Another full week at the 21st and Berkeley Heights remains the hot spot, but as always we’re going to start with the state…

Our briefing covered a packed state legislative agenda that features Battery Incentives, Medicaid Fertility Coverage, General Contractor Licensing, Ballot Rotation and a state budget at the tail end.

We move to more concerning data in connection to NJ’s student debt as a follow up to last years report.

We wrap up this week’s state coverage with an addition to our DOE Adaptive testing coverage and a response to our OPRA request that shows we’re asking the right questions but the answers remain elusive.

Regionally, resident Michael Lebond shares an extensive Data Collection that clarifies the power outage issue in New Providence and Berkeley Heights ahead of the 06/30/2026 Berkeley Heights Town Council Meeting.

Onto the locals….

The Berkeley Heights Town Council Agenda has an early-summer packed agenda filled with controversy that includes a developers agreement that sets the stage for yet another school tax exempt PILOT and a resolution that dissolves a volunteer Recreation Commission and creates a paid Department with more staff. Candidate Edmund Maciejewski argues that Susan Poage’s AI Deck pushed lazy propaganda instead of solid research.

On the school side we saw a BOE Agenda with concerning policy changes that would allow District staff to take pictures of students on private devices and a Strategic Plan presentation that did everything but increase confidence our District was working on improving proficiency.

Moving to New Providence we covered a Council Agenda that involved a grant and shared services agreement resident may be interested in and a BOE agenda that continues to lack the pre-meeting details on important decisions families need to provide relevant feedback.

In Garwood Bruce Patterson adds to the NJ PILOT story with a follow up on Wilf/Gardens and a familiar story of Consultants directing government representatives into bad water.

Randolph contributor Eliza Schleifstein shares an email exchange that leads her to a question … “If asking questions becomes grounds for retaliation, how can any board member effectively perform their oversight responsibilities?”

Top Five Articles for May

The 2026 NJ Layoff Warning Trend Spotted in March Continues Through May

7 Districts, 5 Years, 1 Dashboard: A Comparative Performance Summary

“Security Theatre” and a Silencing Lawsuit: Cherry Hill’s War on Transparency

Scutari’s Law Delivered: NJ County Parties Rake In $22M as Pay-to-Play Thrives

New Providence EMS Opposes S1421: ‘A Costly State Mandate Threatening Local Volunteers and Taxpayers’

This Week at NJ21st: Retaliation, PILOTs and the Fight for Transparency from Trenton to Randolph was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting from the top as always….

This week’s episode of the 21st Briefing covers a legislative calendar that touches upon two bills that may have potential concerning impacts on civil liberties, including speech.

The BPU is looking at whether NJ model is incentivizing higher utility bills and is seeking public feedback.

May looks like good news for NJ’s job picture, but peeling back the layers shows that all may not be well.

Going Local…

In Berkeley Heights, Laura provides her notes on a Town Council Meeting that had residents walking up to the podium on data centers, library surplus and missing bill lists. The library comments were actually a follow up to questions asked during the Budget Meetings and it appears residents may need to ping-pong between the Library Board and the Mayor and Council to get an answer as the minutes show no record of discussion.

Sai Akiri shares her concerns on a Mayor and Council receiving special privileges during the GL Graduation she argues are undeserved given a long track record of bad policy decisions. Laura pops up again with a BOE Meeting that saw members voting through privileges for themselves regardless of ethical concerns.

Summit Common Council Meetings continue to put other towns to shame as residents show up armed with information ready to hold their local government accountable. We highlight a highly informative resident comment on AI Data Centers that every local government should listen to.

Moving onto Millburn we publish an op-ed that acknowledges the issue the 06/16 ballot seeks to solve but disagrees with the proposed remedy.

Then to Warren where 250 manufacturing jobs are set to be created with support from NJ’s first award under the Next New Jersey Manufacturing Program.

On the Socials…

700K children no longer receiving SNAP since passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Summit and New Providence on the road to better culverts

Millburn’s ballot question is too close to call

NJ ELEC speeds to investigate County Campaign Finance

New Affordable Housing Income limits go into effect

This Week at NJ21st: Civil Liberties, Privilege of Power and Big Moves in Warren was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At the Top

Our state legislative review covered bills moving through Trenton on Turf Fields, Climate and the price of Data.

Staying at the top, education advocate Kai Collins takes the OAL to task on confidentiality and record keeping while asking some hard questions on fairness for working families battling the system on behalf of their kids.

We wrap up the state coverage with an addition to our ‘Know Your NJ Government’ series in walking through a BPU agenda — boring but important as utilities continue to be a hot topic.

Regionally, we add to our 7-District School performance hub by taking a look at how our schools compare on the SAT.

It’s been a while but we put out another Nightwatch episode covering the CMS Turf Field/Sports Complex/Project, Peppertown and NJ’s shift to Adaptive Testing.

Moving on to the Locals….

Berkeley Heights

John covers a Berkeley Heights Town Council agenda that includes a boiler plate energy plan, $1.8M in bills and more redevelopment — although that last one got pushed back.

Laura covers the 06/11 Berkeley Heights BOE Meeting Agenda that comes with a long awaited Custodian Contract and new Principal at CMS.

Town Council Candidate Edmund Maciejewski thinks that our Town Government needs to focus less on flags and pet causes and more on Township Business and resident concerns.

Resident Michael Leblond continues to hold the Mayor and Council accountable for the ongoing power issues in Berkeley Heights.

Summit

We publish our coverage of the Summit BOE Agenda that had some big bills, big hires and big transfers as that District has it’s year-end meeting.

New Providence

Looks like it’s ‘Energy Plan’ week at the municipal level as New Providence rolls its version out as well, along with a ~$3M Bond .

On the Socials….

The State Supreme Court makes it crystal clear — emails from private accounts pertaining to public business are subject to OPRA.

NJ publishes its first annual wildfire report and 2025 was a bad year.

NJ DOE is investing in High-Impact Tutoring — why aren’t we?

Top Five Articles for May

The 2026 NJ Layoff Warning Trend Spotted in March Continues Through May

7 Districts, 5 Years, 1 Dashboard: A Comparative Performance Summary

“Security Theatre” and a Silencing Lawsuit: Cherry Hill’s War on Transparency

Scutari’s Law Delivered: NJ County Parties Rake In $22M as Pay-to-Play Thrives

New Providence EMS Opposes S1421: ‘A Costly State Mandate Threatening Local Volunteers and Taxpayers’

This Week at NJ21st: Holding the NJ DOE Accountable, SAT Scores, Energy Plans, Problems and Agendas was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Top Level

Our top story covers what appears to be the longest running NJ ethics case (according to records available online) involving six BOE Members. Despite affirmation that they violated ethics by an OAL Judge and the SEC; the case remains in limbo as two political appointees holding the DOE Commissioner position have thus far stalled on their final decision raising questions about the Law Firm representing the former BOE reps and whether political influence matters more than justice.

We move on to our 7-Districts and 2026 Special Education determinations — all of our Districts ‘Met Requirements’’, but there were significant differences among the 7 that warrant a second look.

We looked at four key areas legislators tackled in Trenton including a new statewide EMS planning bill; two school funding bills (one aimed at districts in development-restricted areas like the Highlands and Pinelands; the Senate housing agenda, (including ADUs and a bill that would direct property-transfer revenue to affordable housing); and an NJ Transit accountability bill that would let riders see where delays are coming from.

On the economic front, 2026 is surpassing the last four years on NJ WARN layoff notices and workers impacted and a US Census bi-weekly snapshot shows that NJ Business Owners are a bit more pessimistic about the next 6 months ahead than their peers, nationally.

Eliza share her thoughts on a new NJSBA initiative that seeks to improve BOE Behavior as a rash of bad actions across the state raises serious questions on whether Representatives understand what the title means.

Onto the Locals

Berkeley Heights moves forward with invasive 24/7 AI Surveillance of students despite concerns expressed by community members and student representatives; we explain why these systems are dangerous and how students and parents can push back.

This wasn’t the only item on the BOE’s agenda this past week, as subscription bus price increases and AP classes were also the subject of discussion during the most recent meeting.

Republican Town Council Candidate Edmund ‘Tom” Maciejewski published two Candidate statements; one outlining the potential impact of a one-candidate Republican ballot and the other a ‘Thank You’ and declaration of victory.

In Summit we covered an agenda that led to a steep increase in fees for OPRA requests of police video, a concerning policy restricting Drone recording of police actions and a land giveaway that had Summit residents lining up to speak. Following our letter to the Council in connection to the OPRA increases, Summit made a small change that moved the fees from being mandatory to discretionary but did not include the specific exemptions we requested.

Garwood resident Bruce Patterson shares another chapter in his community’s saga involving a developer who “dragged their feet’ for 8 years, sued the borough, nearly doubled housing density and is now being considered for a PILOT tax exemption.

Millburn resident Viswa Reddy argues that a vote that may lead to a different form of Government may not actually solve the underlying political issue.

On the Socials

Former Hillsborough Business Administrator Indicted

NI Unemployment Rate Improved Compared to Last April

Top Five Articles for May

The 2026 NJ Layoff Warning Trend Spotted in March Continues Through May

7 Districts, 5 Years, 1 Dashboard: A Comparative Performance Summary

“Security Theatre” and a Silencing Lawsuit: Cherry Hill’s War on Transparency

Scutari’s Law Delivered: NJ County Parties Rake In $22M as Pay-to-Play Thrives

New Providence EMS Opposes S1421: ‘A Costly State Mandate Threatening Local Volunteers and Taxpayers’

This Week at NJ21st: Landmark Ethics Delays, Student AI Surveillance and Local Land Giveaways was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week was packed, and it feels like we covered almost every topic, so let’s get started because there is a lot.

State

There was also a lot of news on the state level this week, starting with a slew of bills covering EMS, energy and AI that had their day in Trenton.

While politicos are celebrating a small decline in the unemployment rate, the picture is still very mixed, and the strength of the recovery remains uncertain as numbers on private-sector job losses came out.

The NJDOL showed its teeth on worker misclassification, as one company was hit with a stop-work order and a $200K bill. We cover what went south for the Teaneck limo company and what businesses need to understand about NJ’s ABC Test.

Regional

We finished our 7-District Dashboard on the NJ School Performance Reports, which included Chatham, Madison, Millburnand our dashboard-wide analysis. Spoiler: we are still lagging behind our pre-COVID numbers as a group.

Local

We will start in New Providence with an ambitious Town Council agenda that included a $2.9M bond and some police purchases that deserve a bit more detail. The NP BOE meeting took a typical next step after budget approval, but key policies without backup documents showed up on their agenda yet again.

Moving on to Berkeley Heights, we cover a Berkeley Heights BOE agenda with some big decisions, including an AI surveillance system that carries with it some big questions on student privacy and well-being. Staying with the district, Shauna shares her trials and tribulations in getting BOE committee minutes and gives us a summary of Athletics Committee meetings.

Moving to the Township, Laura provides us with a recap of a Town Council meeting that was another chapter in what has been a strange ride thus far this year. We also have two candidate statements: George Deluna for Mayor and Edmund Maciejewski for Town Council. Lastly, resident Michael Leblond gives us an updated tally on Berkeley Heights power outages in his letter to the Mayor and Council.

Speaking of updates, Garwood resident Bruce Patterson shares another contribution on the impact of PILOTs in his community.

On The Socials….

• NJ WARN notices continue to mount, and the end date for Fiserv is approaching.
• The NJ Globe reveals that NJ ELEC, NJ’s election watchdog, hit all 42 county political organizations with subpoenas.
• Berkeley Heights BOE canceled its meeting this week due to quorum issues.
• Loretta Rivers considers challenging Danielsen again in ’27.

Top Five Articles for April:

NJ Revenue: The Warning Lights are Starting to Glow

The Hole Gets Bigger: Treasury Expands New Jersey’s Health Benefits Alarm

Why NJ’s Payroll Drop May Matter More Than the Unemployment Dip

The 21st District Face-Off: How Seven Towns Stack Up on Per-Household Spending

Legal But Opaque Part 2: A Case Study of th

This Week at NJ21st: School Dashboard Trends, AI Student Surveillance and $2.9M Bonds was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week saw a flood of important information make its way into the public eye so let’s get started.

Laura wrote a revealing breakdown on the ongoing controversies connected to Berkeley Heights’ Columbia Field project with new questions on funding, process and environmental concerns.

School Performance Reports are out, and we started rolling through our 7-District Dashboard data starting with Berkeley Heights, New Providence, Summit and Westfield. Each report compares Districts to prior years, pre-COVID baselines and 7-District Averages and we aren’t done yet.

New Providence EMS published an open letter on a state bill that threatens volunteer EMS units across NJ and may mean higher bills and less effective services for residents.

This week’s 21st Briefing covered a host of bills connecting to data privacy, utility fees and local EMS costs (the same bill referenced above) along with the state budget revenue hearings.

The Short Hills Association published its third installment of its educational series on Property Taxes and how assessed values, equalization ratios, and local tax calculations impact homeowners.

We wind down to our coverage of two town council meetings that included a Berkeley Heights budget ping pong with the State and Summit’s packed yet vague close session agenda along with a $100k settlement.

On The Socials….

NJ21st Opposes S1421

Newark Elects an Independent

2026 7-Municipality Budget Analysis Finds a New Home

One Page — Every Way to Subscribe

Top Five Articles for April:

NJ Revenue: The Warning Lights are Starting to Glow

The Hole Gets Bigger: Treasury Expands New Jersey’s Health Benefits Alarm

Why NJ’s Payroll Drop May Matter More Than the Unemployment Dip

The 21st District Face-Off: How Seven Towns Stack Up on Per-Household Spending

Legal But Opaque Part 2: A Case Study of the Berkeley Heights Recreation Hire

This Week at NJ21st: Columbia Field Questions, School Dashboards and the Threat to Volunteer EMS was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting in Trenton, this week’s 21st Briefing covers a slew of bills that seek to pull housing decisions away from locals and into state hands, along with a proposal that would tie special education funding for districts to real numbers instead of assumptions.

We stay south with our continuing coverage of Cherry Hill’s lawsuit against a journalist. This time, we move beyond the spending and into the actual filings, examining the potential impact not only on journalists and advocates, but students as well, while asking: “What happens when the thing you want to evaluate is used as the reason you aren’t allowed access to what is needed to conduct the evaluation?”

This edition also takes a look at a recent WALL update and how recent changes by the NJDOL to the ABC rules make this report more impactful for NJ businesses.

Moving onto the locals….

Berkeley Heights — John publishes his email to the Mayor and Council pointing out how the current pro-developer context is harming our environment and asks them to take a stand by publicly condemning Senator Scutari’s attempt to roll back protections and committing to not taking outside campaign contributions this election season.

Laura provides her update on the 05/05/2026 Town Council Meeting, which saw the budget go through another round of changes after the State kicked it back.

Resident Michael Leblond continues to pursue the Council on Berkeley Heights’ continuing challenges with power outages.

We wrap up Berkeley Heights with Laura’s coverage of the 05/06/2026 BOE Meeting, which tackled lingering budget issues and featured a STEAM presentation.

Summit — A BOE meeting with a lot of big decisions on the agenda but not much backup.

Westfield — Our last school budget analysis of the year tells a similar story: benefits blowing up another budget.

New Providence — Ending with a Town Council meeting that saw heavy investments in the Annex and another massive number attached to a bill list the public couldn’t see prior to the meeting.

Top Five Articles for April:

NJ Revenue: The Warning Lights are Starting to Glow

The Hole Gets Bigger: Treasury Expands New Jersey’s Health Benefits Alarm

Why NJ’s Payroll Drop May Matter More Than the Unemployment Dip

The 21st District Face-Off: How Seven Towns Stack Up on Per-Household Spending

Legal But Opaque Part 2: A Case Study of the Berkeley Heights Recreation Hire

This Week at NJ21st: Housing Battles, Hidden Bill Lists, and Local Power Struggles was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This was another busy week at the 21st — we’re going to start from the top and work our way down to the locals.

On the state level, we cover special education audits and the state scramble to address the growing infrastructure issues throughout NJ on this week’s 21st Briefing.

The NJ DOL updated is WARN notice archive and 2026 continues to outpace 2025 on potential layoff notices.

NJ ELEC released a couple of impactful reports this week and we honed in the explosion of money feeding into NJ county political systems since Scutari’s 2023 Campaign law defanging.

We finally get something back from the Cherry Hill School District in their lawsuit against a Journalist over OPRA and have since learned there more to the story than we published….stay tuned on this because it has huge implications for the state of journalism in NJ.

Moving onto the locals…

In Berkeley Heights we get the final budget from BHPSNJ and their plan to tackle exploding health care costs. Laura gives us an overview on the 04/30 BHPSNJ Meeting and the 05/06 agenda. We also go back to the 04/17 Town Council Meeting and look at what changed in the Municipal Budget that led to a razor thin $400 cushion.

In Summit we provide an overview of the 05/05 Commons Council Meeting that had budget adoption and road closures as part of the agenda and wrap up our coverage of Summit School’s Budget.

In Garwood a resident offers his input on the impact of PILOT programs on local schools — part of an unfortunate yet common perspective communities around the state can relate to.

On the Socials….

News funded by and accountable to people

This Week at the 21st: Campaign Cash, Layoff Notices and a Press Freedom Fight was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week’s briefing stayed on track with the ongoing budget discussions in Trenton and how the decisions that follow could impact municipalities, along with a bit of commentary on the DOE black box.

We move on to an announcement from the Department of Treasury that, while positive on the surface, threw out some concerning signals, and another announcement from the DOT that’s one point in a larger network of Transportation needs all coming due at once.

Moving on to the locals, Berkeley Heights had another active week as our coverage of the 04/21/2026 Town Council Meeting saw residents raising more questions about Lower Columbia and the Township’s withholding of PILOT Dollars from classrooms. The Town Council meeting next week is going to hold more big items including a possible 250K donation from Connell (the beneficiary of a highly controversial massive redevelopment re-write earlier this year) to the Township for the Lower Columbia project.

The school District also had another big week as we broke down the agenda for a meeting that saw the final adoption of the Budget preceded by a communication from the Business Administrator that provided the public with insight on some of the changes from the preliminary intended to offset rising health benefit costs.

New Providence also had a Town Council Meeting that, while not as big, had it’s own set of question marks.

We wrapped up our Municipal preliminary Budget Analysis with Mountainside and added New Providence and Madison to the School Budget Dashboard.

On the Socials:

The BHPSNJ Board, Administration and BHEA Can Step Up

Top Five Articles for April

NJ Revenue: The Warning Lights are Starting to Glow

The Hole Gets Bigger: Treasury Expands New Jersey’s Health Benefits Alarm

Why NJ’s Payroll Drop May Matter More Than the Unemployment Dip

The 21st District Face-Off: How Seven Towns Stack Up on Per-Household SpendingLegal But Opaque Part 2: A Case Study of the Berkeley Heights Recreation Hire

This Week at NJ21st: Local Governments Scramble as State Revenue Warning Lights Flicker was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting in Trenton we tackle the ongoing discussions on a $60.7B Budget being stress-tested by Tax Relief, Transit Demands and Health Care Costs while Scutari works behind the scenes in pushing back Environmental and Flood Protections that benefit Developer-Donors.

We move to a shaky employment data with meager progress in a state unemployment number that tracks behind the rest of the nation along with deep job losses in a key sector.

This week saw the launch of our series that investigates the ~$1.7M annual school funding gap created by Berkeley Heights PILOT developments and why the Township’s narrative on withholding school funds doesn’t add up.

Our school budget analysis moves forward with reviews of the full preliminary budgets from Chatham and Millburn. We also continue our Municipal Budget series with a look at Summit’s full preliminary budget and highlight the absence of any budget information on Mountainside’s Introductory budget agenda.

The Berkeley Heights CMS Sports Complex/Park has another bad week as resident and BOE Rep Joly asks basic questions the Township can’t appear to answer and a former Recreation Commissioner’s question that lead a Council-member to decline responding without an Attorney — Laura summarizes the most recent set of issues to plague the project.

Meeting summaries for the week include Summit’s Council and BHPSNJ’s BOE Meetings both on 04/21.

Top Three Articles for March…

Luxury Living, Boutique Retail and the Quiet Erasure of Working and Middle Class NJ

NJDOE’s Ghost Deliverables: No Evidence for Adaptive Test Accuracy One Year into Rollout

928 Units and a $16.6 Million Bill- Monday’s Berkeley Heights Council Meeting

This Week At NJ21st: Budget Season Rolls On, Shaky Jobs Data and the $1.7M School Funding Gap was originally published in NJ21st on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.