The Jersey City Independent "

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- Six months in, we have no budget. Jersey City seems to be waiting to see how Gov. Corzine’s proposed pension fund payment deferral plan shakes out before filing its 2008-2009 budget (the fiscal year started on July 1, 2008). If Corzine’s plan passed, it “would close the gap substantially,” Business Administrator Brian O’Reilly says. Apparently, the city is really counting on *not* paying its share ($15 million) into the pension fund in order to come even close to a balanced budget (the city is currently projecting a deficit of $18 million). In lieu of a budget, the Council has been funding “emergency temporary appropriation[s]” to keep things running. This is clearly no way to run a city. Jersey City needs to come clean and instill at least a little bit of fiscal discipline here.

- Today’s front page Journal story looks at the case of a 14-year-old child who pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier in December. The victim’s family is apparently angry that the child will “only” face up to 3 years in a juvenile correctional facility. While HudCo prosecutor Edward DeFazio tells the Journal that the child is “exposed to the maximum sentence for that offense,” the paper clearly questions that decision, with the across-two-pages headline “IS THIS JUSTICE FOR KILLER, 14?” The story never looks at *why* we don’t lock up children for life behind bars, or any other hard realities of incarceration. For that, we have to turn elsewhere. “Kids who commit serious crimes shouldn’t go scot-free,” said a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in an introduction to a 2005 report the group co-authored with Amnesty International on the practice. “But if they are too young to vote or buy cigarettes, they are too young to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.” The report notes that the US is one of the only countries in the world to allow sentences of life without parole for children. They found that at least 2,225 child offenders are serving life without parole sentences in American prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, while in the rest of the world, there are only about 12. And one last tidbit from the report: it found, like many other sentencing studies do, “no correlation between the use of the [life without parole] sentence and youth crime rates.”

- Former Jersey City Housing Authority Board of Commissioners chairwoman Lori Serrano hit the Council meeting last week to ask if there has been any investigation into her October dismissal. Serrano was replaced on the board by a lobbyist for Mayor Healy for not completing five courses that are required of commissioners, but she and her supporters think it has more to do with disagreements with the authority’s director, Maria Maio. Councilman Steve Lipski said that there is an investigation by the authority’s lawyer into Serrano’s situation. Some have called for Maio to resign in recent months, and a plan to raze the housing projects on Montgomery Street and replace them with a mixed-income development was met with criticism. In an interview with the Reporter, Maio plays the blame game a little, pointing the finger at tenants “who don’t come to meetings and listen to rumors” for the ire directed her way, and says her opposition is limited to a few people who “have an agenda” and are “caught up in politics.” She also notes that in 2009, she “would like to see more positive press coverage of the Housing Authority.”

- In his Between the Lines column in the Reporter, Al Sullivan says “reports suggest” that Sean Connors might not challenge Ward D Councilman Bill Gaughan after all, because the HCDO might tap him to replace HudCo Freeholder Eliu Rivera in 2010. He also sketches out a connection between legendary Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague and political corruption in Chicago. Matthew Amato, author of Jersey City: A City in Socio-Economic and Political Change, tells Sullivan that when Hague was vice president of the national Democratic Party under FDR, he used Jersey City’s Democratic Committee as a model in setting up organizations in other cities, including Chicago.

- Former Hudson County College administrator John Shinnick, who has been accused of intimidating employees, has a new $110,500/year post as director of finance and facilities at the Hudson County Schools of Technology.

- Provident Bank gave Christ Hospital $1 million over five years, and the Hospital will brand the maternity and pediatric inpatient services unit “in honor of The Provident Bank Foundation,” according to a brief in the Reporter (not available online.)

In statewide news:

- Last night’s bitter cold proves timely. Last week, Gov. Corzine signed a $22.5 million home heating aid package to add to the $88 million he approved for home heating aid in October. The new package includes $10 million for those who make too much to qualify for low-income assistance but still need help, a number that is surely on the rise in these tough economic times. The program is being run through the nonprofit organization NJ SHARES. It’s worth noting there are other ways to save money on home heating. Definitely check out the New Jersey Citizen Action Oil Group, a co-op that “uses bulk purchasing power to negotiate discount prices on home heating oil for thousands of members statewide.” The group is running a promotion from now until Jan. 1 — if you sign up by Jan. 1 and reference their Dec. 19 email, the first year of membership is free.

- Gov. Corzine talks to the Star-Ledger about the economy, the ’09 election and his legislative agenda. Not much of import in the story, but the paper does report that Corzine “all but ruled out replacing civil unions with gay marriage before the fall campaign.” Corzine cites the ailing economy for the non-action, but I’m sure there are political reasons to put it off as well. He also talks about how his toll-hike plan fell apart earlier this year, saying it was “not the most user-friendly time” to introduce the idea.

- A bill to extend the deadline to attach printers to NJ’s touch-screen voting machines has died. This mean’s the Secretary of State’s office will be breaking the law starting Jan. 1. Concerns have been raised about the technology — both of e-voting overall and of verified paper ballots — but this law was passed in 2005, and through a series of delays and obfuscations, we have never actually complied with it. The voter-verified paper trail is a good idea, and so is complying with state laws, not getting around them via legislative maneuvering. I, for one, am glad to see the bill fail. More from the Asbury Park Press.