Proposed state Constitutional amendment #1: A prohibition on the taxation of personal earned income.

Proposed state Constitutional amendment #2: A prohibition on a general sales tax.

To pass it would require a 3/5 vote in both the state Senate and in the state House of Representatives.  It would then need a 2/3 vote by the public at the next biennial November election, which would be November 8, 2022. Might seem like a steep climb but I think they have a pretty good chance of passing. There are two things the folks up here jealously protect. The first is our tradition of holding the first in the nation presidential primary and the second is our status as being one of only two states that have no personal income tax or general sales tax. (Alaska is the other.)

I am very happy to report that my good friend Sandy Caputo has started a new blog and it is now on line with its first post.  “The Belmar Blog” will carry forward the mission of providing information and transparency about Belmar’s governmental and political activities.

Un-coincidentally similar to this blog in appearance and content, the new blog will be the place to go for meeting agendas, Zoom log-in info and videos of the meetings. (After I moved up here, Sandy was kind enough to tape many meetings for this blog before they had to switch them all to Zoom.) I’ve also been telling Sandy where I snoop around for interesting stories so I think there will be a lot of content worth checking out. I will also continue to keep an eye on things and will forward to her anything interesting I happen to find. I will also mention on this blog when Sandy has something up that I think you’re going to want to go have a look at.

You’ll probably still want to check in here from time to time because I will continue to publish some content that is not specifically about Belmar or is something that maybe Sandy might be a little uncomfortable about publishing. If it’s something really juicy maybe I’ll leave a comment on some recent post in Sandy’s blog letting you know to come here and take a look.

I want to thank Sandy very, very much for relieving me of all this work that I didn’t feel like doing anymore and that I wasn’t really doing such a good job of these days anyway. It’s going to be much better because she has the time to do a better job and she really cares a lot about Belmar. I have to confess that for me Belmar is getting more distant in the rearview mirror and you all deserve better than someone who is reporting from a great geographical distance and, to be honest, is becoming a little less interested in Belmar’s day to day affairs.

Please all join me in thanking Sandy Caputo for stepping up and helping us all out. Congratulations and good luck to her and I promise you and her I’ll be around to help and to contribute for quite a long time to come.

Please visit her blog and leave some encouraging comments. This is a really good thing she’s doing, I’m sure she’s going to do a great job and we should all be very grateful.

A back and forth with Cynthia Cotton of the state Civil Service Commission.

Note: the emails are not quite in chronological order.

Resolutions here.