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Brandon J. McKoy

7 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read

OMG - marijuana bill is up in Senate Judiciary on Monday at 10am. The bill dropped tonight, the committee advisory went out at 5pm, and the deadline to sign up to testify was 6pm. If you wanna testify, I hope you were Sonic the Hedgehog cause you had to catch all that quickly.

Also this bill - which does zero for communities of color - will be heard in a Senate committee that only offers IN PERSON testimony during a raging pandemic that's disproportionately killing Black & brown folks.

Couldn't look like they care less about injustice if they tried.

This is what we mean when we say governing processes are broken. It's impossible to expect equitable outcomes with processes like this that don't consider the public until the very last second if at all. Most considerations center convenience for elected officials & insiders.

Excuse me, not 6pm. The deadline was 8pm.

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More from @Brandon_McKoy

Brandon J. McKoy

@Brandon_McKoy

7 Nov

At first reading of NJ's #cannabis bill draft, not only does it only apply the sales tax meaning it raises a paltry amount of funds, the vast majority of those funds goes to *🥁 🥁 🥁* police departments!

You can't make this up. This is the height of dark comedy. #NJpol

News story with link to the bill language: nj.com/marijuana/2020…

And then the rest goes to the general fund because of course it does...

This bill does NOTHING for racial & reparative justice & is a slap in the face to all the communities harmed by the drug war that deserve real support & investment to address the wounds of prohibition.

Read 11 tweets

Brandon J. McKoy

@Brandon_McKoy

4 Nov

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1323817911572746242

Great news for NJ. The big question now is whether lawmakers will implement an appropriate tax structure that raises enough resources to enable real reparative justice for communities terrorized by the War on Drugs. A failure to do so would be a negative stain on the whole thing.

https://twitter.com/wildstein/status/1323817911572746242

To get into the details a bit (could've said weeds but didn't!) the $300 million in annual revenue projection was based on a tax rate of 20% to 25%. Even better would be a tax by weight to avoid volatility. The problem is...

Some insist that the only tax applied to cannabis should be the sales tax which, is just 6.625%. That would dramatically undermine the revenue projections everyone has been assuming for years & essentially foreclose any chance for effective reparative community investments.

Read 5 tweets

Brandon J. McKoy

@Brandon_McKoy

11 Jun 19

🚨Incoming THREAD🚨 on changes in NJ State Government staffing levels from 2008 through 2017 per the 2017 NJ Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR - pg. 370)...if you had to guess whether NJ's workforce grew or shrank, which would it be? #mathisreal state.nj.us/treasury/omb/p…

Some of the big 👀 popping numbers:
Dept of Health's workforce is down 46% since 2008 from 1,978 to 1,074. So about 900 fewer workers. Think that might have an impact on health inspections & whatnot?

Dept of Human Services, which is responsible for a whole lot w/ regard to the safety net & delivery of critical programs, dropped from 15,684 in 2008 to 11,306 in 2017 for a reduction of 23% - or 4,300ish. Think that might make it tougher to have an efficient welfare system?