>> Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Thursday night.

>> Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Thursday night.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Tonight a few stories we'll get into later in the broadcast.

As the frigid temperatures keep a tight grip on the state, we take a look at how communities are helping the homeless with more than just a warm place to sleep.

Then from rules targeting homelessness to failed election recalls and feuds, what is happening in Tom's River?

We have the latest.

And later, why pressure is mounting for New Jersey's pension system to divest from a controversial tech company.

But first, a few of today's top stories.

Governor Mikey Sherrill's acting attorney general is making good on a vow to go after the Trump administration.

Today, the group sent a letter to U.S.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling out their demand that the state hand over sensitive data, including voter information in exchange for the removal of federal agents.

That's an accusation the Trump administration denies.

Davenport and the other AGs say that likely conflicts with ongoing litigation and court order protections.

The letter comes as Governor Sherrill says her administration plans to create a portal so residents can upload cell phone video and report their encounters with ICE, similar to efforts made by protesters in Minnesota.

Making the announcement on The Daily Show Wednesday night, Sheryl also said she'll prohibit ICE from staging raids on state property.

Also tonight, it turns out the high cost of living here is not a deterrent for people.

New Census data finds the Garden State is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the country.

According to the new census data, New Jersey added nearly 42,000 residents between July 2024 and July 2025, making it the fastest growing state in the Northeast and the 10th fastest nationwide with more than 9.5 million people who now call the state home.

That's a sharp turnaround from the pandemic years when New Jersey ranked among the states losing their population.

And the surge is happening as growth across the U.S.

slows to its weakest weakest pace since covid nationwide.

The population grew by just a half percent last year largely because international migration dropped by more than 50 percent.

Census experts say states with strong job markets and access to major metro areas have been better at holding on to residents even with housing and affordability pressures.

Not to mention of course density here.

They also add that steady growth could hold real weight for New Jersey when it comes to federal funding and of course And lots of folks around North Jersey in particular are still struggling to get in and around their towns this week, with frustration building over the snow cleanup or lack of it.

In New Jersey City, residents have been sounding off online and at Wednesday night's council meeting about side streets that are still buried under icy mounds and pedestrians being forced to climb over snow banks to reach crosswalks.

Schools were closed for two days because students and teachers just couldn't get to them.

Residents claim entire neighborhoods were left behind The new Mayor, James Solomon, admits the cleanup fell short and is promising a public snow removal report, pointing to gaps in operations and access to salt that left the city with only a fraction of what it ordered before the storm.

Similar anger is boiling over in another major city, including Patterson, where residents say local streets are still treacherous days after the storm.

That's where 15 inches of snow were dumped.

Drivers are reporting getting stuck and pedestrians say sidewalks are too icy to pass.

In Camden, schools have remained closed all week as the district says it's still working with the city to clear ice and snow.

And the cleanup doesn't appear to be any easier on the water.

Video from the Coast Guard shows ice breaking operations on the Hudson River thanks to this prolonged cold.

Local leaders across the state are asking for patience as crews continue working.

And coming up, a look at the state of homelessness across New Jersey and how communities are helping their most vulnerable residents.

That's next.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

As the frigid temperatures settle in, communities across the state are taking stock of just how many people are struggling to stay housed, conducting their annual count to get an accurate snapshot of the need and how best to respond.

In Camden, that effort pairs data with direct help.

County leaders and local groups came together this week for a major resource fair, aiming to get people both out of the cold and back on their feet.

Raven Santana was there.

Riding buses to stay warm.

As you can see, I came here to eat.

I don't just come here to eat.

I come here to network and stay educated.

As New Jersey confronts rising homelessness and economic pressure, unhoused residents like Daniel Waterfield are using resource fairs like this one at Cathedral Kitchen in Camden as critical lifelines offering food, services and a path forward for people trying to rebuild.

He's not alone.

Linda Geis says being here isn't just about a meal, it's about survival and stability, especially amid freezing cold temperatures.

We'd be in trouble.

I mean, we could get hurt out there.

I mean, really trouble, really bad trouble.

It's like, especially just with the weathering and my age, you know, I get sick and everything.

So yeah, it helps.

They're like great.

There's just a life-saving thing.

At least 15 vendors offered services from housing help and job support to legal aid and mental health resources.

Clients received hot breakfast, lunch to go, hygiene kits, winter gear and something many don't expect, free haircuts.

are a small thing that a granted, but it really gi makes us feel presentable cool after we get a hairc out of reach for a lot of situation and who are com The event coincides with point in time homelessness the U. S. Department of H Last year, volunteers id statewide and 8% increas kitchen added the count t accessing meals, services point in time count is re important because it gives us data.

It gives us information which informs policy decisions and resources and funding.

The resource fair is a way to attract people here so that they complete the survey so that we get that data from them.

Otherwise it's kind of difficult to incentivize people to take a survey and it's pretty personal.

The questions on that about your housing situat stay last night?

How old I spoke with here say thi term fix.

This is about f and finally having the su next.

When I lost my job accident and I was on the floor.

They helped me to get all my documentation that I needed.

I'm a veteran by the way.

And lately I've been disabled by the state, pregnantly.

So now they're going to help me with the housing.

So I see the work that they do and how they help me.

According to Monarch Housing Associates, homelessness has been on the rise in New Jersey over the past five years, and they expect to see another increase this year.

County leaders say events like these are critical as demand is growing, as unhoused residents face the bitter cold.

We'll have shelter for everybody, and that's what we're trying to do right now because of the cold weather, too, is making sure no one's on the street.

We have warming centers.

We have, you know, transitional housing people are in.

We're making sure no one's outside.

We generally, we have about 600 homeless people or families in our county.

We've heard a lot more families actually with the way that the economy is, right on the edge of losing everything.

And that's what we're seeing.

Officials say the goal is ambitious, ending homelessness in Camden County by 2030, reaching what's called functional zero when housing placements outpace homelessness.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

Meanwhile, Ocean County is widely recognized as the only county in the state without a permanent year-round homeless shelter.

And Tom's River specifically has found itself at the center of several high-profile debates lately involving rules targeting the homeless, the future of the John Bon Jovi Soul Kitchen inside the public library, to a failed recall effort against the mayor, exposing deep divisions within that community.

Asbury Park Press reporter Jean Mickle has been covering it all, and she joins us now for some more insight.

Jean, good to see you.

I would say the insight is badly needed.

Let's start with that recall effort.

What's happening with this level, it seems, of discontent with Mayor Roderick there, and what was a failed attempt at overhauling him?

Well, what happened with the recall is they started last summer and they needed to get over 18,000 signatures and they did not make it.

Now, what's interesting over the last couple days is that Roderick said that he hired a private investigator with his own money to follow the recall people to all their events.

And he claims they never got anywhere near the 16,000 signatures they claim that they have.

And that came up last night at the meeting, as you probably are aware, where he was basically calling them scam artists and saying they only had a couple thousand signatures.

I think at one point he said they had a thousand.

So that's where that's at.

And it failed.

Some of the recall people that are leading you know leading the recall have been some of Roderick's greatest critics.

And you know they came and said look you know more people signed this petition than actually voted for him in the last election.

But he disputes that.

He said that's not true.

And they're scam artists.

They're lying about it.

Yeah I mean he did not soften his response at all during that town council meeting.

He even slammed the council calling them fake Republicans.

He said that this was all an attempt to discredit him to smear his name and what he's done for the town.

I mean how's he framing it beyond how I've just described it?

Well that's basically what he's saying.

He's basically saying that the people that were leading the recall are you know kind of supporters of the last administration and that he came in and really shook things up and you know eliminated a lot of what he calls patronage positions and these people are upset about it.

That's the way he's framing it.

He's framing it also that he maintained a you know a stable municipal tax rate over the last couple of years.

Now in fairness it was also stable for three years before that.

Before he was mayor.

And he's saying you know he stopped the downtown development which was very controversial in the last election is probably a big part of the reason he won.

So he's saying he has all these achievements and these people are just a bunch of you know basically disgruntled politicos who are upset that he has all these achievements and they're not getting anywhere.

I mean he also took aim at the press of course for the coverage of this.

How would you describe Gene the moment in Tom's River right now politically socially.

What does it feel like there.

Well what's really interesting is that you know as you know Dan lost his majority in the council this year.

So right off the bat starting on January 1st he and the council have really been at loggerheads because he now has four votes against him in the council.

So it's going to be interesting to see what goes on going forward because I'm not sure how much work is actually going to get done.

He vetoed, the council actually did adopt an ordinance extending the police promotions list by up to a year.

He vetoed that and the council can't override the veto unless they have five votes and they don't have that right now.

So right now it's kind of interesting to you know looking forward to see what will happen.

Lots of yeah lots of focus also Jean on homelessness in Tom's River in Ocean County in particular.

How precarious is the situation for unhoused residents in that part of the state?

It's really bad and you know my colleague Peter Ackerman photographer and I have been kind of you know following the homeless over the last two years starting with the camp in the woods of Winding River Park in Tom's River which no longer exists.

A lot of those people were moved into hotels.

Roderick did you know come up with some money to to help pay for them to stay in hotels.

But now that money is expiring and you probably I don't know if you saw some of my stories about people were afraid they were going to get evicted on January 5th.

Luckily that money has now been the county has come up with some money and they're not going to be able to stay through the end of February in these hotels.

But it's a big problem.

I mean, I think it's a big problem throughout the state.

But as you said, Ocean County doesn't have a shelter where people can go and actually stay for a longer period of time and maybe get some assistance with some of their mental issues or if they have substance abuse issues.

Or sometimes it's as simple as people have been living in the woods for a while, they don't even have an ID.

So they really need help to get that so they can qualify for social service stuff.

So that's what's going on there.

And I think because Ocean County does not have a shelter, it's made even worse.

Related, the Bon Jovi Soul Kitchen, which has operated out of the public library there, there was lots of community uproar about the kitchen leaving.

Obviously, it feeds folks, but it also has become a real meeting place, a real place of safety.

As you have reported, what sort of spurred the change there and why was that such a flashpoint?

I mean, I think that among a lot of these stories really showed just the divisions within the community.

Yeah, I think so.

And I think what happened was when the when the soul kitchen first, you know, arrived in February last year, there were a lot, you know, there were homeless people who would come, you know, at lunchtime to get a hot meal.

And, you know, this really angered Roderick, who started calling it a soup kitchen, which it is.

And it's a community restaurant, as you know.

I mean, people do pay, you know, if they can afford to, they can pay and they can also pay it forward, pay for someone else's meal.

But people that don't have the money can come in and get a nice hot meal.

And also then they do a volunteer shift.

They they bus tables they clean up after themselves.

So it's kind of a big you know been a big deal.

And Roderick really attacked it.

He got into a whole thing with Dorothea Bon Jovi who's the founder of JBJ Soul Foundation.

You know going back and forth about what the purpose of the restaurant was.

Now the thing is is that he doesn't really have control over it because it's actually in a county building.

And now they've just extended through April 30th.

So I think that was because there was such an outcry about from people about closing it down in the middle of this very very cold weather that we've been having.

And as you said people have been getting you know meals there but they also have been connected to social service agencies.

Some people have found housing.

Some people have found jobs.

So it's become kind of an important hub in downtown Times River.

As you look ahead to this next year we know of course the mayor is not up for reelection until 2027.

But how do you expect some of these controversies to shape what's going to happen in Times River in the year ahead.

Well it'll be interesting because there's a lot of fighting going on between the council and the mayor about a number of issues not hiring people for the police department.

The police department is down about 20 people from when the mayor first got into office in 2024 and also reopening the Times River Animal Shelter which the council wants to do and the council wants to end the shared services agreement with Ocean County and have the shelter come back under township control.

I don't really think that's going to happen because you know the mayor would have the ability to block hiring any of the animal control officers of people that actually ran the shelter.

So those things are going to come up.

I expect development to be a big issue again.

And also I expect the issue with the homeless to keep going because it's not going away and it's just so expensive to rent houses, you know, apartments or houses now in Ocean and Monmouth counties that, you know, people just really can't afford it.

And even if they have a minimum wage job, it's almost impossible to get housing.

Yep.

The affordability issue reaches far and wide.

Jean, thank you for your great reporting and thank you for sharing it with us.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you asking me.

Public pressure is mounting on New Jersey's powerful pension fund managers over their decision to invest public dollars into a controversial tech company.

At a State Investment Council meeting on Wednesday, advocates urged officials to divest $130 million from Palantir Technologies, a data analytics firm with deep ties to ICE and other federal agencies.

Opponents argue the investment makes New Jersey complicit in aggressive immigration enforcement action happening all across the U.S.

Our budget and finance reporter John Reitmeyer covered the hearing and has the latest as part of our Under the Dome series.

John, always happy to have you in.

These Investment Council meetings aren't necessarily known for being fiery.

What stood out to you and was this level of public engagement typical for what we'd see.

Yeah.

Great to be here with you today.

And definitely not the type of meetings where you typically think about people coming in to raise concerns about some of the issues that we're seeing, you know, whether it's playing out in some of our communities or really on the aggressive scale that's happening in Minnesota.

I think probably what what we're seeing in New Jersey is a lot of people thinking like what can I do in my daily life to in reaction to this because it's drawing such a visceral response.

You know you've seen the cardinal of the Newark Archdiocese of the Catholic Church speak out recently.

And so it's really puncturing things including making its way all the way to a state investment council meeting.

That's not to say that there aren't times when people do raise concerns.

You know the state has a more than roughly 80 billion dollar public worker pension fund.

That's bigger than the size of the state's annual budget.

And 800000 people in New Jersey rely on it whether they're current or retired workers or their families to fund their retirements.

A lot of times it's their only source of income.

So there are times where issues whether it's investments in fossil fuel companies different things do.

People do make the connection between politics and investing but it's rare that we get as many people as there were at yesterday's hearing speaking out on one single issue that's for sure.

And because oftentimes folks say when they feel helpless they let their dollars do the talking for them right and so they really are urging the state to make this move but as you report you know state officials also have a fiduciary duty to those folks with the pension benefits.

How do they sort of balance when they're being called out on this ethical level with the duty that they have those beneficiaries?

Yeah and that's where it gets really tricky because for a lot of the people who are state employees or they also will hire outside fund managers, they do have this duty to maximize returns and minimize risk.

That's sort of agnostic to politics, right?

That's a financial calculation and New Jersey has one of the worst funded pension funds in the nation for public workers.

There's been efforts in recent years to improve the state funding of the pension plan, but there were years where it was underfunded.

So it's not a pension plan that can afford to be too picky in terms of losing investments.

It's really trying to maximize the investment returns.

That said, there are laws on the books in New Jersey that do ban certain types of investments.

The state also has an ethics policy.

So there are written policies.

And then we get into times when an individual investment draws red flags or outcry from the public and that's the situation we're in today.

And so is this within the laws of the state as far as Palantir and what it represents.

And just remind us what it does do.

So it's a firm that does.

It's a very successful firm that does you know a lot of data collection analysis with using A.I.

and it is contracting with the federal government according to publicly available databases including ice.

And so the issue is and I don't know the exact date when the state launched this investment.

Right.

This company has been around for a while.

This probably predates all of the current events.

The cleanest way for policymakers to handle this if they do decide we don't want to be in the business of being a partner with ice essentially through our tax dollars or through public worker pension contributions would be to pass a law to ban investments in certain types of things which is what was done if you remember just a few years ago then Governor Phil Murphy worked with lawmakers to ban investments in companies working in Russia and Belarus and that was in response to the aggression and the war against Ukraine.

So there are other examples where lawmakers have stepped in and said we do not want to see public pension funds used in this manner.

And I think in this case that would probably be the easiest way because then you would order the state workers who do the investing to be hands off or to in this case divest.

Yeah those foreign conflicts and the fossil fuels like you mentioned were the ones that immediately came to mind to me because I can recall even small protests at the State House about that.

Any indication though John that the council will reconsider?

So there was no immediate response to the public comment yesterday other than the chair of the council that oversees the investment saying we heard you we're not going to do anything immediately but we did hear your point of view and thank you for your advocacy so we'll we'll see there have been other calls for divestiture including fossil fuels and a lot of times they'll work with the boards on which you know the pension fund in Jersey is very influential because of its size.

They'll work to enact change through those board positions a lot of times versus full on divestment.

But we'll see what happens with this one for sure because it's something that's drawing a lot of political attention.

And the new governor in New Jersey has been very outspoken including on ice issues.

I wonder too given the proximity of some of these ice actions that are happening within New Jersey, whether sort of the fact that it's happening in folks' backyards, if that makes this any different or how it compares to some of the arguments that have been made in the past about divestment.

I think it brings it home because there were stories that were told by those testifying that were personal stories.

People in New Jersey, there was a statement read by somebody who had been detained by ICE, statements that were translated from Spanish.

So I think what you see is these personal stories and that does make it a New Jersey issue and maybe moves it up the agenda than sort of the generic we're against fossil fuel companies.

We know these are long, tedious meetings, so we're grateful to you that you always have an eye and an ear on them.

You can read John's full story on it on our website njspotlightnews.org.

John, thanks as always.

You're welcome.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

That's gonna do it for us tonight.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

For our entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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