I’m giving my endorsement for Legislative Assembly for District 22 to Jeff First. I met Jeff three years ago in Middlesex Borough; he ran for town council, won on the Republican ticket.

What I saw in Jeff was a very hard working, dedicated person, trying to better his town. Vote Jeff First.

Frank Ryan

MIDDLESEX

Supports Van Pelt 22nd District Assembly

This is the first letter I have ever written to support a political candidate. I think it’s imperative that the voters of the 22nd Legislative District elect Joan Van Pelt to the Statehouse.

Van Pelt has a B.A. degree in economics and a J.D. in law. She worked as an assistant prosecutor for three years and a public defender for 27, which gives her an understanding of the law from both perspectives. She spent five years on the lawyers’ ethics committee, and has been a trustee for Union County Legal Services.

If you look at Project Vote Smart, which describes itself as “the voter’s self-defense system,” you will learn that Van Pelt earned 82 percent on their “courage test.” They like her stands on abortion and reproductive rights (she’s pro-choice), as well as the budget, spending and taxes (she would slightly increase taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and corporations, slightly increase the tax on high-income families, and not on lower- or middle-income families.)

According to www.votesmart.org, Van Pelt favors early release for certain non-violent offenders, opposes tapping the state’s “rainy day” fund, would not reduce Medicaid but would reduce public pensions, endorses merit pay for teachers and charter schools, would grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants who graduate from N.J. high schools, believes in climate change and state funding for alternative energy, is strongly against gun possession, supports physician-assisted suicide and doctor-prescribed marijuana, favors same-sex marriage, supports embryonic stem-cell research, and would tighten N.J. anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation and gender identity.

Van Pelt would reduce Assembly members’ salaries by 10 percent.

She was born in Muhlenberg Hospital, and has lived all her life in the 22nd District.

Ethics, legal knowledge and experience, courage, enlightened social attitudes coupled with conservative fiscal policies, local knowledge.

And Joan Van Pelt bakes cookies to take to campaign appearances.

What more could we ask in an Assembly candidate?

Pat Turner Kavanaugh

PLAINFIELD

  As many of you know, Jeff has dedicated his career to caring for seniors and the disabled in long-term care facilities, often referred to as nursing homes.  He has a perspective on issues relating to health care for seniors that will be unique to the legislature once elected.  He had made a career of insuring that residents of the facilities he manages have compassionate, quality care for the least cost possible.  We were asked by AARP to address the question of parity of support for persons being cared for at home versus in a long-term care facility.  We did not hesitate to conclude that we supported equal access to funding whether a person is in a long-term care facility or is being cared for at home.     We also would support continuing the level of funding for these services, keeping in mind that there is stiff competition for the limited resources of the State. We also support rebalancing NJ Medicaid spending to attempt to create a parity between home and community based services and funding for nursing homes and other institutions, however, we believe it is unrealistic to put a 50/50 number on the spending, rather the monies should be allocate as demand requires.

Property Tax Relief- 

We support fully funding of the senior freeze program as soon as the State has adequate resources to do so.  We would work to identify other areas which could be pared back or eliminated in order to allow such important programs to continue.   We would support restructuring the present the Homestead rebate program,  to allow for a direct reduction in property taxes for qualifying seniors thus eliminating the need to pay for the administration of the rebate program at the state level.

Health Care Reform Implementation -

There are several bills pending in the Legislature to implement “Obamacare.”  We are not certain that the Federal healthcare reform program will survive the pending Constitutional challenges in its present form.  Therefore, it would be imprudent and potentially expensive to implement any of the reforms until the constitutionality of the Act and its various provisions has been established

The problem of paying for education can and must be attacked from two angles.  First, we need to contain the costs.  Our primary focus on this front would be supporting initiatives that will enable school districts to either consolidate or share certain services to use the limited resources available in the most effective way to benefit our students.  We also support rethinking the way that education is delivered, eliminating high cost administrative and supervisory positions, rewarding excellent teaching and making discharge of ineffective teachers possible.

The second reform must be a reexamination of the way we presently fund education.  It may be the relying primarily on property taxes to fund education is no longer the most effective way to go.  Even relatively wealthy districts rely on state aid garnered from other sources to fund their schools.  The present formula, like the Abbott Districts before it, has not generated the kinds of improvements in the lowest performing schools that would have been expected given the resources invested in those districts.  Greater state oversight is needed to insure that these taxpayer dollars aren’t squandered on programs that don’t reach the children in the classroom.

While the Legislature is trying to find the optimum solution to the problem, many short terms solutions have been proposed.  We like the Opportunity Scholarship Act because it would enable qualified students from failing districts who lack the family resources to attend other schools to be educated elsewhere at no expense to the taxpayers. We do not support taxpayers subsidizing families who can afford to choose private or out of district schools for their children.  We do not see expanding Charter schools as the solution.  Charter schools should remain part of the public education system to explore innovative educational alternatives leading to a better public education for all students. The goal of these tax-payer supported schools should be to enhance the education provided for all of our children, not just the select few who are chosen to attend these schools.  Oversight of charter schools may be provided through the Department of Education “in house” or using a commission comprised of knowledgeable persons drawn from outside of state government.

We would be happy to address other issues related to education in New Jersey, just ask a question in a comment to our blog.

We just learned that our opponents, whether through arrogance or indifference, declined to answer the questions that the League posed to all Legislative Candidates.  Are they afraid to have their positions compared to ours?  Are they so certain that they cannot be voted from office that they don’t care if the voters are informed?  Would an informed voter necessarily be a voter who rejected the incumbents in favor of the two challengers?  We believe that to be the case.  We respect the voters of the 22^nd district and will never take you for granted.  Too bad our present representatives don’t have equal respect for their constituents.

For our answers see http://lwvnj.org/VotersService/Candidate Questionnaire 2011/District22.pdf

We renew our pledge that once elected we will introduce legislation to reduce the salaries of the State Legislators by 10%.  We will also vote to place an amendment to the New Jersey constitution on the ballot defining judicial salaries as amount paid without regard to costs of benefits and let the voters decide if our judges should share in the sacrifices that have been demanded on the 500,000 other state employees.

Our Democratic opponents have been silent on this issue – Will they vote for pension equality?  Let them take a stand.

Jeff and Joan

In most instances, we’ve found that the hardest questions to answer are those that limit the response to yes/no.  What we really want to say is maybe.  Would preschool be a good idea for all children?   Probably, yes.  Should it be mandated?  Hard to say.  Should it be provided at taxpayer expense regardless of the income of the child’s family?  In a perfect world, why not?  Should it be given priority over other expenses like funding the pension system, repairing roads and bridges, or putting more police on the street?  It’s quite a complicated issue that can’t really be answered yes or no.  It’s hard enough to answer it in 150 characters or less (the limit on some short  essays.)  We understand that any bill now before the legislature will either be enacted before the end of this session or have to be reintroduced in the same or some modified form after the New Year.  Bills are subject to amendment.  A bill that we believe we would support in its present form may be so distorted by the time it is up for a vote that neither of us could, in your best interest, support it then.

All that being said, over the next weeks, we will be publishing answers that we have given to several of the questions we’ve been asked by the special interest groups.   We believe that all the voters have a right to know what our positions on the issues are.  In the few instances where Jeff and I disagree, we will explain what our differences are and why we take different sides of an issue.  We encourage anyone who has a question about where we stand to ask a question by commenting on the blog.

“If the (Union County) prosecutor or the (New Jersey) attorney general decide that the mayor has done something illegal, then at that point I would be happy to respond. Of course I would not support the city’s money being used or taxpayers’ money being used inappropriately ….But I don’t go on hearsay.”

He then added, “I haven’t even spoken to the mayor about it other than when I was invited,”

While I totally agree that no one should be condemned on hearsay, one wonders why Jerry Green, the Mayor’s political mentor, hasn’t spoken to her about this issue.  At the very least, he should have advised her that in the interest of transparency and integrity, she should voluntarily cooperate with the Council’s investigation.  Why not, as Municipal Chair, advise your protégé, that honesty is the best policy?  Why not as the people’s representative in Trenton, talk to the Mayor about the impact the ongoing investigation may have on state aid to Plainfield?

No action in this instance does a disservice to those Mr. Green purports to represent in either or both positions.  The only person whose interest he is now serving is his own.

A simple solution would be to bring the review of all rate increases under the purview of the Board of Public Utilities where the Rate Counsel could advocate for the consumer at public hearings regarding rate increases.  If elected, I would propose this reform.