WASHINGTON — Efforts to protect Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst from cutbacks or closure won approval by a key House committee when lawmakers denied funding to move or retire any of the KC-10 refueling tanker planes based there. The provision, authored by freshmen Reps. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd Dist.), whose district includes the joint base, and Donald Norcross (D-1st… Read the rest of this entry »

TRENTON — Senate President Stephen Sweeney has a message for Gov. Chris Christie: Log off Twitter, come home and work to fix the state’s economy. “He actually needs to be back here meeting with the legislative leadership. He needs to be back here with a plan on what we’re going to do to fix this place,”… Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON — The first of an estimated 141,800 Hurricane Sandy victims will receive letters next month asking whether they want to reopen their damage claims, a top Federal Emergency Management Agency official said Tuesday. Brad Kieserman, the deputy associate administrator who oversees the federal flood insurance program, said the letters will begin going out in May… Read the rest of this entry »

A Rutgers graduate from Edison who was working as a doctor with a team of climbers on Mount Everest was killed Saturday in an avalanche caused by a devastating earthquake in Nepal. Marisa Eve Girawong was a base camp doctor at Madison Mountaineering, a Seattle, Washington-based mountain guide service, according to the organization’s website. Girawong graduated… Read the rest of this entry »

TRENTON — State Senate President Stephen Sweeney does not leave room for doubt when he says the Democratic-led state Legislature will fully fund New Jersey’s public worker pension system next year. “We’re going to fund it,” he said. Democratic leaders say they’re forging ahead with plans to make a $3.1 billion contribution into a pension system… Read the rest of this entry »

A New Jersey appeals court ruled Wednesday that merely being accused of domestic violence is enough to deny someone permission to obtain a gun and keep it at home, the New Jersey Law Journal reported. Judges John Kennedy, Amy O’Connor and Jose Fuentes denied the application of a man identified in court papers as Z.L., who… Read the rest of this entry »

TRENTON — Republican members of the state Assembly Budget Committee on Wednesday criticized New Jersey’s largest public worker union of taking the easy road by shutting down pension talks and demanding full funding without offering any alternatives. The assemblymen, in a brief news conference following a budget hearing on Department of Education funding, leveled accusations of… Read the rest of this entry »

UNION TOWNSHIP — Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick on Tuesday said Democratic legislative leaders shouldn’t side with unions in asking the courts to order the restoration of $1.6 billion in state pension payments cut by Gov. Chris Christie. They should come up with the money themselves. “I think it’s simple: I just don’t think that we… Read the rest of this entry »

TRENTON — You could almost hear the gasps in Trenton when former Gov. Tom Kean criticized Gov. Chris Christie. “You assume that if the governor wins by 20 points or more you’d have coattails,” Kean said in November 2013, a week after Christie had won re-election by a landslide. “No governor I know in any state… Read the rest of this entry »