Steve Lonegan

Conservative activist and former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan will be the special guest at a fundraiser for Senate candidate Murray Sabrin next month.

The fundraiser will be hosted by Club for Growth board member Frayda Levin at her Mountain Lakes home on Saturday, April 12th. 

"We are very excited about New Jersey Taxpayer’s greatest friend, Steve Lonegan, serving as a special guest,” said Sabrin in a press release.

When the state Senate pasAFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanechsed paid family leave today by a vote of 22-16, AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech admitted he felt a particular sense of satisfaction after a hard, 12-year trudge.

"We're exhausted, but we're very happy," said Wowkanech, whose outfit numbers 1 million strong in New Jersey, and who remembers first trying to float the idea of paid family leave over a decade ago.

What the Senate passed today was a bill that enables employees to pay into a fund that would allow them to receive compensation while taking up to six weeks off from work to care for their own health or the health of a relative. According to the bill, "an amount not to exceed $25 million may be transferred from the state's temporary disability fund to the new account to support start-up costs." The program is designed to run on the monies employees pay into the funds, which amounts to about $33 apiece annually.

Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo, one of the sponsors of the Assembly version of paid family leave, which came out of committee today. 

The lobbyists' feeding frenzy continued in Trenton today as representatives from both the business and labor communities zeroed in on lawmakers in the hallways of power and attempted to elicit the promise of a yes or no vote on the issue of paid family leave.

The measure would extend state liability insurance to employees for up to six weeks, enabling workers to care for themselves, a newborn or a sick relative. Funding would come from the workers contributing on average a dollar a week from their salaries.

Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, state chairman of the DeAssemblyman Joseph Cryanmocratic Party, today derided the reaction of Republican leaders to Gov. Jon Corzine's budget as "all over the map."

"Too many of the Republicans are resorting to the political rhetoric of the past about budget cuts but they want  to exempt their own pet projects," said Cryan in a press release. "They aren't just contradicting each other, they are contradicting themselves. Their budget  numbers don't add up and their ideas don't add  up."

The governor described his budget as a "turning point"  away from the irresponsible practices of the past. "But the Republicans' want to do a u-turn back to the same politics of the past," Cryan said.

Conservative activist Steve Lonegan isn’t surprised that Gov. Corzine’s fiscal restructuring plan is so unpopular.

A Quinnipiac poll released today puts the public’s opposition to the plan at 73%. 

The more Corzine has tried to promote his fiscal restructuring plan, Lonegan said, the more distasteful the public finds it. As he’s traveled across the state to protest it, Lonegan has found mostly sympathetic reactions.

Former Bogota mayor and conservative activist Steve Lonegan said today that the Attorney General’s office is investigating him, and that he thinks it reeks of political retribution.

Lonegan is calling for the legislature to appoint an independent prosecutor to look into the matter and wants the U.S. Attorney to conduct a civil rights investigation on his behalf. 

Lonegan, who has spent the last week in the media spotlight after he was arrested for trespassing while protesting against the governor’s asset monetization plan outside of his Cape May County Town Hall meeting at a school in Middle Township, said that arrest was merely “the tip of the iceberg” in a campaign of intimidation on the part of the Corzine administration and Attorney General Anne Milgram.   

According to Lonegan, the investigation started at the peak of his own campaign against two ballot measures that went down in defeat in November’s elections.

Conservative activist Steve Lonegan says the state Attorney General is investigating him, alleging that while he has not been contacted, records from the Bogota Borough Hall have been subpoenaed and six unnamed associates of the former Mayor have been interviewed.

The former Bogota mayor said he suspects that the investigation is political retribution, and began during his campaign against a ballot initiative supported by Gov. Jon Corzine.

"I'm not afraid of Jon Corzine. I'm not afraid of the Attorney General’s office. They can come up with all kinds of phony claims if they want and intend to do so,” said Lonegan. “I challenge them to come out of the shadows and tell us what they're all about.”

The New Jersey State Police will investigate the arrest of former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan at Gov. Jon Corzine’s Town Hall meeting in Middle Township last weekend, according to a Star-Ledger report.  "The superintendent has ordered the review and wants to have definitive answers," Capt. Al Della Fave, a State Police spokesman, told the newspaper.

Saying that the State Police was to blame, Middle Township municipal and school officials say that conservative leader Steve Lonegan was “engaging in a constitutionally protected action” when he protested Gov. Jon Corzne’s town meeting, and said they would ask the municipal prosecutor to drop all charges against the former Bogota Mayor and possible ’09 candidate for Governor.

In light of the arrest of former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan on Saturday outside Middle Township High School where Gov. Jon Corzine was holding a town meeting, the director of communications for the New Jersey School Boards Association on Tuesday responded to a question about free speech and individual school board policies.

Frank Belluscio quoted from a 2004 decision, in which the 3rd circuit federal appeals court ruled that a government entity conducting an open forum must permit the distribution of literature by those of varying or opposing viewpoints.