If there was an award for ZERO OVERSIGHT, New Jersey would need a bigger trophy case.
What we don’t have is anybody CHECKING until the audit comes, or we get caught by the newspapers or the feds with our heads in the sand or our hands in the cookie jar...or some shady combination of the two.
💊 Opioid settlement money: Millions awarded to fight addiction...spent on concerts, luxury VIP trailers, popcorn & cotton-candy machines, $34,000 in T-shirts, monogrammed jackets and other municipal "wishlist" items.
NOW we need a “review.”
🍎 SNAP: A bizarre 35.7% payment error rate in FY23, compared with 11.68% nationally. It dropped to 14.11% in FY24 and 13.25% in FY25, still well above the national rate in all three years.
🏫 Montclair schools: A $20M budget crisis, " lost" money, with auditors finding $13.6 million in overspending, duplicate expenses, missing invoices & conflicting records.
🦠 COVID money: Questioned costs, missing documentation, improper contracts & overpayments discovered...after the fact.
🏙️ Newark BOE: Where do I begin? Did someone say Honolulu? Millions in catering? Open bar? No-bid contracting? Patronage contracts to unrelated "experts"? Year after year, obscene amounts of taxpayer dollars are thrown at Newark schools while parents and taxpayers are still waiting for that money to actually reach the classroom & the kids.
BONUS: Pandemic money tied to a $17.5 million camera project?
🏥 Medicaid & nursing homes: $119M in improper Medicaid payments recovered in FY24, while investigations uncovered tens of millions going to related-party transactions before formal investigators blew the whistle.
PS: NJ is getting roughly $1 BILLION MORE from the federal government for Medicaid this year while cutting roughly a QUARTER-BILLION DOLLARS of our own state funding for the program. And before anyone comes swinging: not my numbers; the Sherrill Administration confirmed it during budget testimony.
💰 NJEDA: Billions in tax incentives under a system auditors found wasn’t even verifying whether taxpayers got what they were promised. SURPRISE!
🏫 Educational Services Commission: $69.6 MILLION accumulated without an official plan, $14.6 million in contracts improperly awarded without competition & major contracts never submitted for required Comptroller review.
And its longtime board president? None other than Dale Caldwell.
No worries! We promoted him. He’s now our Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State & New Jersey’s chief election officer.
🗳️ Which brings us to elections: thousands illegally registered through the MVC citizenship-check failure, hundreds voting from that group that we've been told about (so far- single year only), @DHSgov flagging tens of thousands more potential noncitizen registrations & federal cases showing noncitizen voting going back YEARS.
Nice pattern. NJ has TONS of rules, forms, certifications, fees, departments, commissions, and 'oversight' boards. Where's the actual PROACTIVITY besides the words on paper???
@NJAssemblyGOP@njassemblydems@NJSenateGOP@NJSenDems@GovSherrillNJ@NJGOP@votebergen
https://t.co/KjRyjJZb9K
‼️ “The largest property tax relief package in New Jersey history.” ~@GovSherrillNJ
(That’s what she said.)
WHAT THEY’RE NOT TELLING YOU: Right out of the gate, Trenton had no feasible or sustainable plan to pay for StayNJ.
But the Speaker got the Majority to finally wake up to the fact that crushing property taxes are driving seniors out of NJ, and gave them a reason to STAY.
Then Gov. Sherrill got her hands on it.
She slashed eligibility & even tried to yank $2,500 away from our lowest-income seniors. The battle for that group of seniors was won...but that was about it. Moderate-income seniors still got whacked and lost $2,500. The others were shoved out the door to sunny Florida (along with their retirement spending, investments & tax dollars).
Very Hochul-esque. Wonder if we’ll beg them to come back, too?
💸 FUN BONUS FACT: Guess who else lost in the shell game? EVERYONE who gets an ANCHOR check.
ANCHOR used to run two years behind, so two additional benefit years were still sitting in the hopper. Then came StayNJ, NJ suddenly jumped ahead, and Treasury now confirms the 2022 & 2023 ANCHOR benefit years were skipped. Two years GONE.
And remember, that was YOUR money! Inflated property taxes you already paid, with two years of anticipated ANCHOR rebate checks wiped from the payment schedule. Welcome to the Trenton property-tax-relief shell game.
📺 Check out the @NJAssemblyGOP YouTube channel & subscribe for The Rundown, What They’re Not Telling You & Side by Side. New episodes every Friday: https://t.co/9culB6YU5P
Episode 3: https://t.co/btSoGzuXq2
The numbers don’t lie.
Old Bridge is getting roughly $3,100 per student in state aid.
Newark? $32,000 per student. Camden? $55,000.
And the usual justification for cutting aid to districts like Old Bridge has been declining enrollment — yet Newark is projected to lose more than 1,000 students and is still getting an additional $60 million.
That’s not a fair funding formula.
New Jersey needs to stop picking winners and losers when it comes to our children’s education.
The U.S. House will be in session only 4 full days from July 24th to November 8th.
That’s 100 paid days off versus 4 full workings days plus 4 travel (half) days.
Meanwhile TRUMP says YOU have too many holidays.
Are you F'ing serious? All while your school were gutted with school funding, it always seems like Newark is always flush with cash on hand. They get $1.3B from outside the district, absolutely insane stuff folks
Did you know NJ towns blew $2.3M in opioid settlement money?
AC bought a $73K vinyl-wrapped electric Mustang, monogrammed jackets, Irvington spent $600K on "awareness concerts", $148K finding broken street lights in Camden, all while 30,000 people in the state have died from opioids
https://t.co/7Uxvaaqg6h
Trump could salvage the midterms IF he:
1/ ended Iran war;
2/ ended support for Ukraine war;
3/ stood up to Israel;
4/ gave us right to buy food right from farmer;
5/ held Fauci & Big Pharma liable for Covid & vaccine lies; &
6/ unleashed antitrust on big tech & big ag.