For almost 10 years now, New Jersey lawmakers have been grappling with the issue of what to do about surprise medical bills.
They are the invoices sent by doctors and other health care providers who are not part of your insurance company’s network. So when your insurance does not cover the full amount of what they charge for their services, they come after you to pay the difference. Hence the term “balance billing.”
Continue reading TIME TO PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM SURPRISE MEDICAL BILLS
Radburn residents who have been battling for years to have a greater say in the governance of their planned community, gained ground earlier this month when new by-laws that would have undermined their voting rights were thrown out by the state.
The NJ Department of Community Affairs (DCA) on March 2 notified the Radburn Association board that amendments it approved last May were invalid because they were never filed with the county clerk, as required by state law. As a result, Radburn members get to elect four trustees to the nine-member board rather than the two that would have been allowed under the by-law changes.
Continue reading STATE INVALIDATES ANTI-DEMOCRATIC RADBURN BY-LAWS
On January 23, New Jersey Appleseed filed a complaint on behalf of Radburn United, a community group that is asking for the state’s help in preserving the voting rights of those who reside there.
Founded in 1929 as one of the first planned communities in the United States, Radburn is a private, unincorporated association within Fair Lawn, with over 3,000 people living in a mixture of single-family homes, townhouses, two-family houses, and an apartment complex.
In a process that took years, spanned three mayors and was led by an urban planner who just won a MacArthur “genius” award based, in part, on those efforts, the City of Newark overhauled its zoning laws in 2015.
It was the first such comprehensive revision in more than 50 years and was widely praised not only for the substance of the new zoning, which was based upon goals of environmental justice and accountable development, but for the open, participatory process by which it was adopted
Recently, in a move that would seem to undermine the well-thought out plan embraced just two years earlier and to contradict its participatory approach, Newark amended its zoning to increase the maximum building height in part of the Ironbound. And it allegedly did so without providing nearby residents the legally required notice. Continue reading LAWSUIT CHALLENGES IRONBOUND UPZONING
NJ Appleseed 