IMPORTANT ALERT from Steve Lonegan to Vote "No" Next Tuesday for Quest

[Cranbury Conservative]

Next Tuesday we will not only be voting on the national and local level for elected officials. We the residents of New Jersey will be asked to vote on several questions. One of the questions is garnering allot of media attention here at the eleventh hour before the election.

The question is as follows....

"QUESTION
Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential governmental functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of the Constitution?"

According to Steve Lonegan...

"The devil is in the fine print of Senate Concurrent Resolution #39 which will replace our current constitution if State Ballot Question #1 is approved.

First, voter approval will NOT be needed if a proposed project has "an independent non-State source of revenue" or "a source of revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of this Constitution".

Any Enron accountant or Abbott lawyer can drive a truck through those loopholes.

But here is the real kicker: "No voter approval shall be required . . . authorizing the creation of . . . debts . . . for the refinancing of all or a portion of any outstanding debts or liabilities of . . . an autonomous public corporate entity." "


Mr Lonegan's complete statements can be found on the Americans for Prosperity web site at http://www.americansforprosperity.org/index.php?id=6656&state=nj

At the very least Mr. Lonegan's position on this issue has to make everyone stop and think before they vote next Tuesday.

[Guest]

Why do lawyers get away with such terrible grammer. That question is a massive run-on sentence. Lawyers love to turn paragraphs into single sentences that then require them to be read about 8 times to flow chart all the mean from the construction of the paratheticals, etc. You'd think they never took 4th grade English.

[Guest]

[Cranbury Conservative]

[Guest]

So, can someone please help me understand this.

Voting YES allows the governor and legislature to borrow, without voter approval, MORE money to

A. pay debt on the money they already borrowed
B. And to create new "entities" that can authorize more debt?

Voting NO ensures the voters get the last say on approving increased debt?

And if it passes, the current sales tax will be used to pay the refinancing on this currently $37 billion debt, which will necessitate increasing taxes to pay for those items that the sales tax currently pays?

What is "unenforceable debt" issued by shell-entities?

Without completely understanding it, it sounds like a shell game, and as usual, the taxpayers will be left with a bill.

If I cannot understand it, I will vote NO. The onus should be on the government to fully explain this.

[Guest]