From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News.

>> Hello and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Coming up, a data center fuel spill into a New Jersey creek has many activists and communities questioning the environmental impact of having those companies in their neighborhood.

We'll get you the latest on the investigation.

Plus, a new rule may limit who can be a referee or official at your child's next game.

Joanna Gagis takes a look at the new regulations and potential costly consequences.

But first, we follow the money coming in from Super PACs in the competitive District 7 race between Rebecca Bennett and Congressman Tom Kane Jr.

in District 7.

We'll break down who the big donors are.

That's next.

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Well, big money is starting to pour into the state's most closely watched congressional race.

Outside groups are lining up millions of dollars for spending in the 7th District, where Republican incumbent Tom Kaine Jr.

is facing Democratic upstart Rebecca Bennett.

Polls predict a tight race, and the Cook Political Report has rated it a toss-up.

Now both national parties are preparing to flood voters with ads for and against their candidate.

Politico New Jersey reporter Joey Fox joins us now to break down where the money is coming from and what it means for this race.

Joey, it's good to have you on the show.

We know, we expect that this would be a very expensive race if 2024 was any indicator.

But what are we seeing at this point, at this stage of the game from outside spending?

I mean, we're seeing what we usually see at this relatively comparatively early stage of the campaign cycle.

You know, some outside groups are starting to get involved.

It's pretty clear that both parties see this as an extremely competitive race and are planning on spending millions of dollars, much as they did in 2024, in 2022, in 2020, in 2018.

This is actually one of the most persistently competitive House districts in the entire country.

So, so far, you have seen a couple of more peripheral kind of super PACs get involved.

There's the scientists group 314 Action and the gun control group Giffords that are spending money on the vaccine.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We've seen a lot of people in the race.

We have some ad reservations that indicate Republicans in particular are preparing to spend upwards of maybe $10 million on this race.

Democrats have been a little bit more circumspect about what their spending will be, but it'll probably also be a lot.

So, I mean, I think voters in this district can expect a pretty massive barrage of ads in the next couple of months coming from these groups that don't have much to do with New Jersey themselves.

Yeah.

And on all fronts, whether it be airwaves, mailers, political pop-up ads, things of that nature, it's kind of filtered into every area of our lives.

What can you tell us about the money coming from outside of New Jersey?

I mean, the transparency around this has gotten murkier and murkier with every election cycle.

Are you able to trace just how much of it is coming from inside PACs within the state and outside?

I mean, yeah, every cycle, these PACs get a little bit better at figuring out how to mask what they're really doing and how they're spending their money and how they're raising their money.

So there's one loophole that groups can use or the donors can use where they donate to 501c4 nonprofits that then have to air slightly different types of ads that can't be quite as political, but they can completely mask all spending and raising if they want to.

So we saw some of that this year.

Those same groups can give money to Super PACs and then those Super PACs spend it.

So even though we see reports of the Super PAC spending, like the money trail runs dry after that because it's coming from these untraceable sources.

The Supreme Court struck down some limits on how much parties can spend in conjunction with candidates.

So you're probably gonna see that a lot and that probably benefits Republicans more because the Republican like committees are better funded this cycle than Democratic committees.

So yes, there are a lot of ways, you know, to some extent, we can track some of this money, there are FEC reporting requirements, they do have to, these super PACs do have to report their donors, they have to, within a short period of time, tell people when they make these expenditures.

But there's a lot of ways that that funding can be masked and that transparency can be sort of thrown out the window.

Both of these candidates, though, I mean, certainly, Tom Kane has a long history of being a prolific fundraiser, but Rebecca Bennett has now shown to be able to raise substantial sums.

How unusual is that dynamic that so much money is planned potentially to be spent here over these next several weeks, couple of months, when these candidates are already have a pretty decent war chest?

It's really not unusual at all in this district.

This is kind of what happened in the last four races for this district too, where you've got a pretty well-funded Democrat going up against a pretty well-funded Republican, so they'd have plenty of money to sort of hammer each other regardless.

And candidates get better rates on advertisements, and obviously they can control their own message, so I think most candidates would prefer to have their own money, you know, versus an equivalent amount of Super PAC money.

But one of the things that makes both Super PACs and candidates so critical in this district is it's in a very expensive media market.

In order to simply put an ad in front of people's eyeballs, it takes a lot more money than it would in say, Iowa.

So that means that you end up with these spending totals.

I mean, in 2024, the race cost around $26 million.

That's the most expensive house race New Jersey has ever seen.

And I would bet that this year's race, we don't know for certain yet, but I would bet that this year's race blows past that record, too.

So it's pretty eye-opening amounts of money here.

Yeah, there's another issue that's become a big part of the campaign conversation, which is Congressman Kane's stock disclosures, new reports showing that he has spent tens of thousands on AI data centers, which if you ask the team with the Congressman, they describe it as something that is set up like a blind trust, but essentially that it's run by professionals, but he has no prior knowledge or input when it comes to those stock trades.

How much of a role does this play here?

Because it certainly can take a hit on a candidate.

Yes, I've done some coverage of this.

And if you talk to Kane, or if you talk to his staff, what they'll say is any attempt by Democrats to make this an issue is just, it's nonsense because Kane removed himself from any stock proceedings when he was first elected to Congress.

He put it entirely in the hands of independent advisors.

And so he is required by law to file these reports saying what his stocks, his stock advisors are doing.

But he has no personal involvement.

But for a variety of reasons, he didn't actually set up an official blind trust, which would have truly removed him from this and he wouldn't have been required to file reports if that was the case.

And so that was a decision he made so that he could still advise his financial advisors not to short sell American companies or to invest in companies with ties to foreign adversaries.

So he has a reason for that.

But it means that Democrats are able to criticize him for not being able to do that.

And they're going to criticize him based on the actual reports that are in the reports.

Rebecca Bennett sold off all of her individual stocks last year.

So it's not really a vulnerability for her in the same way.

And I think Democrats are going to clearly hammer on this issue.

The question is whether voters think that that's a fair line of attack or whether they sort of buy into what Kane's reasoning here is, which is I don't have any involvement.

Anything that Democrats say about this is simply trying to slander me.

Very quickly, Joey, what are you watching for in terms of campaign spending in these final weeks?

I mean, I think the biggest question is how much do Democrats come in for.

Republicans seem pretty committed to defending their incumbent in Tom Kane Jr.

Democrats have signaled to me that they are really interested in this district and that they want to make sure there's a win here, but they have yet to back that up with the same kind of significant ad reservations as Republicans.

So I think the second that you see, you know, we've got ad trackers, we're in contact with super PACs about what their plans are.

I think the second that you see a really big planned expenditure from Democrats, then you know that this race is, you know, sort of really on.

Joey Fox, reporter with Politico New Jersey.

Joey, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

A fuel spill is raising fresh questions about the environmental risks tied to the state's growing data center industry.

DEP officials say 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel leaked from the Equinix facility in Secaucus, flowing into Anderson Creek, a tributary of the Hackensack River.

The state says the fuel was contained before reaching the river, but environmental advocates are calling for the company to be held accountable.

Michael Warren is a reporter for WNYC and The Gothamist covering New Jersey, and he's been following the cleanup, along with what the incident could mean for the broader debate over data centers.

He joins us now.

Michael, it's good to see you.

It's nice to have you on that side of the camera, though.

We miss you over here on this end.

What can you tell us about the cleanup so far and what do we know about the source of the failure?

Sure.

So it's great to be here, Brie.

First off, the cleanup remains ongoing.

Most of it has been done already, but there's some mopping up efforts that have to go on.

The spill was reported on Friday evening, and by the company that owns the data center, that's Equinix.

They've run this data center in Secaucus since 2001.

Spill happened Friday evening.

They reported it immediately to authorities in Secaucus who ran it up the chain to the DEP.

A contractor hired by Equinix has been on site since that Friday evening vacuuming up oil and water, putting down booms to make sure that the oil doesn't spread.

And it's been pretty well contained.

It entered into this kind of ditch that is alongside the property and they were able to catch it before it spread further into nearby wetlands or the Hackensack River.

- The DEP says the fuel was contained before it reached the Hackensack River, but I know you've spoken with Bill Sheehan, with the river keeper, with other advocates in the area.

What's their concern about the environmental risk that it poses even if it was contained?

Yeah, the concern is that, you know, diesel fuel just is not a good thing to be having loose in an ecosystem.

It's not really something that's compatible to life, you know, if you're a fish or an animal or something that's existing in this water.

It's not something that would be good for you to consume.

So that's why there was some concern by Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack River keeper.

I just want to reiterate that the DEP is adamant that this spill was contained before it had reached the river.

I know Mr.

Sheehan remains and he will be keeping a close eye on these waters as he has done for decades.

But that was the concern.

Is the state planning, Michael, to take any type of action?

Enforcement, fines?

I know there's some talk about a natural resource damage claim.

Where does that stand?

Yeah, DEP told me today that it's still too early to know what enforcement is going to look like.

So we're gonna have to wait a little bit and see.

The Riverkeeper and Secaucus Mayor Mike Ginelli, among others, would like for the state to pursue what's known as a natural resource damages claim.

And that's something that under New Jersey law is a penalty that can be assessed on a polluter.

And what it would do would be require that the polluter, in this case, Equinix, pay a fine that's equivalent to the damage they did.

And that money would be dedicated to ecosystem restoration in the general area.

So an example right in this in this region would be in 1994, there was a major chemical spill on the Hackensack River, a barge overturned and spilled like 300,000 gallons of caustic acid.

As a result of that, there was a natural resource damages case and the money that came from that was used to restore and do major cleanup at Lincoln Park in Jersey City, which is on the Hackensack River banks.

So if there was to be a NRD claim here, the hope would be that that money would go towards cleaning up generally in the area.

Yeah, I mean as you mentioned they've been operating there at Quinex since 2001, so we're talking about 25 years without an incident, but this comes at a time when the state is pretty hotly debating getting behind a growing, expanding really AI data center industry.

How much of it is a you know a one-off mechanical failure and sort of a canary in the coal mine?

What are folks telling you?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

It's definitely the timing could not be worse if you're Equinix, right?

I mean to be operating this thing for basically 25 years with no complaints, a lot of people not knowing that this even existed.

It's probably the worst possible time for something like this to happen.

I mean, the concerns around new data center development in the state have, as you know, been reaching a fever pitch these past few months.

And there's been a lot of environmental concern about data centers.

But most of it has not been about diesel spills, right, or this kind of pollution.

Most of the concerns have been around like noise pollution or the amount of water that is needed to cool the operations inside a data center or the emissions if they have a power plant on site.

This one kind of introduces a new variable into the equation.

It's a new talking point for opponents of data centers to latch on to.

That you know that there are these kind of substances that are stored on site at these facilities and accidents like this can happen.

Well, and if we're talking about 5,000 gallons that spill, do we know how much they do keep on site or how much is required?

Some of the, you know, what I've been talking to folks about is they want to know it in its entirety.

Do we have that picture?

I don't yet.

I've asked around about that.

What I would say is 5,000 gallons is the number 5,000 is a big number.

There's no doubt about it.

But I do want to put that in perspective.

5,000 gallons is less than the amount that can be held in a typical fuel tanker truck that you would see on the highway.

Think about it's not uncommon for there to be tanker accidents on the turnpike or on route 3 or something.

And in a situation like that, we might have a similar amount of fuel spilled onto the highway.

I think in a lot of cases when you have major facilities, not just data centers, but kind of any type of major commercial or industrial facility, they often keep their own large generators on site for backup power.

And that may be what this fuel was being stored for.

I'm not entirely sure yet, but I do know that they have an air permit, which is something you would need to keep a large generator on site.

So it's, it's, it's not something that's uncommon for a facility like this to have this amount of fuel on site.

Thanks for that context, that perspective.

Michael Warren is a reporter covering New Jersey for WNYC and Gothamist formerly with us here at NJ Spotlight News.

Michael, good to have you on.

Thanks for having me, Bree.

>>> New Jersey recently adopted new worker classification rules that were meant to provide more clarity and equity for employees and the companies that hire them.

But the rules could have unintended consequences on youth sports where umpires and referees may no longer be hired as independent contractors.

sports writer with NJ.com who recently looked into the issue and legislation aimed to change it.

He spoke with Joanna Gagis about that and other sports developments in the state as part of our Under the Dome series.

Keith, great to have you with us.

I want to first start with this worker classification rule.

Can you tell us about the ABC test that really determines whether or how a person should be considered an employee?

So once you do work for any entity, any business, they want you to be classified as an employee.

There are three prongs to it.

Basically, the most important one as applies to this is if you are free of control from the entity's normal course of business, from a sports official standpoint, what advocates, people who are pushing for this bill would say are, they are.

They work for multiple different organizations.

They are free to choose who they work for.

There are multiple different assigners they are allowed to work for.

From that standpoint, that is why they want to maintain their independence as a worker.

I know you heard from many individuals who work as officials, umpires, refs, for a range of youth sports.

What can you tell us generally about what that kind of worker pool looks like?

You mentioned that many work for many different districts, but what does it look like generally?

Yeah, I mean, as one, you know, high profile umpire in New Jersey said, you know, this is a business where no one's making a living on it, right?

Um, that, uh, by and large, uh, you know, people use it as a side, uh, side gig, um, that, you know, supplement their income.

Um, you have a lot of retirees.

You have a lot of people who, who are trying to, you know, supplement their, uh, income.

I know a lot of teachers during the summer who umpire, um, in, in, in officiating soccer and multiple sports because they don't get paid during the summer.

So this is a, you know, you know, by and large an industry, um, that, that does not, you know, it's not their main source of income.

It's a supplemental income.

Um, we were talking, you know, the average, you know, high school, um, baseball umpire, according to the people I interviewed make between about five to ten, ten thousand dollars a year.

So I mean no one's getting rich off it.

So take us down the line.

This is a rule that's set to take effect on October 1st.

This is of course a new Department of Labor rule.

What ends up being the impact on these these officials if they end up having to be classified as employees to the districts or communities that would have to to employ them and then what then is the impact on families?

Just kind of walk us down that line.

Yeah, no one knows for sure from October 1st that deadline because there are groups of umpires and officials who believe that they're already being classified as state employees and you know there's been some court cases that of groups who are already fighting it.

So whether or not all this takes place October 1st, the Department of Labor is not saying.

What they are saying is you know their job is to codify law that has existed for decades and you know they're going to continue to do so.

They're not commenting specifically on sports officials.

So let me jump in here though, what's the impact?

Yeah, yeah the impact is you know take it from you know the high school sports level.

Perhaps it would be athletics directors having to assign officials which you know as of now, each county, each high school relies on different signers to be able to bring the soccer referee, the field hockey referee, the football referees, the baseball umpires to their games.

If this takes effect, a lot of signing groups are going to be concerned and might even fold.

That would mean that athletics directors at each school would have to assign it.

That would mean that referees and umpires become state employees on October 1st.

Because of that, their fees are going to be impacted.

So that gets passed on to each town school budget.

And then from a youth sports level, if these different groups are assigning their officials and they become state employees and all of a sudden there's a cost to hiring referees, they're going to charge it to the consumer, right?

So tournament fees are going to go up, each league is going to have to charge more, and that's going to impact the bottom line.

We've done a lot of good reporting this year on the cost of youth sports.

A lot of just travel leagues are $3,500 to $4,000 a year.

Expect that to go up if this bill goes through.

If this bill doesn't go through.

And we know families are already struggling to keep up with the cost of youth sports.

And we know districts that have faced year-over-year budget cuts are struggling.

And many have cut youth sports programs.

In fact, this could only potentially worsen it.

There is proposed legislation sponsored by Republican Senator Kristen Carado, Democratic Assemblyman Anthony Angelozzi to address it.

Can you just tell us what this bill would do?

>> It would exempt officials from this ABC, it would essentially exempt them from state employee status.

It would mean that they're independent contractors, that's the simplest terms that they would be.

Any sports official in New Jersey would be classified as an independent contractor.

California did something similar a year or two ago.

Keep in mind, New Jersey, if this does not pass and officials are treated as employees, would be the only state in the country that would treat sports officials as employees.

OK, very quickly, New Jersey just took on a new soccer program operations coming from New York.

I'm giving you one minute to talk about this quickly.

Tell us about the team and where they're going to play.

They will be playing at Middlesex College.

This is not owned by Middlesex College.

It's a $350 million project.

Included is a 6500 stadium that's going to include baseball.

Rutgers baseball will be playing games there.

Middlesex College will be playing baseball.

But the big news was the New York Pro soccer team is going to have a minor league club that's going to be playing out of there.

So, you know, we're going to have a minor league team.

And we're going to have a minor league team.

You know, controversy.

When it came to a lot of Republican leadership.

Have criticized the spending.

We're talking about $350 million project.

That includes a lot of youth sports fields nearby.

But Republican lawmakers have criticized the spending saying that $200 million.

from state budget, including COVID funds, is supporting a soccer stadium.

So, you know, a lot of people are excited, though, about soccer, you know, coming on the heels of the World Cup.

Yeah, I was going to say, clearly, the governor's seeing potential here to keep the community energized about soccer and maybe get more young people involved in the state.

as you said, rightfully of those funds were spend great wrap up there in ju Sports writer with NJ dot much.

Anytime.

Thank you.

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