Dear Editor:

On behalf of the 1,000 OPEIU Local 32-represented employees at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, OPEIU strongly opposes S-4 that seeks to impose restructuring requirements forcing the company to become an “insurer of last resort,” a move that would have devastating financial repercussions for the company and translate to exploding premiums and fewer services for its 3.8 million subscribers.

This onerous and politically motivated move by Gov. Chris Christie and the state senate will also hurt the innocent employees of Horizon who will as a result face certain layoffs and deep cuts at the bargaining table. Forcing Horizon into a quasi-charitable role that only it has to bear would put it at a serious disadvantage to other insurers in the state. More importantly, its employees and premium holders would be the ones absorbing the cost of caring for non-policy holders.

Our hardworking members shouldn’t have to serve as unfortunate pawns in Christie’s political game of financial chess. Creating unfair competition is not the way around the state’s fiscal crisis or the path to funding state programs that work for everyone in the state of New Jersey.

Gov. Christie’s legacy in New Jersey is set. No amount of financial trickery is going to change that.

The Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), AFL-CIO, represents more than 103,000 members in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. OPEIU represents employees and independent contractors in credit unions, hospitals and medical clinics, insurance, higher education, transportation, shipping, utilities, hotels, administrative offices and more.

Professional organizations and guilds affiliated with OPEIU are a diverse group that includes registered nurses, podiatrists, clinical social workers, teachers, Minor League Baseball umpires, and helicopter pilots.

Nicole Korkolis
Director of Communication

Dear Editor:

Parsippany under the Barberio/Inglesino Administrations is leaving Parsippany open to more development and lawsuits. Citizens of Parsippany are being purposely denied the right to know, or discover the benefits available under “regional conformance consistency”, under NJ Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act.

It is this writer’s grounded opinion that this is being done with purposeful disregard. Why would any community be openly against water protection and best practices in land use law? Open Space possibilities; and lower numbers of affordable housing proposals?

Water Protection: its quality and quantity cannot be separated from good land use. The truth is under Highlands Conformance your local master plan becomes stronger and you maintain home-rule, contrary to what we are being told.  

Parsippany-Troy Hills Township Attorney John Inglesino has spoken openly as an enemy of the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act, siting inaccurate and disinformation based on his values as a real estate developer lawyer, and his personal established political views. These views and opinions are not based in facts. He has at Council Meetings accused Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act as being responsible for what he calls, Parsippany’s unfair burden/share of the coming affordable housing obligations. As a matter of policy he and elements of this administration have used the affordable housing issue as a fear tactic, rather than an obligation. This tactic involving the waterview landscape, lead to another lawsuit in 2016 concerning illegal tactics. These closed session deals with developers, are kept secret, the Council members being threatened with prosecution, if any transparency to these deals are revealed. (Including denying OPRA requests to this individual). 

Remarks were also made concerning the possible unconstitutionality of the NJ Highlands Act, and the name Jon Corzine is used as a knock. The Highlands Act has withstood numerous attempts at challenging it and upheld as sound based on, wholesome discretion and science involving its application, methods and benefits for all.

 Inglesino attempts to use the affordable housing issue to knock the Act further. Affordable Housing is a separate entity. However NJ Highlands communities, if they chose to be are governed by a Memorandum of Understanding between the Highlands and Affordable Housing, which actually can bring lower housing numbers using regional build out numbers.

Inglesino has stated falsely that this MOU is longer in existence. Not true! Conforming communities do have this agreement. The proof is called the Skillman Decision, upholding the Fair Share Housing challenge to its validity to obtain higher housing numbers. Inglesino has provided no proof his allegation is so, to the contrary Skillman disproves his allegation. *(August 15, 2011 Argued April 12, 2011 – Decided Before Judges Yannotti, Skillman and Roe. On appeal from the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council, Council on Affordable Housing and the Governor). 

In the past certain communities abused the Highlands growth share methodology to purposely avoid their fair share obligation. This perfectly good method was abused not by the Highlands as Inglesino insinuated, but by the local municipal authorities. This is the same sort of abuse Inglesino used to rezone Waterview, as this landscape because of it’s steep slopes alone would not be considered by Fair Share Housing; it would of also been spared if the Mayor kept his promise of the 26 Acre Open Space.

It was the rezone that caused another lawsuit; described in a news article in Daily Record by William Westhoven in February 2016; entitled: Lawsuit: Parsippany zoning tactics illegal. This lawsuit has been hidden from the public. The citizens and the council voted No to the rezone, only to have the grassroots outcome trashed in favor of a rude corporate developer.

The point is this present administration is preventing the people of Parsippany from being something greater than it can be. Ask why did Parsippany is July 2010 agree to begin regional conformance; was it the lower housing numbers? Why did Parsippany spend from 7/2010-6-2014 in a state of conformance and do nothing to strengthen its master plan? Why is 2014 before the housing fiasco caused by the Governor was about to resurface through court action, did Parsippany abandon conformance, when they needed it most? 

If a real estate developer attorney is administering us and a mayor who’s’ ambition is to make historical; what he calls “economic improvements” by inviting more new land development, which does this favor? Not the people of Parsippany.

The one obvious truth about the benefits of regional planning is that your master plan gets stronger, while you maintain home rule. The courts, with 36 points of exemptions that secure home rule, have worked this out. (Skillman Decision). However conforming communities receive the benefits of legal shields from corporate developers lawsuits. What is home rule when a corporation has unlimited resources to force their way on a town, through developers rights lawsuits?

Parsippany is entirely in the planning zone, so what is the fear? The truth is developers can cut corners, and destroy sensitive landscapes while other developed properties lay idle wastelands. We are not in good hands, and our citizens committees of open space, environment, and transparency are mute. To keep the opportunity of regional conformance from the people of Parsippany and slander its importance is in practice arbitrary, capricious, absence of a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made, a clear error of judgment, that serves not the people of Parsippany nor the environmental crisis of long term water protections, and land use both inseparable.  Regional Planning can also bring less or reduced taxes and a higher quality of life. It’s already happened in Pinelands NJ.

Professor Inglesino in his affordable housing presentation started with the Newark so-called riots of 1967; however the Mount Laurel decision began with gentrification zoning tactics 1970, used against a poor African American Neighborhood in Mount Holly NJ established as free blacks since the revolutionary war. Although free they were not entitled to full rights of citizens; voting was one example. It also reminds local municipal governments that the State is ultimately responsible for zoning.  Wake up people Home rule is an illusion. Developers’ rule and you pay the higher taxes. Finally should not all housing be affordable; pretty ridiculous right?

Nick Homyak
Lake Hiawatha, NJ 07034