On Thursday, November 12at 10:30am, the Assembly Appropriations Committee will consider A4907, sponsored by Assemblyman Wimberly, which calls for a supplemental budget appropriation of $58,000,000 in order to provide grant funding for NJ Police departments to purchase body worn cameras (BWC). According to the bill, “due to ongoing incidents between police and communities nationwide, law enforcement agencies throughout the State are searching for sources of funding to purchase BWC equipment for law enforcement officers to ensure accurate documentation of both the citizen and the officer during an interaction.” It’s worth noting that this bill was originally referred to the Assembly Community Development and Affairs Committee when it was introduced on 10/29/20, but is now scheduled for a hearing in the Appropriations Committee. According to the person I spoke with today at the Office of Legislative Services, the bill has been transferred to the Appropriations Committee, although as of this writing that transfer is not yet reflected on the NJ Legislative website. *This is a perfect example of why it’s so important to subscribe to bills that are of interest to you, so that you can receive alerts whenever there’s action on the bill. For more info on how to do that, see my previous post HERE.
The Appropriations Committee will take oral testimony on bills, by telephone and video, limited to three minutes. If you are interested in registering your position with the Committee, you’ll need to fill out the Registration Form located on the Appropriations Committee page. For those who want to testify at the meeting, check the box “Do you wish to testify?” on the Registration Form, and instructions for testifying before the Committee will be forwarded to you after you submit your Registration Form. The form must be submitted by 3:00 PM on November 10, 2020. The public may also submit written testimony electronically in lieu of oral testimony. Written testimony will be included in the Committee record and distributed to all the Committee members. Written testimony should be submitted to OLSAideAAP@njleg.org.
There are several other bills on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting; two bills of note are the Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance, & Marketplace Modernization Act (A21), which is expected to be released from the Assembly Oversight, Reform and Federal Relations Committee today, and A4942, which appropriates $87,444,690 from the “New Jersey Library Construction Fund” to provide grants for construction, reconstruction, development, extension, improvement, and furnishing of New Jersey’s public libraries. Governor Murphy announced the list of libraries who are to receive funding, as part of a $125 million bond initiative (the Library Construction Bond Act) that was approved by voters in 2017. For more information, see the Governor’s press release HERE.
