Editorial: Aaron Morrill and the Fight for a Free Press in New Jersey
We should all be pulling for Aaron Morrill. He could have done the easy and profitable thing. He could have kept in a mayor’s good graces, taken down or softened critical news, and made sure he had steady access that allowed for the content and clicks that drive revenue for the Jersey City Times. Instead, he chose to do the...
Building Blind: Is New Jersey’s Development Boom Overwhelming Schools and Flooding Homes?
If you want to know where the state is growing, don’t listen to speeches. Follow the permits. The NJ DCA 2024 housing permit numbers tell a story of towns building towers while others are sticking to cul-de-sacs with a few re-imagining shopping strips as live-work hubs. This while communities struggle to deal with infrastructure impact and working families still wait...
NJ Regulators Call Out JCP&L After Three Years of Declining Reliability
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has put Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) on notice after three straight years of declining reliability across its service area. From 2022 through 2024, JCP&L’s saw more frequent outages and customers experienced longer waits for power outages to be resolved. In 2024, the company recorded a ten-year high in outages. The...
Loretta Rivers: ‘We must not allow silence to be the response to tragedy.’
Following our Deadly Discretion report on the killing of 68 year old Deborah McCalla Terrell, NJ21st invited community members and leaders to share their perspectives. Loretta Rivers, Piscataway school board member and former Democratic candidate for New Jersey’s 17th Legislative District Assembly seat, responded with the following statement: Hello NJ21St, I appreciate the curiosity of allowing me to respond. I...
NJ Education Report Amplifies Call for Clarity on Adaptive Testing
Laura Waters of New Jersey Education Report adds to the questions surrounding New Jersey’s planned adaptive testing rollout. You can Read It Here.
Deadly Discretion: What New Jersey’s Use-of-Force Reforms Still Leave Unanswered
Earlier this month the New Brunswick police were called to a senior apartment building after getting calls about a woman walking in the hallway with a knife. At the end of that encounter, 68-year-old Deborah Terrell was pepper sprayed, tased, and shot multiple times. The incident led to her death, Terrell is the fourth Black resident to be killed by...
Open Letter to Commissioner Dehmer Regarding Concerns About NJSLA-Adaptive Rollout
Last week, the New Jersey Department of Education announced plans to move to a new kind of state testing called NJSLA-Adaptive. Starting in the 2025–26 school year, students will take computer-based tests that adjust in difficulty as they go. On the surface, this sounds like progress. But as an organization that’s spent years tracking how schools report student outcomes, we...
The 201 Billion Dollar Burden Explained…A Deep Dive into New Jersey’s Debt
New Jersey’s long-term debt hit $201.0 billion – steady from last year, according to the state’s 2024 Debt Report. That massive number includes everything from pension liabilities to bonds. Here’s a look at where that debt comes from — and why it matters. Bond Debt at $39.7 Billion $39.7 billion of the debt is bonded – money the state borrowed...
Curse of the PILOT
Bruce Paterson is a Resident of Garwood, NJ As an existing homeowner, the question arises why our property taxes continue to soar; especially after watching so many high-density luxury-rate residential complexes being built in the last 5-10 years. You can chalk it up to the “curse of the PILOT”. Although occurring statewide, we will look at our local area as...
The Limits of Disclosure… What NJ Monitor’s Supreme Court Victory Means for Police Transparency in NJ
The New Jersey Supreme Court made a big call this week in connection to police transparency. At the center of all this is a Jersey City police officer who allegedly fired his gun while off-duty in 2019 while under the influence. The city launched an internal affairs investigation and The New Jersey Monitor asked for the report a few years...
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