It’s been exactly one month since Mikie Sherrill was sworn in as New Jersey governor and state Republicans are speaking out about what issues they’d like to see prioritized in her administration.
“Affordability is one thing we keep hearing from everybody in New Jersey,” Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen) said in an NJ Spotlight News interview. “We need to ensure whether or not it’s our utilities, whether or not it’s allowing our middle class, who are working night and day, to be able to afford a home and to stay in their homes.”
Schepisi is sponsoring a bill that aims to alleviate some taxes for first-time home buyers. She’s also encouraging incentives for developers to build more types of housing.
“We are taking away the ability for moderate-income people to own anything,” she said. “Instead of building high-density housing up and down this entire state, we really need to refashion what we have been doing and put together programs that incentivize developers to come in and to build moderately priced homes for sale.”
ICE criticism
Last month, fellow Republicans took issue with a Schepisi social media post criticizing ICE enforcement in Minnesota following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a nurse and U.S. citizen who had been observing protests. Schepisi says the actions of federal agents nationwide are creating distrust between the public and law enforcement.
“We need to be able to get back to a pragmatic approach on how we handle immigration,” she said. “And I don’t see that happening.”
Schepisi also called for an analysis of training for federal ICE officers, and reforms to arrest quotas that she says are putting a strain on what she called well-intentioned employees.
“Here we have in most instances, agents that have less than eight weeks of training that is not necessarily tailored to these sorts of high-stress, high-intensity type of situations,” she said. “And I think we really do need to look at that.”
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