SENATE STATE MANAGEMENT, INVESTMENT AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS COMMITTEE

STATEMENT TO

ASSEMBLY, No. 1965

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DATED: OCTOBER 7, 1996

      The Senate State Management, Investment and Financial Institutions Committee reports favorably Assembly, No. 1965.

      The purpose of this bill is to correct a printing error. Five lines of existing statutory language were inexplicably omitted from the copy of Assembly Bill No. 3296 which the Governor signed into law as P.L.1995, c.425 on January 10, 1996. The law concerns compulsory arbitration for public fire and police departments. One of the omitted lines included deletion of the sentence: "The cost of factfinding shall be borne by the commission." Since the removal of that sentence by amendment constitutes a substantive change in the law, the printing error cannot be corrected by the Office of Legislative Services under R.S.1:3-1 and must, therefore, be addressed by remedial legislation. (Under R.S.1:3-1, the Office of Legislative Services, through its Legislative Counsel, is authorized to make non-substantive corrections in the text of any law, with the concurrence of the Attorney General.) This bill corrects the law to read as the Legislature had intended.