Statewide intel. Local accountability.
Accountability
Passaic County commissioners are set Oct. 13 to approve a $397,110.50 final payment to Smith-Sondy Asphalt for the 2024 road resurfacing job. Six change orders took the $4.61M bid to $5.65M; the sixth crossed the 20% limit state rules say should be exceeded only in limited instances. Bidders for the county paving contract fell from seven in 2024 to one in 2025.
Accountability
S4796, introduced Oct. 8 by Sen. Brian Stack (D-33), would require early voting for every election — including municipal, school-board and fire-district contests — only in counties with at least 15,000 people per square mile. 2020 Census figures put Hudson alone above that line; Essex, the next densest, is under 7,000. The Legislature’s bill page says OLS certified the measure for a fiscal note; no estimate is posted.
Accountability
S4729, introduced by Senate President Nicholas Scutari on Oct. 5 and approved by a Senate committee Oct. 8, would let community solar projects on landfills, brownfields, contaminated sites and mines include ‘related, non-contiguous tracts of land’ and bar the BPU from limiting how much. The September solar law allowed only ‘associated or contiguous’ land, and only for public remote net metering.
Accountability
North Bergen Mayor Nick Sacco says he’ll resign effective Oct. 28 and is backing Commissioner Hugo Cabrera for mayor and his son, Lincoln School Principal Nick Sacco Jr., for his commission seat. Under New Jersey’s Municipal Vacancy Law, that date lands 6 days before the Nov. 3 general election, too late for the ballot, so the four remaining commissioners pick the replacement and voters next weigh in on May 11, 2027.
Accountability
The NJ Schools Development Authority’s Oct. 7 board packet recommends Ernest Bock & Sons at $80,985,000 for Bridgeton High School, the project’s third procurement and about $7 million above the bid SDA recommended in March. The budget is now $94,971,000, up from $49,240,000 in 2022. The packet calls a rival’s protest pending; an SDA decision dated Oct. 1 denied it. The resolution’s operative clause says $80,895,000. The same agenda carried a $1,519,054 Bock change order in Trenton.
Accountability
At the Sept. 9 Local Finance Board meeting, Trenton’s business administrator testified health costs were $56 million in 2025 and $73 million in 2026. The mayor said the city withdrew from the State Health Benefits Plan and self-insures. The board approved an $18 million cap waiver 5–2. The city’s April budget lists its entire insurance line at $71.7 million, and Trenton is back Oct. 14 seeking approval for $20 million in bonds.
Accountability
A June 11, 2026 Treasury decision names Thales DIS USA as the State’s pick to replace IDEMIA’s MVC driver-license system, chosen on “the lowest overall pricing.” The bid was issued in January 2025, before Gov. Sherrill took office. Her July 21, July 28 and Oct. 7 statements on the voter-registration errors don’t name Thales. The new bid says MVC and the Division of Elections “will provide all verbiage and workflows for the signature pad logic.”
Accountability
The Hess consent judgment carves the Arthur Kill and lower Smith Creek out of the $19.5 million natural resource damages settlement for the former Port Reading refinery. That is where the State says the 1969 spill went. The State can’t sue over those waters until a formal damage assessment is done, any such suit must name multiple defendants, and Hess can argue a 2013 Occidental settlement already covered them. The Oct. 5 announcement didn’t mention the assessment condition or the Occidental defense.
Accountability
AG Jennifer Davenport joined a multistate First Circuit petition challenging NHTSA’s SAFE III rule weakening CAFE standards for model years 2022–2031. The AG release claims nearly $220 billion in lost national fuel savings and an EV-blind baseline — but offers no New Jersey-specific pump-cost model.
Accountability
Governor Sherrill launched an SHBP Reform Working Group that includes current vendors Aetna, Horizon, and Optum Rx among stakeholders advising on contracting, networks, pricing, and plan design — with recommendations advisory and detailed design deferred into 2027 after the state already waived 2027 contribution increases.
