New Jersey Policy Perspective President Gordon MacInnes sat down with host Lisa Allen on a recent episode of As a Matter of Fact. Check out the full half-hour show below:
Category: Video
NJPP’s Gordon MacInnes on Latest Credit Downgrade
Last week NJPP president Gordon MacInnes talked to Chasing News about the record 10th credit downgrade under the Christie administration, which came on the heels of the approval of a reckless package of tax cuts that accompanied a long-overdue gas tax increase this fall.
“It was certainly guessable that if the legislature and the governor agreed to blow yet another hole in New Jersey’s revenues, that the credit agencies would … issue their warnings and … another downgrade,” he said.
Reckless Transportation Deal Will Exacerbate Inequality
Yesterday, NJPP joined Senator Lesniak, Eric Schoenberg from the Patriotic Millionaires and fellow advocates to decry the latest deal to replenish New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund – and eliminate billions of dollars in revenue while disproportionately helping the most well-off at the same time.
“In New Jersey, [there are] 9 million people and 70,000 of them die every year. Of the 70,000 who die only about 3,500 have to file an estate tax return with a check,” NJPP President Gordon MacInnes said. “So what you’re talking about is eliminating a very, very special source of revenue for the rest of us by rewarding 95 to 100 families every year with a sweetheart deal.”
New Jersey Leads Nation in Young Adults Living at Home
One of many distressing statistics from last week’s release of new U.S. Census Bureau figures: Almost half — 47 percent — of New Jerseyans aged 18 to 34 years old live with their parents – the highest share of any state in the nation.
“It’s all a byproduct of the fact that our economy has not recovered from the great recession at the same pace that the nation’s has,” NJPP Vice President Jon Whiten told NJTV News in a segment on this trend.
“It’s a combination of a stuck economy, high cost of living and low wages – and add on to that a lack of affordable housing and increasing student debt and you’ve really got a perfect storm,” he added.
The Notorious Nine
Today New Jersey Policy Perspective released a major new report on nine key decisions that help explain why New Jersey has gone from an economic powerhouse with a coveted AAA bond rating to a state struggling to grow its economy or even make basic ends meet, with a bottom-basement credit rating.
For the first time ever, NJPP produced an accompanying short video to accompany the report, which is embedded below.
For the press release, click here.
For the full report, click here.
Small Businesses Push to Close Tax Loopholes
This week New Jersey Policy Perspective joined small business owners and Senator Raymond Lesniak at a State House press conference to urge the Senate to vote “yes” this week on legislation to close corporate tax loopholes by enacting what’s known as “combined reporting” – and NJTV News was there.
NJPP’s Ray Castro on Affordable Health Care
Following reports that the insurer Oscar is dropping out of New Jersey’s Affordable Care Act Marketplace next year, NJTV News took a look at the insurance landscape in the Garden State last night. NJPP’s Ray Castro told the station that this should be a “wake-up call” and that “we need to improve insurance conditions in New Jersey.”
He added that lawmakers should consider reforms that could clamp down on out-of-network billing and other issues that inflate costs.
“I think that we do need to lower the premium costs, and there are ways we can do that across federal and state levels,” Castro said. “I think there’s a solution to this problem.”
NJPP’s Jon Whiten Talks Tax Breaks & Camden Redevelopment
In a new 10-minute video, the Media Mobilizing Project and NJ Platform dive into New Jersey’s unprecedented use of tax breaks to lure corporations to the state’s poorest city, under the misleadingly named “Economic Opportunity Act” of 2013.
The video raises key questions NJPP has often raised, and gets stakeholders from around the city and beyond to weigh in: What benefits will these deals actually have for the city of Camden and its current residents and business owners? And what’s the connection – or disconnection – between this style of economic development and widespread community revitalization?
“Tying these types of corporate relocations into an actual plan for an actual neighborhood with actual people and actual jobs for local residents is vitally important,” NJPP vice president Jon Whiten says in the video. “And none of that seems to be on the table.”
NJPP’s Gordon MacInnes Weighs in Against So-Called ‘Tax Fairness’ Proposal
From NJTV News:
A milestone in the effort to replenish the fund for roads and bridges. And it could cost you plenty. Dueling Senate and Assembly committees worked against the clock to get a complex cluster of tax hikes and tax cuts to Christie’s desk before time runs out.
…
The left says phasing out the estate tax helps the wealthy at the expense of everybody else and the state budget.
“To take up to a half billion dollars in gifts to the wealthiest 3 or 4 percent of the state when we are so far behind makes absolutely no sense,” said New Jersey Policy Perspective President Gordon MacInnes.
NJPP’s Sheila Reynertson Busts the ‘Tax Flight’ Myth
“People are fleeing the Garden State and they’re taking all their wealth with them. Or, are they?”
With that essential question as a lead-in, NJTV News last week turned to New Jersey Policy Perspective to shed some light on the myths and the facts about who is moving in and out of New Jersey, why they do and what it means for the state’s wellbeing.
The coverage coincided with the release of NJPP’s new report, The ‘Exodus’ is More Like a Trickle: Taxes Aren’t Shrinking New Jersey, and featured our Senior Policy Analyst Sheila Reynertson.
“The mass exodus … doesn’t really exist,” she told NJTV. “On average we have a net loss of about 9,000 people per year. That’s nothing new for New Jersey. We are traditionally an outmigration state as are many northeastern states.”
That’s about a tenth of New Jersey’s total population. The reasons people leave are complex, according to the report. Reynertson used IRS data from outmigration states for the last decade, from 2003 to 2014.
“Taxes really aren’t the reason why people are leaving New Jersey. They leaving for job opportunities and for family considerations,” Reynertson added. “If cost of living is a factor it’s usually housing costs or seeking out lower property taxes.”