Jeff Abramo

A statement from AARP New Jersey State President Dave Mollen

Millions of Americans, and residents across the Garden State, rest their retirement hopes and dreams on Social Security, employment-based savings plans, personal financial assets, and health insurance. Unfortunately, these pillars are eroding. The winds and sands of political strife and the fallout of the financial crisis have contributed to the erosion of defined pension plans and personal financial assets. As a matter of fact, more than 50% of private sector workers in the Garden State lack an employer-sponsored retirement plan altogether. For these particularly vulnerable employees, a robust and worthwhile retirement is virtually unattainable.

AARP recently hosted a tele-press conference to alert the public about a recently revealed backroom deal struck between the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) staff and Verizon New Jersey to deregulate basic landline telephone service and which could harm consumers.

Contrary to popular cynicism, public policy making is not all rank partisanship. The CARE Act was signe d into law by Governor Christie in November and becomes effective on May 12. The lead sponsors were Assembly Speaker Prieto and Senator Vitale. The bill garnered almost unanimous bipartisan support. This was made possible due to months of negotiation and between sponsors, supporters and many stakeholders such as the New Jersey Hospital Association.

In New Jersey, 1.2 million workers do not have the ability to earn sick days. Earned sick days can reduce emergency room visits, saving $1.1 billion a year nationally. Parents with paid sick days are 20 percent less likely to send a sick child to school, reducing the likelihood that their child’s illness will infect other children and staff. And speaking of disease transmission, 80 percent of food service workers in the United States have no paid sick days. When they go to work sick, they put the public health at risk. The Center for Disease Control found that more than ten million cases of foodborne illness each year are caused by sick restaurant workers contaminating food while they are at work.

AARP is pleased that the result of today’s actions by the NJ Board of Public Utilities will be a reduction in base utility rates for JCP&L’s more than 1 million customers. Prior to today’s decision, JCP&L’s rates had not been fully reviewed for almost a decade. And while we are disappointed that rates are not being lowered more, a rate cut is certainly better than a rate increase.

A surprise party on your birthday is great. A surprise visit from your grandchild is joyous. But a surprise medical bill? There's nothing happy about that.

It’s been a long road to get where we are now.

Family caregivers in New Jersey provide billions of dollars in unpaid help to their loved ones annually. Most of them are women. We need to do our best to support these loving caregivers.

Caregiving for a loved one is physically and emotionally demanding, especially for women under the stress of being unemployed or single mothers or struggling to make ends meet. According to the Knowledge Center, 83.3 % of all US single parent families with children under 18 are maintained by mothers as compared to 12.9% such families by fathers.