Noticias

Mohammed Nagi, un hombre ugandés de 38 años y padre de cinco hijos, fue asesinado el 19 de agosto tras convertirse al cristianismo y abandonar el Islam, siendo el primero en su familia en hacer pública su fe en Jesús. Nagi, junto a su esposa Katooko Nusula y sus hijos, se habían convertido en marzo […]

La entrada “Merecía morir”: Cristiano es asesinado por su familia al ser el primero en abandonar el islam por Jesús aparece primero en NOTICIAS CRISTIANAS DE ÚLTIMA HORA.

Op New Jersey has lifted the veil on its power grid—pushing PJM Interconnection to become more transparent. While this move won’t cut rates overnight, it marks a pivotal shift toward accountability and long-term energy reform.

“These bills complement our long-term plan of action to hold PJM responsible for hardworking New Jerseyans’ skyrocketing electricity bills and a lack of new energy generation,” Governor Murphy said in a press statement. “We are committed to creating a system that is fairer and more transparent for customers and the states that represent them – a necessary change from the opaque practices that have, for too long, defined PJM.”

What Is PJM?

PJM is a regional transmission organization that includes more than 1,100 member utilities serving more than 65 million people. Its territory includes all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and of course, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.

PJM is responsible for the safety, reliability, and security of the bulk power transmission system in its footprint. Per its mandate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), PJM is a nonprofit entity that does not sell electricity to end users, nor does it own any equipment such as generators or power lines.

Instead, PJM coordinates the movement of electricity across its service territory with the management of a wholesale electricity market. Additionally, it operates a capacity market that takes a longer-term view on electricity supply and demand. Every year, PJM holds an auction to secure enough power to meet the peak demand it expects in three years.

PJM members, including electric public utility companies, vote on transmission policies and market rules that impact ratepayers in New Jersey and across the regional grid, which raises concerns about conflicts of interests. For instance, many holding companies that supply power in the state have numerous affiliates, which may all hold voting rights.

Critics of PJM further contend that capacity prices do not align with the principles of affordability and transparency outlined in New Jersey’s “Electric Discount and Energy Competition Act.” They also maintain that delays in PJM’s interconnection queue have prevented new electric generation resources from becoming operational in a timely manner. As a result, these new resources, which are needed to maintain reliability at low costs, will be unable to compete in PJM’s capacity market auctions in the near future.

What Do the New Grid Transparency Laws Do?

On August 15, Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation into law aimed to increase public accountability and transparency in decision-making by PJM and its members. The legislation comes as New Jersey ratepayers have seen their monthly electric bills increase up to 20 percent after PJM’s capacity auction in 2024, requiring the state to fund a $430 million relief package for ratepayers.

The first new law, Assembly Bill 5463, aims to increase transparency and accountability around how decisions made at PJM may impact electricity reliability, affordability, and sustainability. It mandates that electric public utilities and their affiliates operating in New Jersey disclose details on their voting at PJM and report to the BPU annually.

The report is required to:  (1) list each recorded vote cast by the electric public utility, and by any affiliate of the utility, at a meeting of PJM during the immediately preceding calendar year, regardless of whether the vote is disclosed by PJM; (2) include a brief description of what transpired at the meeting, including the purpose of the meeting, the meeting agenda, if any, and what role the electric public utility, or its affiliate, played at the meeting; and (3) include a brief description explaining whether each vote that was cast furthers the State’s goals of prioritizing the affordability, reliability, and sustainability of electricity production, consumption, and conservation.

Pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 154, the Board of Public Utilities must investigate whether PJM’s Reliability Pricing Model is serving its intended design to obtain resource adequacy at the lowest possible cost and report the results of itsinvestigation to the Governor and the Legislature within 12 months. The Resolution also directs the State of New Jersey to collaborate with neighboring states to promote affordable energypractices and to urge PJM to implement market reforms and expeditiously review new electricity generation applications.

What’s Next?

New Jersey’s new laws won’t result in changes overnight, but they do improve transparency on behalf of both JPM and voting utilities. There is also strength in numbers. Maryland and Delaware have similar laws in place. In addition, at least eight other states have introduced legislation, including Pennsylvania, Illinois and Virginia.

The post Scarinci: Grid Transparency Laws Might Lower NJ Energy Costs appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

Before Bill Bradley, there was Harry C. Harper.

Known as “Hackensack Harry,” Harper spent ten seasons as a major league baseball pitcher.  The big left-hander was the starting pitcher for the New York Yankees game six of the 1921 World Series against the New York Giants.

He made his Major League Baseball debut with the Washington Senators in 1913 and played for the Boston Red Sox in 1920.

His baseball career came to an end in 1923 when the Brooklyn Dodgers released him.

Four years later, at age 32, he launched a political career as the Republican candidate for Bergen County Sheriff.

Sheriff George Nimmo died that spring.  Gov. A. Harry Moore appointed Bergen County Democratic Chairman Mort O’Connell to replace him.

Harper defeated the Democratic incumbent, Mort O’Connell, by a little under 10,000 votes (56%-44%).

There was no transition period in those days, with constitutional officers sworn in the week after the general election.  The Bergen County sheriff had an official residence at the jail, so within a week, O’Connell and his family moved out and the Harper family moved in.

When State Sen. Ralph Chandless (R-Hasbrouck Heights) was expelled from the New Jersey State Senate for his role in the Lodi sewer scandal – that’s a story for another day – Harper became a Senate candidate.

Harper had the support of Bergen County Republican chairman Daniel Thomson, a bitter Chandless rival.  The Chandless faction backed Bergen County Court Judge John Zabriskie. Harper won the primary with 61% of the vote.

The general election was a tough year for Republicans, who were fighting a sort of Blue Wave caused by the unpopular economic policies of President Herbert Hoover.

Harper lost the general election to Democrat William Ely, a former Bergen County Court Judge and Rutherford councilman by less than 4,000 votes (52%-48%).  The Democratic candidate for governor carried Bergen by a margin of more than 17,000 votes (56%-44%).

With Harper gone, O’Donnell again became the sheriff.

Gov. Harold Hoffman appointed Harper to serve as a state Civil Service Commissioner in 1934. He held that post until his appointment by Gov Walter Edge as the state Commissioner of Labor and Industry in 1944. He continued in that post following Alfred Driscoll’s election as Governor in 1946.

After U.S. Senator Alfred Hawkes announced he would not seek re-election to a second term. In 1948, Harper – against the wishes of Driscoll, his boss – became a candidate for U.S. Senate.

Driscoll endorsed State Treasurer Robert Hendrickson, a former Senate President and GOP gubernatorial candidate.

Hendrickson won the Republican primary by more than 60,000 votes, but Bergen gave Harper a massive 78% of the vote – a plurality of more than 29,000.

After seven-term Rep. J. Parnell Thomas (R-Allendale) resigned following a guilty plea to charges that he took kickbacks from his congressional staffers, Harper resigned from the cabinet to run in a February 1950 special election for Congress.

In an upset, Harper lost the primary by 402 votes (50%-49%), to Assemblyman William Widnall (R-Ridgewood).  Widnall held the seat until he lost in the 1974 Watergate landslide.

EPILOGUE

Harper left politics after losing his congressional race and went on to build a series of phenomenally successful companies.  He died in 1963.  His son, George Harper (R-Sandyston), represented Sussex County in the New Jersey State Senate from 1954 to 1964 and served as the New Jersey State Auditor from 1964 to 1974.

Hackensack Harry’s grandson, George B. Harper, Jr., is currently the mayor of Sandyston.

Ely ran for re-election to the Senate in 1934 and lost by less than 100 votes countywide to Republican Winant Van Winkle, the president of the Rutherford Taxpayers Association.

After the election, Winant joined the Roosevelt administration as head of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) office in New Jersey.

In 1938, when Moore resigned his U.S Senate seat to become governor, Ely won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination for a two-year unexpired term.

Ely was criticized for taking a $350 fee from the Bergenfield Board of Education to help obtain a WPA grant, and for his ties to Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague.

At a campaign rally, Ely called Hague “my leader” and said that Hague “will not find me wanting when he wants me.”

He lost the general election by a 56% to 43% margin.

The post Labor Leader: ex-Yankees pitcher later served as N.J. Commissioner of Labor appeared first on New Jersey Globe.

Thomas P. Giblin got hooked on New Jersey politics at the age of seven, when his father won a seat on the Essex County Board of Freeholders in 1954.  Over the last eight decades, he’s had a front-row seat watching the state’s history unfold.

The Essex County legend served as a freeholder for a decade and then as Essex County  Surrogate.   He was the Essex County Democratic Chairman from 1993 to 2003. He became the New Jersey Democratic State Chairman in 1997 after backing James E. McGreevey for governor in the Democratic primary that year.

In 2023, the 77-year-old Giblin did not seek re-election to the State Assembly seat he’s held for eighteen years, bringing one chapter of a remarkable life in the political arena to a close

Giblin’s real clout comes from his family business, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 68, where he is the longtime business manager.  His later father, John J. Giblin, an immigrant from Ireland, ran the politically influential union from 1948 until his death in 1975: John Giblin was a freeholder from 1955 to 1957 and a state senator from Essex County from 1966 to 1968.   Another son, Vincent Giblin, succeeded him as president of the IUOE in Washington, D.C.

Tom Giblin also serves as president of the Essex-West Hudson Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

Still, despite his extraordinary success in state and county offices, the one job Giblin desperately wanted, Essex County Executive, continued to elude him.  He ran three times, never making it out of the primary.

In 1973, at age 26, Giblin launched a political career of his own as a candidate for State Assembly in the old 25th district, which began in Millburn and extended through western Essex County into Pequannock and Lincoln Park in Morris and Wayne in Passaic.   A New Jersey Air National Guard veteran, he ran on a ticket with Fairfield Councilman Nicholas Saleeby.

Legislative redistricting that year put three incumbent Republican assemblymen into the new district: Assembly Speaker Thomas Kean (R-Livingston), Philip Kaltenbacher (R-Short Hills), and Michael Horn (R-Wayne).  Since most of the district was in Essex, Horn announced his retirement.

After the primary, Kaltenbacher unexpectedly changed his mind about running, and the Republicans picked former Essex GOP vice chair Jane Burgio to replace him on the ticket.  (One of the people who sought Republican party support to replace Kaltenbacher was Ralph Caputo, a 33-year-old former GOP assemblyman who had moved from Newark to West Caldwell).

Kean ran 4,839 votes ahead of Burgio, who edged out Giblin by 1,079 votes.  The 25th was one of just four districts in the state that elected a Republican senator and two Republican assemblymembers in the Watergate landslide.   That was the only general election Giblin ever lost.

Giblin was appointed to the freeholder board in January 1977 after Peter Stewart (D-Caldwell) resigned to become Essex County Counsel to replace Francis McQuade.  He easily won a special election for the unexpired term with 60% of the vote against Matthew Carracinco, a Republican from Caldwell.

But Giblin’s first tenure as a freeholder was short-lived.  On the same day, Essex County voters approved a charter change referendum switching to a county executive form of government.   That effectively changed the election Giblin had just won from a two-year term to one that would last only eleven months.

In 1978, at age 31, Giblin sought party support to run for county executive as part of a faction of the party led by Philip Keegan (D-Newark), the county purchasing agent and a former assemblyman.  Then-Assemblyman Richard Codey (D-Orange), attorney Michael Critchley, Stewart, and Giblin were possible candidates for the post.

Giblin formally entered the race for county executive, filing over 7,000 signatures on his nominating petitions and announcing endorsements from Keegan, Stewart, Newark West Ward Democratic powerbroker George McCormack, Maplewood Democratic Municipal Chairman Raymond Durkin, and a list of labor leaders that included New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Marciante and the president of the New Jersey Building and Construction Trades Council, James Grogan.

But a promised endorsement from  Gov. Brendan Byrne never materialized, and Giblin dropped out of the race on ballot draw day.  Within a couple of days, Giblin signed on as campaign manager for a good friend, Sheriff John Cryan.  The primary was won by Peter Shapiro (D-South Orange), a 26-year-old assemblyman.

After a few years on the State Racing Commission, Giblin returned to county government in 1981 as a candidate for freeholder-at-large on the organization line.  He won easily – Essex Republicans haven’t won a countywide Essex freeholder seat since State Sen. Geraldo DelTuo (R-Newark) won in 1971 — and was re-elected in 1984 and 1987.

Giblin had an unexpected opportunity in 1989.  Republicans had captured the county executive and surrogate posts in 1986, Surrogate Earl Harris, a former Newark Council President,  passed away toward the end of his second year in office, triggering a special election.  Democrats picked Giblin to run against the interim Republican surrogate, Bob Cottle, a former Newark police lieutenant, and Montclair NAACP member.   Giblin won with 64% of the vote.

He served as surrogate for under four years when County Executive Thomas D’Alessio, under indictment for embezzlement, money laundering, and extortion, resigned as Essex County Democratic chairman.  He had been facing a challenge from Codey, then seeking his fifth term in the State Senate and the winner of a primary challenge from Orange Mayor Robert Brown.

Giblin resigned a surrogate to run for county chairman, and Codey withdrew, allowing Giblin to run unopposed.

In 1994, with D’Alessio headed to prison, Giblin ran for county executive in what became an astonishingly close primary election with Cardell Cooper, the mayor of East Orange.

Cooper initially defeated Giblin by 25 votes, setting a recount into motion.

Cooper had won the Election Day machine voting by 120 votes, but Giblin carried the absentee ballots by 120.  The Essex County Board of Elections, which rejected 37 emergency ballot cast in the primary, declared the race to be tied.

The contest for the Democratic nomination continued until late August – judges moved slowly on election matters in New Jersey even then – and the assignment judge, Burrell Ives Humphries, ruled that the emergency ballots should be counted.  That gave Cooper a victory by a margin of exactly 17.
There were grounds for Giblin to appeal, and many of his supporters wanted him to precisely do that – but the county chairman decided it was time to end the campaign for the good of the party.

Cooper went on to lose the general election to Democrat-turned-Republican James W. Treffinger, a freeholder and former Verona mayor.

Giblin became a substantive statewide player in 1997 when State Sen. James E. McGreevey (D-Woodbridge) and Rep. Rob Andrews (D-Haddon Heights) were locked in a close Democratic primary for the chance to challenge Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

Both sides aggressively courted Giblin, who decided in late March that Essex would go with McGreevey.

McGreevey beat Andrews in Essex County by 27,076 votes, a 66%-13% margin – former Morris County Prosecutor Michael Murphy finished second with 21%.   That helped McGreevey score a 9,993-vote win against Andrews, 40%-37%.

As expected, McGreevey picked Giblin to serve as Democratic State Chairman.  He held that post for four years.

With Treffinger giving up his county executive post in 2002 to run for U.S. Senate – then U.S. Attorney Chris Christie put his thumb on the scale days after the filing deadline, and Treffinger’ dropped out following an FBI raid on his office – Giblin launched his third campaign for county executive.

His primary opponent was Joseph DiVincenzo, the Essex County Board of Freeholders president.

McGreevey, elected governor in 2001, endorsed Giblin, along with U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg and two state senators, Codey and Ronald Rice (D-Newark).   But DiVincenzo was backed by Democratic powerhouses Stephen Adubato, Sr. and George Norcross.  U.S. Senator Bob Torricelli and Reps. Donald Payne, Sr. (D-Newark) and Bob Menendez (D-Union City) eschewed the organization line to run with DiVincenzo.

After a particularly nasty primary, with each candidate spending more than $1 million, DiVincenzo prevailed by a large margin.  He won by over 12,000 votes, 61%-39%.

DiVincenzo’s freeholder slate swept eight of nine races;  the lone exception was in the 5th district, where Caputo, a former Republican assemblyman who had switched parties in the mid-1970s, defeated Bloomfield Councilman Vincent Esposito by sixteen votes.  Caputo ousted Republican incumbent Joseph Scarpelli (R-Nutley) and returned to the Assembly in 2007.

Caputo resigned from the Assembly this week to take a seat on the Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey board of directors.

Legislative redistricting created a new 34th district in 2001 that included East Orange, Montclair, and Clifton.  Essex Democrats gifted one Assembly seat to Passaic County, which Peter Eagler (D-Clifton) occupied for four years.   (Giblin was a member of the Legislative Apportionment Commission that year.)

But in 2005, Essex reclaimed the seat and sent Giblin to the legislature.  He won nine elections by overwhelming margins, running first with now-Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, then with a protégé, soon-to-be state senator Britnee Timberlake.

Some considered the Assembly seat a consolation prize, but Giblin did not.   He chairs the Assembly Regulated Professions Committee and has been a deputy majority leader for nearly sixteen years.  He has been a zealous advocate of labor unions, civil rights, and services to veterans, children, and the economically disadvantaged.   He also was a generous benefactor to Democratic candidates and organizations.

Part of Giblin’s legacy is the third generation of his family.  His daughter, Noreen, served on Murphy’s senior staff as director of the Authorities Unit.  Two of his sons have held public office: Ted was a councilman in Verona, and Patrick was the mayor of Cranford.

The post Labor Leader: The story of Tom Giblin’s magnificent political career appeared first on New Jersey Globe.