want to employ people but won’t because the risks are too high for the potential returns.

Most importantly and not yet addressed in a major way, we need to bring management and accountability to the administration of the Unemployment Trust Fund.

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Little Holds Her Ground

By Art Gallagher

Declaring that it was not a partisan issue but an individual decision, Highlands Mayor Anna Little again joined the two Democrats on Highlands Council in approving a amendment to the Highlands PBA contract, over the objections of her Republican successor, Council President Frank Nolan, and her Republican predecessor, Councilman Rick O’Neil.

In introducing the resolution to the public, Little distributed the statement she posted on her facebook page over the weekend.

Little said that the new agreement would result in a saving of $500,000 to Highlands taxpayers vs. a net savings of $34,000 had the resolution failed, which would have resulted in layoffs of three police officer.  During her remarks, Little admitted the numbers in her statement were her “beliefs” and the result of assumptions regarding police overtime of $18,000 per month provided by the Police Chief.  She admitted that her numbers had not been certified by the Chief Financial Officer.

Little addressed the penalties in the new agreement only after Nolan brought them up.  Nolan asserted that Little’s calculations were off by at least $300,000, which she disputed.  Nolan argued that the council should not accept the penalities knowing that there will very likely layoffs necessary that will trigger the penalites.  At that point Little scolded Nolan for speaking out of turn regarding Executive Session matters that council had not agreed to make public.

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All Eyes On Highlands Tonight

Will Anna Little End Her Term As Highlands Mayor As A Christie Republican or As A Corzine Democrat?

Dramitization. Neither Anna Little nor Jon Corzine really look like this.

By Art Gallagher

Tonight in Highlands we find out if Anna Little has come to her senses or if she really has forsaken any future in the Republican Party.

In case you missed it, on December 1 Little inexplicably returned to Highlands from the campaign trail for the 2012 congressional race to join her Democratic colleagues on the governing body in approving a hastily drawn labor agreement with the Highlands PBA that undermines the plans of her Republican successor as Mayor, Council President Frank Nolan.

Her actions have lead many of her recent supporters, including yours truly, to question who Little really is. Others have been saying, “I told you so.”

Is Little the “Christie Republican” she campaigned for Congress as, or is she a political opportunist “Corzine Democrat?”   Did she vote with the Democrats on December 1 to give herself some time to study the agreement  before making her final decision with the vote that will occur tonight?  Will she make the tough, yet potentially unpopular choice to reduce the size of government and save taxpayers money, ala Governor Christie, or will she hamstring her successor like Corzine did to Christie in 2009 when he made a hasty deal with the state workers union out of political expediency.

Early indications are that Little has left us for the leftists.  Late Sunday night, apparently in response to my post this weekend, Will The Real Anna Little Please Stand Up, the Mayor posted a grossly inaccurate and incomplete justification of her support for the PBA deal on her facebook page.  “Fuzzy math on facebook,” is how one former supporter described it.

There are two major items missing from the “Fuzzy math on facebook” piece. 

1) The penalties included in the agreement, payable by Highlands taxpayers to members of the Highlands PBA, that could run anywhere from $60,000, to $150,000 should layoffs become necessary in the next 18 months.

2) Little knows that Nolan has started conversations with Middletown about a shared services agreement for police that could potentially save Highlands taxpayers high six figures or more, and return Highlands to solvency, for many years to come.    This new deal complicates a potential shared services agreement and reduces the savings should it occur. 

Democratic Councilman Chris Francy, who promised regionalization in his unsuccessful campaign for Mayor last November, said “Its only $60,000,” when asked to justify his vote for  the agreement on December 1st when he knows about the potential shared services deal coming in 2011.    Maybe Little is thinking the same way.

Hopefully Little will come to her senses tonight.

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Explosive New O’Keefe Video

NJEA PROTECTS SEXUAL PREDATORS!

Hat tip to InTheLobby for this one.

James O’Keefe, the conservative journalist who brought down ACORN and who released the TEACHERS UNION GONE WILD in October, released Happy Holidays the Teacher Unions.

In this video, NJEA and AFT leaders throughout New Jersey first bash Governor Christie, which is nothing new. 

As the video progresses, the “star” of the video, a male voice with a real or faked British accent posing as a teacher, confesses to “kiddy fiddling” and sexual touching of students to union officials who say they’ve dealt with such circumstances before and that they will back him up.  One union official advises the fake teacher to accuse students of coming on to him before the kids complain.

This video is sure to go viral.  NJEA is sure to spin.

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Democrats need to move on appointments

More than 50 nominations awaiting action in state Senate

By Senator Joe Kyrillos

The failure of the Democratic majority in the state Senate to even consider, much less vote on, many of Gov. Chris Christie’s nominees started as ridiculous and is now verging on a constitutionally dangerous level of dysfunction. The state constitution states clearly that the governor is to make appointments to the courts and various agencies, and the Senate is to consider them and render its approval or disapproval.There are about 53 nominations ready to be heard by the Senate, including the director of the Division of Consumer Affairs, who regulates doctors, nurses and pharmacists; four members of the state Board of Education; and most importantly, a nominee for the state Supreme Court.

In addition, millions of dollars are being appropriated by important bodies such as the Turnpike Authority, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Sports and Exposition Authority by members whose terms have expired despite new appointments to these posts having been submitted long ago.

When I brought this subject up on the floor of the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee responded that the current situation with regard to gubernatorial appointments pending before the Senate is completely normal. With all due respect to my colleague, that is not true.

The Democrats’ inaction on appointments is unprecedented. Roughly 68 percent of the nominations submitted to the Senate this year have been stalled. In 2009, just 18 percent of Gov. Jon Corzine’s nominations were held up. In 2002, under Gov. James McGreevey, only 8 percent were delayed.

The blatant partisanship on display by Senate Democrats is more than irresponsible, especially with regard to the appointment of Anne Patterson to the state Supreme Court. That nomination has languished in the Senate since May, all because the Democratic Senate president wanted someone else for the job.

Refusing to even consider an extremely well-qualified nominee is a reprehensible dereliction of duty that will allow the chief justice of the Supreme Court to appoint an interim justice himself.

Allowing the court to choose its own members sets a dangerous precedent. Doing so circumvents the separation of powers between the branches of government and weakens checks and balances on an unelected judiciary. The chief justice will be able to appoint a member who is accountable to nobody but himself, with no check on his or her power by the public or the Legislature.

Unfortunately, should the Senate not act on these nominations before the middle of January, the nominations will expire. This will cause an additional delay in filling these vital offices. The clock is ticking on nominations to courts, boards, commissions and agencies that affect the daily lives of New Jersey residents.

Playing politics with the appointment process is more than a blemish on the institution of the Senate; it is a finger in the eye of the public that elected us to go to Trenton and get to work.

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Sometimes people just need something to fight about

By Art Gallagher

While municipalities and school boards throughout New Jersey are struggling with budget cuts and layoffs of teachers, police and other public workers, over in Rumson they’re fighting over whether the spring crew program will be administered by the Rumson Recreation Department or by Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, according to a post this morning at RedBankGreen.

People who participate in crew are very passionate about it.

Growing up in Bergenfield, we didn’t have a crew team.  Not one run by the Recreation Department or by the High School.  The nearest river was the Hackensack.  I guess it didn’t occur to anyone to row there.

At Georgetown I had some friends on the crew team.  My roommate would get up before dawn and run, so he told me, like really run hard, down to the Potomac where the team would row for a couple of hours and then run up and down the stairs from the Exorcist movie for a while.  I knew it was time to get up for my first class when I smelled him come back into our room and heard his groaning.

My girlfriend’s roommate was a coxswain.  She was less than five feet tall and weighed less than 100 lbs.  She got up before dawn too, did the running thing, and then sat on the back of the boat yelling at all of the guys through a bullhorn who did what she said.  She loved it. 

They all seemed very passionate about it. I didn’t get it, but I was happy for them.  But I digress.

Why would smart adults be having a turf war over the crew team?  That’s tougher for me to get my head around than trying to understand what my friends were so passionate about 35 years ago.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the issues is this controversy.  The RBG article indicates it has something to do with which government entity owns the equipment. Doesn’t it all belong to the taxpayers?  Ahh, but which taxpayers, Rumson’s or Fair Haven’s?  Muncipal or School Board?

I suppose this is an opportunity to teach the kids a lesson in politics and red tape.  Maybe they already mastered commitment, teamwork and the other character building lessons of scholastic athletics.

I never heard of an award winning Recreation Department sports team.  I never heard of a kid earning a college scholarship based upon his or her performance on a Recreation Department team.  But like I said, I’m not an expert on crew.  Maybe somone from Princeton or the Philadephia Main Line could clear it up for me.

In the meantime, I bet that if the powers that be in Rumson and Fair Haven focused on what is best for the kids that the politics and red tape could be solved quickly.  Wouldn’t that be a great lesson.

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