♪♪ -Governor Sherrill has put the money where her mouth is, or rather where the priorities are that she outlined on the campaign trail.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Joanna Gagas.

This is "Reporters Roundtable."

We've got a panel of journalists with us to help break down all that's happened in the last week of New Jersey news.

Let's see who we have with us today.

First up, Colleen O'Day, senior writer and projects editor with NJ Spotlight News.

Jelani Gibson, politics reporter for NJ Advance Media.

And Matt Friedman, reporter, politico, and author of New Jersey Playbook.

While the Sherrill administration priorities are taking shape now that the governor has outlined a spending plan, but it's all set against the backdrop of federal policies that are impacting New Jersey.

Colleen, let's start with the news of the day.

The Sherrill administration is suing the Department of Homeland Security over the Roxbury warehouse that they purchased to turn into an ICE immigration detention center.

New Jersey's had some success taking legal action against the Trump administration.

Do they have any legal standing here to stop this purchase to stop this center from moving forward?

So the purchase has been done, so I don't think they can stop that, but they certainly may be able to stop the construction or the changing that facility into a detention center.

We saw the state of Maryland file a suit against the feds a few weeks ago when the feds tried to, I mean and that's still pending, but tried to create a center in a town there and they were granted a preliminary injunction for at least a couple weeks based on some of what they argued, which is that the federal government is supposed to provide certain advance notice to a state under federal law.

And none of that happened in Maryland.

And as far as we know, none of that happened in New Jersey.

So I would think that that would be some good grounds at least to delay the construction.

But of course, no precedent set yet right as to actually stopping that effort altogether?

Not in the courts, certainly.

There were some places across the country where opposition was so strong and local congresspeople put some pressure on DHS that those just didn't move forward.

Although we have not seen that from any of our Republican congressional representatives, including Congressman Tom Kane Jr., who does represent Roxbury as part of his district.

Jelani.

Correct.

We have a new assemblywoman in the assembly, Katie Brennan, who all eyes were on her when she was first elected as someone who might come in and be a disruptor, a changemaker.

But all of a sudden, she's in the hot seat for some legislation that she wrote that would try to block some ICE enforcement here in the state.

What can you tell us about that?

-Yeah, so basically, the acronym is F-ICE, and it would basically allow people to sue ICE for violations of constitutional and civil rights in civil court, which also happens to be roughly the same type of court system that ICE does most of its arrests and detention in to begin with.

And an ethics complaint has been filed against her by another Republican about the acronym itself.

Yeah, this is one of the, I guess, kind of kitschy things that happens in politics, right?

You write a bill and then you need to come up with a title for that bill that creates an acronym that you can say easily.

This one is "Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act."

So anyone can read that and figure out what that says, as you explained already.

Assemblyman Bergen says, "Look, the legislature" -- this is a direct quote here -- "legislature is not a playground for performative activism.

New Jerseyans expect us to govern seriously, write real policy, and respect the institutions we serve."

Is there an expectation of decorum here that maybe she's crossed the line over?

Do you think that most legislators here would agree with Assemblyman Bergen?

I haven't really heard anything from the Democratic caucus that's raised too many concerns about it and quite frankly, ethics complaints in the New Jersey legislature, they don't tend to go that many places.

So we'll see.

But ethics complaints for the New Jersey legislature, they don't tend to go very far.

Yeah.

We'll be watching to see what happens there.

Matt, at the other front of law enforcement in New Jersey is the U.S.

Attorney's Office.

Judge Karashi here in New Jersey, federal judge lambasted some of the prosecutors in that office.

Can you explain some context for what's happening there?

It's a bit wonky.

The average person probably doesn't pay too much attention here, but it is significant.

Well, essentially, there's a number of statutes about what you do if there's not a Senate confirmed US attorney in office.

And the Trump administration has decided that even if they can't get their nominee through the Senate confirmation process, like Alina Habbo, the only person who's been formally nominated at this point that they'll keep putting their choices in and try to make end runs around the various statutes through untested means to put people who are clearly, you know, have no independence from the Trump administration, leading the prosecutor offices, judges keep invalidating them.

This federal statute says very clearly that judges get to pick an interim person until there's a Senate confirmed nominee, but statute, different statute also says that the president can fire the U.S.

attorney.

So we're in this, this, this game now where the judge is named someone, the president fires someone, and then it's just start over again.

So what we have right now is this quote unquote triumvirate of three attorneys running the U.S.

attorney's office.

There's absolutely nothing in the law that says this is possible, which the judges have, you know, ruled on and said this is illegal, but we're in kind of a holding pattern as we wait for an appeals court.

Ultimately, because New Jersey is far from the only state where this is happening, ultimately we're going, I'm sure this is going to the Supreme Court and we're going to have to get precedent from them because it seems like there's two very conflicting things going on here.

But on the on the tangible side of that, though, Matt is the reality that there are cases right now that may be impacted in terms of how they're prosecuted.

And one case at hand was a child sex offender.

You wrote about it.

That's true.

And good.

Yeah, I what I think is shocking is that the Trump administration has been trying to play this off as judges are going to let criminals go free because they won't prove our prosecutor.

But in this case, the judge was taking into the prosecutor for saying, hey, you're insisting that this case move forward and you cut this plea agreement with the guy before you had all the evidence.

So you cut a plea agreement for one thing, but turns out he had a whole lot more child porn and a whole lot more victims at the time you got the plea agreement, but you're still trying to go forward.

And you're agreeing to a sentence that is one third of what federal guidelines call for.

So in this case, he flipped the script a bit.

But I think what his real contention was, the judge's real frustration was like, it's not clear, you know, your leadership structure has been ruled illegal.

But you still want to move forward with this, even though I've given you a chance to put it off for a month.

While this gets decided in appellate court.

They didn't take it.

And not only did you want to move forward with this, but you're saying you want to move forward because this is a victim's case.

And then he's saying, well, there's a lot more victims here.

I don't think you're really doing the victim's justice by effectively letting this guy off easy.

Yeah, and of course, we know, we know to Matt that cases could be dismissed if any judge decides to rule that way because of who was in charge and, and how those cases were prosecuted.

So there could be some kind of trickle down effects from this as well.

I want to just shift gears and look at the legislature again, taking up some ice action.

Colleen, this package of bills, once again, moving through the legislature that they've had a lot of fits and starts.

Where are they right now, these three immigration bills that we know two of them, Governor Murphy pocket vetoed on his way out of office?

Right, so there's three bills.

One would stop any law enforcement officer from wearing a mask and not carrying identification, but we know who it's aimed at.

It really is aimed at ICE officers.

There is a Privacy Protection Act to prevent the collection and sharing of information about immigration status and other personal information.

And there's the codification of the AG's Immigrant Trust Directive, which essentially limits law enforcement, local law enforcement, from working with ICE to help detentions unless there is a criminal complaint against someone.

After the pocket veto, legislators immediately reintroduce these into the current legislative term.

They've gone through committees.

They are both up for final votes in the Assembly and Senate on Monday.

And then they go to Governor Sherrill and we'll see what she does.

As long as that ICE, the Immigrant Detention, the Immigrant Trust Act codification is essentially the same language as the directive, it seems like she would sign it because that was what she telegraphed during her campaign.

I think she might be inclined to sign the other two, but certainly the governor's office doesn't discuss pending legislation, so we're not really sure what's going to happen.

Colleen, the bills were up for a vote and then pulled at the last minute in a previous session.

Is there any word out there that there are perhaps some Democrats who are still not in support of advancing these bills?

Yeah, I don't think that's the case.

What I heard was that there was some language in one of the bills that just slipped through the cracks that they needed to change, and they want the three bills to pass as a package.

They want to send them to the governor's office together.

So that was what the holdup was.

- Jelani, one of the things that Governor Murphy said, excuse me, Governor Sherrill said she was gonna do early on was create this database where people could file complaints against any ICE activity that they saw that might be unconstitutional.

What are we seeing so far in terms of folks who are out there reporting ICE activity?

- Well, ever since the portals debuted as of a couple of weeks ago, they've gotten around 35 substantial submissions.

They've received many more submissions than that, but that's about the amount that they're basically going after.

They're playing their cards pretty close to the chest on other details that surround it, but that also seems to function around concerns of how much information they want to give out about the people that are submitting stuff to the portal for concerns of anonymity sake.

- Yeah, let's switch gears.

We've got, we're just a couple months away from the World Cup coming here to New Jersey.

The governor came in and made some big changes to the FanFest, right?

A lot of folks were planning for this big, huge excursion at Liberty State Park.

All of a sudden she says, "Look, it's not gonna be one event.

"It's going to be several.

It's going to be spread around a lot of different towns.

Jelani, tell us what towns are getting involved and what has taken shape so far."

-Yeah, I mean, you've got a couple of towns that are getting involved.

There was supposed to be, you know, a massive -- this massive party in Jersey City.

Now it's been split up between, you know, Jersey City, Newark, you know, Rutherford, like a whole lot of places throughout the state where you're going to have, basically, these miniature parties.

And, you know, the Jersey City mayor did not want this giant party in Jersey City.

They were like, you know, transit concerns and about how people were going to get there.

And so breaking it up into multiple parties across the state seems to be the move that folks are going for right now.

-How much do you think that is because of the more than $250 million budget hole that Jersey City is facing?

-Well, you know, speaking to some folks that are familiar with that off-record, it definitely played a role in the decision and the optics of the matter as well.

-But, of course, there's no parking.

That means no tailgating.

Anyone who's planning on grabbing a six-pack or more and heading to the games cannot do that.

It looks though as though NJ Transit is going to be increasing its bus schedules.

There's going to be park and ride options, ride share options.

If you're a New Jerseyan and you're trying to get over to the stadium, how much chaos do you think this creates for what you're used to as just a quick drive up at a park in the parking lot?

- Well, if you know NJ Transit, you're already used to chaos to begin with.

So, hopefully if you are an optimist, the stakes of the situation might make NJ Transit function a little bit better.

And at its worst, you could see everybody in the world experiencing the same thing that we experience every single day in terms of frustration.

It'll be one of the major tests.

- Don't be such an optimist, Jelani.

(both laughing) Realist, you're a realist over here.

Matt, switching gears again.

We have a new acting comptroller.

Not a lot of people know what the heck a comptroller is, but our previous comptroller secured significant amount of funds in New Jersey looking at fraud.

Tell us who's coming in and let's start there.

Well, we have Shirley Emehulu.

She is new.

I mean, I don't know her, but she was in the Attorney General's office under Matt Plattken for a couple years where she was the third-ranking official.

I don't know if that means anything about her zeal against political bosses that Matt Plattken and Kevin Walsh, the previous comptroller, shared.

But I can tell you that there was just a decision involving a key South Jersey patronage agency between the two states, between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, called the DRPA, where the comptroller has been suing - The Delaware River Port Authority, right?

And the comptroller has been suing for some documents related to an investigation they're conducting.

And the DRPA has preemptively sued them in court.

They're saying, "We'll turn over the documents, but we can't cede our authority here."

At the same time, the previous comptroller was saying, "There's no guarantee that they'll turn over all the documents.

We need them to turn over, even though they're saying they'll do it voluntarily."

But the comptroller has now won two victories over them in getting them to turn over the documents, I think it is.

And the question is, will this comptroller approach the job with the same kind of zeal that the previous one did, that Kevin Walsh did?

And we don't know yet, but there will be a key test.

Because in one of his last big investigations, Kevin Walsh went to the heart of the George Norcross insurance empire.

And he looked at this joint insurance funds that are extraordinarily complicated and hard to process.

And that's part of the reason these things get so little scrutiny, but it's a lot of money.

And he's saying, what are we doing here?

We've got the company awarding the contracts to the same company, basically.

I mean, that's an oversimplification a bit, but that is the gist of what he was saying.

And this is a pretty crazy case, and the health insurance funds are suing right now so that they don't have to develop these correction action plans.

And the question is, will this new comptroller continue to pursue them aggressively, or will there be political pressure?

You know, and you would say that- - Looking at- - Yeah, I just- - I wanna look at the politics of it a bit, because as you said, Shirley Amihelu served under Attorney General Matt Plotkin.

He also took on the Norcross machine.

He brought a RICO case.

It was not successful, but you've got two people in positions who were pretty aggressive there.

You have to wonder if she kind of is going to carry forward the torch of both of them, as you've said.

Are there any signs so far as to how she's going to handle this seat?

Not yet.

It seems like they're the DRPA case there.

It seems like they're, you know, full speed ahead and staying the course on that one.

And they're not giving up to this agency.

But we don't know, you know, previous comptrollers, you know, Matt Walsh's, Kevin Walsh's predecessor was, you know, he was far less aggressive.

And in fact, when we're talking about fraud, cut, you know, basically created an amnesty program for the massive amount of fraud going on in Lakewood, which is, let's face it, a very politically connected community that votes as a bloc and wields substantial influence.

And there's a huge amount of welfare fraud going on there.

And he cut an amnesty program, which I've never seen for another wider community.

And still most people didn't take them up on it.

And there haven't been that many prosecutions that I'm aware of there.

So the office, it varies by person, how aggressive they are.

- Yeah, well, we'll be watching.

We'll wait and see.

Colleen, it seems anywhere you look right now, data centers are a central talking point.

We've got one being developed in Vineland.

It's created noise disturbances that we see residents posting about on the regular, asking the Department of Health to get involved.

But you looked at, in particular, a bill that's moving through the legislature that would attempt to rein in some data center development here in the state.

What can you tell us about it?

Yeah, there are actually a bunch of bills that are moving through.

The one that I looked at would essentially require all data centers, or all large data centers, to supply their own electricity or use only a new source of electricity.

So if they don't supply it, they'd be in working with an organization or with an energy provider that's providing, again, just new electricity.

And it would have to be clean energy only, not coal fired plants, you know, the old fashioned electricity.

The caveat here is that the state, while it wants to make sure, wants to try to stop further increases in electric bills.

It doesn't want residents to have to pay for these huge data loads that these centers use.

It also doesn't want to lose the economic opportunities of centers being cited here.

So this law would only take effect if other states in the PJM region, which is where we're located, pass a similar law.

Do you hear any pushback on this type of proposal from Republicans in New Jersey?

Absolutely, yes.

What does that say?

Yeah, I mean, you know, they're saying that, I mean, they also, they don't want people's electricity bills to go up, and they also would like to see the economic opportunities coming in, but, you know, they're afraid that some of these bills at least could make it impossible or make it much less attractive for businesses to come in, for data centers to come in, and, you know, they'd rather see the economic opportunities happening.

Yeah, there's a whole lot that is yet to be understood as to what it means for a community where a data center comes in, but if you could, Colleen, tell us quickly what's happening in Montvale as it relates to a data center and affordable housing.

So, very, yeah, it's hard to do this quickly, but, you know, there's this law now that says you've got to provide a certain amount of affordable housing.

Every town had to file plans.

Montvale, which was the leader of the lawsuit that failed trying to stop the law, has submitted a plan that would give the developer the option to either build 250 housing units, 50 of them would be affordable, or a data center.

And, you know, I think we know that data centers provide, could provide much fewer impacts in terms of their kids going to school, probably wouldn't need the same kind of police force, you know, those kinds of things that municipalities have to pay for.

The housing advocates are just furious, saying, you know, they're trying to get out.

They've been trying all along to get out, and they're now doing this to try to stop, to prevent the construction of housing, which we know as many as 200,000 people in New Jersey need.

So they're taking Montveil to court over this.

Yeah.

And just a few seconds left, Jelani.

Gas prices up are up.

The governor saying this is all laid at the feet of the president.

The president says increased prices are a small price to pay for security against Iran not having a nuclear weapon.

How does that play here for voters and residents here in New Jersey?

New Jerseyans are tired of high bills.

They are tired of their property taxes.

They are tired of the electricity bill, and now they're paying at the pump.

You know, whether or not it works on blaming Trump, we do have to acknowledge that very rarely does a president do well when the gas prices are high in terms of approval, and so time will tell.

-Time will tell.

Colleen, Jelani, Matt, thank you so much for being with us today.

That's all the time we have.

You can follow me on Instagram @joannagaggisNJ and go ahead and scan that QR code right there on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

For all the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great weekend.

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