NJ Spotlight--Effort Advances to Circumvent Trump Property-Tax Hit, but Questions Remain
NJ lawmakers push ahead with creative maneuver to stave off new federal limit on tax write-offs. Skeptics still maintain IRS won’t accept the workaround
While Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration is getting ready to go to federal court to challenge a cap that was recently placed on a longstanding federal tax write-off for state and local taxes, lawmakers in Trenton are advancing a bill that would use some creative accounting to help recapture the deduction for New Jersey homeowners.
John Reitmeyer | February 16, 2018
Associated Press (via Press of Atlantic City)--Murphy says 'we need action' after fatal school shooting
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says he was "staggered" by the fatal shooting at a Florida high school and that "we need action."
Murphy addressed the shooting Thursday at an unrelated event in Trenton.
The shooting Wednesday at a Parkland, Florida, high school left 17 people dead. Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder
Associated Press| February 15, 2018
Education Week--'I Didn't Want Them to Panic': Amid Chaos, Teacher Sheltered Students in Fla. School
Parkland, Fla.
By the time Jim Gard realized he needed to lock down his classroom Wednesday, many of his students were out of reach.
A fire alarm had gone off inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School just as the school day was about to end, sending Gard and his math students into the hallway. It was strange, the teacher said, because they’d had a fire drill earlier in the day, but Gard followed the school’s safety protocols and ushered his students out, taking up the rear to make sure his classroom was empty.
Then the noise started.
“We heard all of these popping sounds,” he said. “I can’t count how many. There were a lot.”
Then the announcement: Code Red. A shooter was on campus. The popping was gunfire from a semi-automatic rifle that would eventually claim the lives of 17 students and adults and wound at least 14 others at the high school of more than 3,000 students.
It would become the third-deadliest school shooting in the nation’s history.
Evie Blad| February 15, 2018