A Look at the Interests Behind $8.5 Million in NJ Campaign Contributions
When campaign finance reports are filed in New Jersey, contributors often list their employer—shedding light not only on who’s giving, but why. A review of the top contributors by employer, as reported to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), reveals a familiar pattern: law firms, engineering contractors, real estate developers, and public sector employees dominate the donor rolls....
A Tale of Two Systems: Comparing City and Suburban School Districts in New Jersey
In New Jersey, public education is shaped not only by state standards and funding formulas, but by local context — especially the economic and demographic makeup of each district. This report compares two distinct groups of school districts: seven suburban districts serving some of the state’s wealthiest communities, and seven city districts serving some of its most economically disadvantaged. While...
Out-of-School Placement Rates in NJ Special Education: By Year and Subgroup
This report presents a multi-year overview of special education placement patterns in New Jersey from 2020 to 2024, focusing on students with disabilities ages 5–21. Using publicly available data from the New Jersey Department of Education, it tracks the percentage of students placed in out-of-school settings—such as separate schools, residential facilities, and home/hospital instruction—across a range of demographic groups. The...
Concentrated Influence: Following the Money in NJ Politics (2019–2024) Part 1
State Level Data and Insights Last year, NJ21st published a multi-part series tracking the flow of grey money into County Committees between 2019 and 2023 — helping clarify how more than $50 million from non-individual entities, like PACs, moved through the county networks. This year, we’ve built a more robust infrastructure to collect, clean, and analyze a more complete dataset....
Fewer Borrowers, Heavier Load: New Jersey’s Student Debt Paradox
When it comes to student debt, New Jersey paints a complicated picture—one that’s often overshadowed by larger states like California and Texas. While New Jersey has significantly fewer borrowers overall, the average burden each borrower carries is among the highest in the country. Based on US DOE Data, New Jersey reports approximately 1.23 million student loan borrowers, far fewer than:...
NJ21st Interactive Property Tax Dashboard
The NJ21st Property Tax Dashboard helps residents explore and compare local property tax data across New Jersey. With this tool, you can: Compare your town’s 2024 average school, municipal, county, and total tax payments to those of other towns and cities. View trends from 2019 to 2024 to see how your town’s average tax payments have changed over time—side-by-side with...
New Jersey & Union County Property Tax Trends: 2019–2024
The Department of Community Affairs published it’s annual Property Tax Report. Excel files were merged from 2019-2024 and Google Colab was used to assist in cleaning the data, applying uniformity to the tables and creating the graphs. What the Data Tells us about the State as a Whole Based on verified statewide municipal tax data, this report provides a comprehensive...
Journalism in New Jersey Is Under Attack—And Berkeley Heights Just Joined the Pile On
Arik Samson is a resident of Berkeley Heights and was a 2024 Candidate for BOE In a deeply troubling move for civic transparency, The New Jersey Monitor reported on March 21, 2025, that Governor Phil Murphy’s latest budget proposal would eliminate funding for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium—a bipartisan initiative he launched in 2018 to support community-based journalism. Over...
NJ21st Supports Efforts for a Fairer Ballot in New Jersey
NJ 21st would like to acknowledge the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice for its leadership and dedication to advancing electoral fairness in New Jersey. We have joined a coalition of organizations in calling for a conditional veto of A5116/S4142, a bill that proposes changes to New Jersey’s primary ballot design. While the bill represents a step forward from the...
A Closer Look at Proficiency on the NJ 7-City Dashboard
Third contribution in a series to NJ Education Report on seven urban districts in NJ: A Closer Look at Proficiency on the NJ 7-City Dashboard
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