Law changes how prisoners are counted in redistricting – Politico

Good Monday morning!

When New Jersey redraws its congressional districts, prison inmates will be considered as residents of their hometowns — not where they are incarcerated.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill on Friday that changes how inmates are counted, according to my colleague Matt Friedman. That includes for congressional, county, municipal and school board redistricting. Under a separate law, New Jersey will count inmates as residents of their hometowns.

Why does this matter? Previously, counting inmates in the town where they are incarcerated boosts those towns’ populations for redistricting. These laws change that.

Read more from Matt here.

PROGRAMMING NOTE — I’m helming playbook while Matt is off this week. Send any tips, complaints, birthdays, suggested puns or dad jokes to [email protected].

WHERE’S MURPHY? — In Trenton for a 1 p.m. COVID-19 press conference.

VIDEO OF THE DAY — “Helmetta, NJ is currently underwater.” — @byMikeDavis

ALRIGHT STOP, DON’T COLLABORATE OR LISTEN — Murphy signs bill banning immigration detention contracts with ICE, by POLITICO’s Katherine Landergan: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed into law a bill that prohibits immigration detention agreements with the federal government. What the bill does: The bill, NJ S3361 (20R), prohibits private, state and local entities from entering, renewing or extending agreements and contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While three jails run by Democrat-controlled counties — Essex, Hudson and Bergen — have recently stopped accepting ICE detainees, a private detention facility in Elizabeth quietly renewed its contract with ICE after the bill’s passage, drawing further protests from immigration activists.

HEALTHCARE COSTS — N.J.’s big deal with teachers to cut healthcare costs is backfiring in 130 school districts, by NJ Advance Media’s Samantha Marcus: “In March 2020, the state’s top lawmaker brokered a deal with New Jersey’s powerful teachers union to end a years-long battle over healthcare costs. They called it a “win-win.” Teachers would have the chance to pay lower premiums and, in exchange, taxpayers would spend less on educators’ generous benefits plans by providing new alternatives. Projected total savings: More than $1 billion annually. But more than a year after Gov. Phil Murphy signed the compromise into law, more than 130 school districts say they’re not winning at all, according to one survey. Instead, their health care expenses are rising even as teachers reap savings.”

DON’T GET BAKED — Brownies, cookies verboten in New Jersey’s legal cannabis market, by POLITICO’s Sam Sutton: New Jerseyans will soon be able to purchase recreational cannabis products ranging from flower and vapes to lozenges and syrups, but brownies, cookies and other popular edibles won’t be among them. The new rules approved by the Cannabis Regulatory Commission on Thursday give adult use businesses the ability to offer only a narrow range of products, limiting edibles to syrups, pills, tablets, capsules and “chewable forms” that can’t resemble food items. Gummies have become an increasingly popular method for ingesting cannabis, and while many of those products fall into the “chewable” category, manufacturers and retailers would have to assure they don’t deliberately appeal to children, CRC spokesperson Toni-Anne Blake said in an email Friday. The 160-page rulebook adopted by the commission also specifies that edibles must be packaged and labeled in a manner that won’t be mistaken for a less potent product.

— “Will your town sell legal weed? More than half likely to say no as deadline hits,” by NJ Advance Media’s Amanda Hoover: “Legal marijuana sales will start in New Jersey within the next six months — but a majority of towns are likely to just say no to weed for now. The legal cannabis law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy earlier this year gave municipalities the power to decide if they would allow, restrict or altogether ban the sale of cannabis in their borders. But without a blueprint to follow, many cities and towns have decided to opt out of allowing cannabis businesses, at least for now. NJ Advance Media has spent the past few months tracking ordinances passed by municipalities across the Garden State. We have monitored press releases, municipal ordinances, news stories and cross-referenced the list with others to compile a full report.”

— NJ Advance Media: “Newark says yes to recreational cannabis, will allow dozens of licenses.”

— NJ Spotlight News: “Businesses face challenges to get into NJ’s marijuana market.”

— NJ Advance Media: “N.J. legal weed rules are here. So when can I buy it?”

CONGESTION PRICING — MTA to release long-awaited process for congestion pricing, by POLITICO’s Danielle Muoio: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to announce Friday that it has reached an agreement with the Biden administration on how to conduct the environmental assessment of congestion pricing, three sources familiar with the matter told POLITICO. Details: The MTA is expected to formally announce a 16-month timeline to conduct the environmental assessment. After that, a vendor would have up to 310 days to install scanners and do other technical work to get the system operational, according to one of the sources familiar with the discussions. The MTA had no immediate comment. The MTA was told in March it could conduct an environmental assessment, instead of a lengthy environmental impact statement, for the congestion pricing plan, which would toll drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street.

CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION — “We just ranked N.J.’s members of Congress from poorest to richest. Here’s the full list.” by NJ Advance Media’s Jonathan D. Salant: “Six of New Jersey’s 14-member congressional delegation — the 12 House members and two U.S. Senators — are millionaires. That’s according to their annual personal financial disclosure statements recently released. Their net worth was compiled by NJ Advance Media from annual Senate and House filings and reflects the minimum value of stocks, properties and other holdings. The disclosures covered the 2020 calendar year, and most were filed late due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

MORRIS COUNTY — “’Interwoven tapestry’: Growing Morris County population is more diverse,” by The Morristown Daily Record’s William Westhoven: “While half of all United States counties experienced a population decline over the past decade, Morris County went the other way, shows data recently revealed in the 2020 U.S. Census. For the first time, Morris County is home to more than half a million people who are increasingly diverse, with significant increases in residents who identify as Asian or Hispanic/Latino. Morris County also saw a 12.8% decline in its white population. The county’s increasing diversity is reflected in another significant statistical rise: 9.2% of residents, or 46,739 individuals, identify their ethnicity as “two or more,” a 351.9% increase between 2010 and 2020, the census reveals.”

OUCH — Woman says marinara from Bergen pizzeria caused second-degree burns, by The Record’s Tom Nobile: “There’s no use crying over spilled marinara, unless you’re from New Jersey and the beloved sauce gives you second-degree burns. That’s what happened to a Bergen County woman, who claims she dropped a cup of the scalding-hot sauce on her lap while driving home from Brooklyn’s Brick Oven Pizzeria in Hackensack. As of last week, her ongoing lawsuit against the restaurant was all but cooked. But a state appellate court has ruled for the case to continue, despite the pizzeria’s contention that she threw out most of the evidence, including her clothes after the spill, pictures of the burns, and the smoking gun — the marinara sauce container — according to court documents.”

HUNGER CRISIS — “Hunger crisis may loom as emergency food assistance ends,” by the New Jersey Monitor’s Dana DiFilippo: “As pandemic protections like eviction and foreclosure moratoriums near their end, pundits and policymakers have warned about the expected impact on homelessness. But advocates for New Jersey’s poorest residents warn that federal emergency food assistance provided during the pandemic will go away soon too, and a recent bump in food stamp benefits won’t help enough to avoid a hunger crisis the state is ill-equipped to handle. ‘This is a storm coming, and no one is talking about it,’ said Yoni Yares, founder of Feed All the Children, an advocacy group based in Cherry Hill that supports food distribution in South Jersey. To help those hardest hit by the pandemic, federal policymakers in January raised Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by 15%. In New Jersey, that bump translated into an extra $30 a month for each of the almost 850,000 New Jerseyans enrolled in SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, according to the N.J. Department of Human Services. The feds also allowed all recipients to ‘maximize’ benefits by determining what they should get solely by household size and income, instead of weighing other factors like childcare, utilities, and housing as they did before the pandemic to determine benefit amounts.”

MON DIEU! — “N.J. weather: Henri dumps up to 8 inches of rain on state. Latest town-by-town rainfall totals,” by NJ Advance Media’s Joe Atmonavage: “Bands of heavy rainfall from Hurricane Henri, which has been downgraded to a tropical storm, pounded parts of New Jersey overnight into Sunday morning with more than 6 inches of rain in some spots, prompting road closures, evacuations and water rescues. The National Weather Service’s office in New Jersey said it has received some reports of up to 8 inches of rain, as of 9:12 a.m. Preliminary town-by-town rainfall totals from CoCoRaHS, a community reporting network, shows Hopewell in Mercer County with the highest rainfall total so far with 6.69 inches as of 8:45 a.m. Long Beach Township in Ocean Township ranks second with 6.45 inches and Helmetta in Middlesex County rounds out the top three with 6.17 inches, though that report was submitted at 6 a.m. when rain was still falling in that area.”

EDUCATION — “NJ parent group asks Murphy to permit students to go to school virtually from now on,” by The Record’s Mary Ann Koruth: “A group of parents wants Gov. Phil Murphy to remove the ban on virtual learning for the 2021-22 school year and provide a permanent remote learning option for K-12 schools. A change.org petition started by New Jersey Parents for Virtual Choice has garnered more than 12,000 signatures. The parents are driven by a variety of reasons, some related to health and safety concerns due to COVID and the highly transmissible delta variant, said group spokesperson Karen Strauss. Some parents want to retain the virtual learning option from last year because their children excelled, she said.”

— “This Newark charter is offering tutoring to kids, even if they go to district public schools,” by NJ Advance Media’s Rebecca Panico: “Borne out of that conference was a plan to combat learning loss. Great Oaks Legacy Charter School is piloting a tutoring program using AmeriCorps members — and it is open to all 9th and 10th graders in the city, even those who attend Newark Public Schools or other charter schools. ‘We see a responsibility that we’ve always had to serve the Newark community, even outside of our four walls,’ said Great Oaks Legacy Charter School Executive Director Jared Taillefer. Great Oaks Legacy Charter School, which serves 2,000 pre-K to 12th-grade students, already has a model using one-on-one tutors with every student in grades 3 to 10. Every day, students meet with the same tutor for an entire year. That creates a bond and support system for every child, Taillefer said.”