Statewide intel. Local accountability.
Accountability
A New Jersey Appellate Division panel heard Conduent’s challenge to the Turnpike Authority’s $1.73 billion E-ZPass award to TransCore and reserved decision. Court filings put the price gap at about $251 million and center the fight on ownership disclosure.
Accountability
State Auditor David J. Kaschak’s Newark schools audit finds $6.65 million in excess state aid from enrollment overstatements, an estimated $18.7 million in missed SEHBP savings, and multiple procurement and screening failures — with certain matters referred to Criminal Justice.
Accountability
Official Senate Roll Call 253 shows Booker and Kim both voted Nay on cloture for the Stop Insider Trading Act (53–47; needed 60). The engrossed bill bans new public-stock purchases and requires advance sale notices — and adds a federal photo-ID voting requirement.
Accountability
Governor Mikie Sherrill signed S-4420/A-5232 on Sept. 28, 2026, letting a regional rehabilitation and reentry center authority certify each participating county ADP-based share — with the debt-service portion a county tax-levy cap exception. Which counties have joined remains undocumented in the bill text.
Accountability
Introduced Sept. 24, 2026, A5569 would raise the share of rent treated as property taxes for New Jersey gross-income deduction from 18% to 30% and lift the elective credit from $50 to $250. No OLS fiscal note was located as of Sept. 30.
Accountability
Jersey City locked twin 30-year Canal Crossing tax exemptions on Sept. 23–24, 2026. Stage One ASC is the greater of prior taxes or 10% of Annual Gross Revenue; the county gets 5% of ASC — not a full ad-valorem share.
Accountability
The Senate killed a discharge motion for a State Department report naming nine Americans killed in the West Bank — including New Jersey teen Amer Rabee — even as Booker and Kim voted to advance it.
Accountability
New Jersey’s ABC independent-contractor regulations become operative Oct. 1, 2026, after a 120-day legislative window produced no reform — while Democratic and Republican leaders ask for July 2027 and DOL signals it may lack authority to hit pause alone.
Accountability
Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed S-4515 on Sept. 28, 2026, letting qualifying Rutgers managerial executives collect pay from both the public university and an affiliated nonprofit health entity, carving those arrangements out of specified state conflict-of-interest rules.
Accountability
Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s Sept. 29, 2026 housing rollout pairs a permitting “shot clock” and a roughly 40,000-home state-land production frame with EO-17’s Housing Governing Council strategy — an accountability story about timelines, inventories, and what “doubled” actually counts.
