Yesterday, we asked you, our ocean champions in New Jersey, to call your elected officials and ask them to Vote No on a bill that would open up 300,000 acres of New Jersey's undeveloped land to new malls, new parking lots, and new big-box-stores. This bill was passed last night by a wide margin, and will become law in New Jersey. (Read more here)
Thanks for everyone who made calls yesterday!
At the final votes, this bad bill was amended to provide two years of “build-anywhere-you-want (no matter the consequences)” help for developers (down from the original three year proposal), and the bill was amended to not include development in the Pinelands and Highlands regions of the state.
Overall, however, this bill represents a land grab for developers to allow them to build malls where there once were farms, big box stores up the road from mom-and-pop Main Streets, and parking lots on top of parking lots.
The New Jersey Legislators that voted “NO” on this bill are:
NJ Senate:
Allen, Diane B.
Bateman, Christopher
Buono, Barbara
Connors, Christopher J.
Greenstein, Linda R.
Turner, Shirley K.
NJ Assembly:
Barnes, Peter J., III
Benson, Daniel R.
Chivukula, Upendra J.
Cryan, Joseph
Diegnan, Patrick J., Jr.
Gove, DiAnne C.
Gusciora, Reed
Jasey, Mila M.
McKeon, John F.
Riley, Celeste M.
Rumpf, Brian E.
Stender, Linda
Vainieri Huttle, Valerie
Wagner, Connie
Watson Coleman, Bonnie
For more information, check out these news stories from across New Jersey:
It looks like the legislators from district 15 didn't care. To them I say:
ReplyDelete"Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money" -Cree Indian Proverb.