<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">When the New Jersey budget was finalized back in June, hundreds of so-called Christmas tree items worth more than $ billion were added to the spending plan that was eventually signed by Gov. Phil Murphy.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">This practice of handing out politically motivated financial gifts has become a tradition in the Garden State, but one lawmaker is pushing a plan to change things.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">According to state Sen. Michael Testa, R-Cumberland, the time has come to restore integrity and fairness to the spending process in New Jersey.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">&ldquo;I just really don&rsquo;t believe that South Jersey gets her fair share of state spending, especially when it comes to all of the pork that is in our state budget,&rdquo; Testa said.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">He pointed out that the Fiscal Year spending plan includes a $ million handout to Rutgers University, &ldquo;which includes a $ million donation, as I&rsquo;ll call it, to renovate the basketball facility and to start work on an indoor football practice facility.&rsquo;</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">Testa said he&rsquo;s not claiming these payments aren&rsquo;t for worthy causes but they &ldquo;need to be far more transparent, competitive and merit-base. What we&rsquo;ve seen out of Trenton is backroom deals that are secretive, arbitrary and unfair.&rdquo;</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">He said it&rsquo;s very unfortunate that &ldquo;all of this additional Christmas tree spending seems to happen in North Jersey, and South Jersey goes largely ignored.&rdquo;</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">👉 S redirects the $ million special line item for capital projects at Rutgers to a grant program run by the Commission on Higher Education that would be open to all public and private higher education institutions as well as vocational schools.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">👉 S would redirect approximately $ million in special local government line itemsto a grant program run by the Commissioner of DCA that would be open to all local government</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">👉 S would redirect approximately $ million of eight line-items awarded to arts and cultural organizations to a grant program run by the Secretary of State that would be open to all arts and cultural organizations.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">&ldquo;The public is highly cynical of the processes that take place under the gold dome in Trenton, and I just want government to be transparent and accountable, and I don&rsquo;t see how anyone can really argue against that, he said.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">David Matthau is a reporter for New Jersey .. You can reach him at david.matthautownsquaremediam</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in April , we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from to along with the Consumer Price Index CPI for unleaded regular gasoline from to , including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">Below, find out where of the most infamous crimes in history took place &mdash; and what the locations are used for today. If they ve been left standing.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #777777; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; background-color: #ffffff;">Sadly, these bands either announced a breakup, went on indefinite hiatus or broke up entirely in .</p>