Corzine willing to lose re-election to fix N.J.’s financial woes

ATLANTIC CITY — New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Thursday said he’s willing to risk losing re-election by increasing highway tolls to try to resolve state fiscal woes.

The governor didn’t detail how much he wants tolls to increase, but said he plans to present a formal plan in January as part of his State of the State address.

Speaking at a League of Municipalities convention, Corzine, as he has throughout the year, detailed fiscal woes he claims bar the state from investing in key needs.  NorthJersey.com

“We will get one chance at a serious financial restructuring and it has to be done right,” Corzine said. “But you can take this to the bank — I will be bold in the name of progress.”

The Democratic Corzine is up for re-election in 2009, but said, “Make no mistake. I am willing to risk losing my job if that’s necessary to set our fiscal house in order and get New Jersey out from the debt burden constraining our future.”

Corzine has discussed finding ways to make more money off state properties such as toll roads.

On Thursday, Corzine also said he wants to establish new limits on state borrowing. The state constitution bars the state from borrowing money without voter approval, but courts have allowed independent state agencies to borrow without voter consent.

Corzine didn’t detail the new limits, but said they were key.

“I don’t want to clean the manure out of the barn, only to have someone else fill it back up,” Corzine said.

Accident shuts down part of Route 17 for hours

An accident on southbound Route 17 will shut down a lane of traffic on the road into the night, police said.

The crash occurred around 12:30 p.m., when a box truck rammed into a fire hydrant and utility pole just north of Century Road in Paramus, sending streams of water into the air and flooding a nearby parking lot, according to Paramus Deputy Police Chief Richard Cary.

“The only lane that’s open is the left lane,” Cary said at 1:30 p.m. He estimated that the right lane and shoulder would be closed after dark. It was unclear whether the truck, owned by Health Care Waste Solutions of Cincinnati, Ohio, was carrying anything. According to its Web site, Health Care Waste Solutions transfers and processes medical waste for hospitals

Cary said the truck driver was transported to Bergen Regional Medical Center with injuries that aren’t considered life-threatening.  NorthJersey.com

Grandmother Killed When Rock Crashes Through Windshield

OLD BROOKVILLE, NY (AP)  — A rock tumbled off a truck and smashed through the windshield of a nearby car, killing a 75-year-old woman riding by her daughter’s side, police and the victim’s relatives said.

Police were looking for the truck driver early Thursday, while saying the incident appeared to be accidental. The driver, probably unaware of what had happened, kept going after the accident Wednesday morning, Nassau County Police Detective Gary Ferrucci said.

Rita Oill and one of her daughters, Marie Waters, 39, were out getting supplies for the holiday meal when the three-pound stone came flying at them from a truck headed in the opposite direction on Glen Head Road, police and family members said. Waters was driving, with her mother as a passenger.

After the rock hit the car’s hood, Waters “flinched, closed her eyes and … the piece of debris went through the center of the windshield and struck my mother-in-law in the head,” said the driver’s husband, Bill Waters.

Oill was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Waters was treated for minor injuries and released.

Gas Prices going up for Holiday season

 

 

 

 

 

 

AP Gas prices near record highs at a time of year when they typically decline will not deter drivers from hitting the road this Thanksgiving, AAA said Thursday.

“This is the first time that we have seen gas prices tipping over $3 a gallon in November,” Robert L. Darbelnet, president and chief executive of AAA, said in a statement. “But Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for family gatherings, and higher gas will not discourage Americans from reconnecting with their loved ones.”

While travelers will be paying more at the pump, hotels, airfares and car rental prices are mostly declining this year, according to AAA. Holiday hotel rates are down 3 percent for AAA-Rated Three Diamond hotels and up a modest 1 percent at Two Diamond hotels. The average decrease in rental car prices is 12 percent, and airline tickets are down about 7 percent.

Med school to open in Bergen in 2009 (TOURO)

Eager to expand and flush with cash, the nation’s largest Jewish university plans to open a private medical school in Bergen County in late 2009.

Touro College — started by a rabbi and professor as a no-frills institution with 35 students in a Manhattan office building in 1970 — has grown rapidly to 27 locations in four states and four other countries.

Now, bolstered by the profits from the $190 million sale of its online university, Touro is opening the first new medical school in New Jersey in decades. It recently opened a medical school in Harlem.

Touro will be affiliated with Hackensack University Medical Center. The college is weighing two locations for its fourth medical school: a six-story building on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights it recently purchased for $15 million and the bankrupt Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood.

“The M.D. program we are establishing in New Jersey is committed to filling a need in the state for superior medical education and scientific research,” said Bernard Lander, 92, Touro’s founder. He is president of the college, which has 17,500 students in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in medicine, law and business.

Touro’s earlier attempts to expand into New Jersey were sidetracked by scandals. In the summer of 2004, its major financial backer, Charles Kushner, was arrested on federal charges that included hiring a prostitute in a scheme to tamper with an FBI witness.

Weeks later, the college found itself in the middle of the Gov. James E. McGreevey-Golan Cipel affair. Cipel, one of the school’s paid advisers, reportedly offered to keep his sexual encounters with McGreevey secret if, among other things, the governor let Touro open a medical school.

The school denied any knowledge of or involvement in Cipel’s offer.

In 2006, with former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli lobbying state officials on Touro’s behalf, Touro won approval from the state board of medical examiners and seemed to be on its way to Florham Park. Kushner, who was about to be released from prison, was to give the school land and $10 million.

The school never materialized. Kushner is still listed as a member of Touro College’s “board of overseers” but he is inactive, said Touro spokeswoman Barbara Franklin. He does not attend meetings, she said.

“Mr. Kushner is not financially supporting the New Jersey effort,” said David A. Moss, vice president of institutional development at Touro.

“This issue with Golan Cipel is behind us,” he said.

New Jersey needs a new medical school because it is not graduating enough doctors, said Dr. Paul Wallach, vice president and dean of Touro University College of Medicine of New Jersey.

“There’s a general agreement that we’re in need of more doctors,” said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, a professor of preventive medicine at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

New Jersey’s three medical schools — which operate as the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — graduated 400 doctors last year. UMDNJ is located on four campuses and operates University Hospital in Newark. The school plans to enroll 10 percent more students over the next few years to address the need to train more physicians in-state, said Dr. Robert Johnson, dean of the Medical School of New Jersey.

Johnson cautions that Touro’s arrival will add to a crunch in clinical training spots at hospitals throughout the state. He was one of three UMDNJ officials who testified against Touro’s application before the state Board of Medical Examiners last year.

“My big concern is the availability of clinical sites for teaching medical students,” he said.

But Dr. Peter Gross, chief medical officer at Hackensack University Medical Center, said the new medical school will not crowd out the other teaching programs at the hospital.

“The New Jersey Medical School students can continue to spend time here, even with Touro,” he said.

Touro and Hackensack plan to bid jointly for the ailing Pascack Valley Hospital. They are one of several potential suitors for the hospital and its 20-acre property.

Although the school is founded under Jewish auspices and avoids scheduling classes on the Jewish Sabbath and holidays, Touro students are from many backgrounds and faiths, Wallach said.

Touro has selected locations for its medical schools in areas that are suffering from a dearth of doctors. Lander describes himself in published reports as coming from “an old school of Ortho- dox socialists who believe that healing the entire world is an integral part of Judaism.”

In September, Touro opened a medical school in Harlem with a special emphasis on training minority doctors. Graduates will be encouraged to stay in the area. Another medical school, near Las Vegas, is also comparatively young.

A third school — an osteopathic school on an island in San Francisco Bay — has been open 10 years. According to the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings, it had an acceptance rate among applicants of 10.8 percent, compared with the 6.3 percent acceptance rate at UMDNJ’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford. The average score on the entrance exam for both medical schools was the same.

However, Touro has the distinction, according U.S. News, of its students incurring the most debt through four years of medical school: $182,000 for the class of 2005.

Edelman questioned the rapid growth in medical education. “It’s disconcerting to have all these sites,” he said. “How can they be assured of excellence in all of the locations?”

Edelman said the Touro name is recognized for its law school and graduate programs. It has a law school on Long Island and a college of arts and sciences with campuses in three boroughs of New York City. The college also has sites in Moscow, Jerusalem, Berlin, South Miami and outside Rome.

“They’re not listed among the top 20 law schools, but a lot of Long Island politicians got their degrees there,” Edelman said.

Gross and Dr. Ihor Sawczuk, chairman of Hackensack’s urology department, are aiding Touro in the application for accreditation by the American Medical Association’s Liaison Committee for Medical Education. If Touro succeeds in the rigorous process, it will welcome its first class of 40 students in the fall of 2009. The school could grow to 400 students, Wallach said.

Unlike Touro’s plan for New Jersey, its three other schools are not M.D. programs. They train osteopathic physicians, who emphasize preventative health.

A former dean of the University of Florida Medical School at Tampa, Wallach said he’s creating a curriculum for the North Jersey campus that includes early emphasis on clinical training. Rather than spending their first two years solely in the classroom and labs, Touro’s students will interact with patients from the beginning, he said.

“I think they will invest what it takes to make it an excellent school,” Gross said. “They’re willing to recruit outstanding faculty.”

E-mail: washburn@northjersey.com and layton@northjersey.com

Drivers entering NYC will have to pay higher tolls under new plan

The Port Authority plans to contribute another $1 billion toward the construction of a second commuter rail tunnel to Manhattan, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

The agency’s Board of Commissioners will unveil the plan during its 2 p.m. meeting Thursday when it is expected to propose raising tolls on Hudson River crossings from $6 to $8 during peak hours.

Motorists would pay $6 during off-peak hours, and PATH riders would pay 50 cents more, or $2, per trip under the agency’s plan. E-ZPass users would lose the $1 discount they get during peak hours, Port Authority officials said.

Peak hours are 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and noon to 8 p.m. on weekends.

The bi-state agency said it needs more money to pay for capital projects and escalating security costs that have tripled since 2000.

But it doesn’t need the extra cash to pay for increasing its contribution toward NJ Transit’s Trans-Hudson Tunnel project from $2 billion to $3 billion, said authority spokesman Marc LaVorgna. The Port Authority wants to demonstrate to the federal government that it is “serious” about building the tunnel, construction for which is expected to begin in 2009 and be completed in 2016, LaVorgna said.

Earlier this year, the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority unanimously approved Governor Corzine’s plan to swap $1 billion in federal funding expected for roads to help build the $7.2 billion project.

New Jersey had already committed $500 million toward the project that NJTransit officials say will relieve traffic congestion on the state’s roads. Federal funding is expected to pay for the rest of the work.

“We’re a full partner in the project and when you demonstrate this level of local commitment [to the federal government], it shows you’re serious about the project,” LaVorgna said. By TOM DAVIS NorthJersey.com