Shirley K. Turner

TRENTON – Senator Shirley K. Turner, D-Mercer, released the following statement today regarding this morning’s Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing with Commissioner Kevin Ryan of the State Department of Children and Families:

“During last year’s Budget hearing on the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), I expressed my concern for the need to preserve and maintain families, while avoiding unnecessary out-of-home placements of children. I specifically asked about the need for funding basic necessities such as, food, shelter, utilities, repairs, essential household equipment, and other expenditures, to permit, wherever possible, children to continue to live with their families.

TRENTON – Senator Shirley K. Turner, the Senate’s leading advocate for expanding affordable housing available to low-income families, said today that “The State must continue its work to provide low-cost housing opportunities to our most vulnerable residents.”

“Governor Corzine ran on the promise of expanding the number of affordable housing units in New Jersey and I am glad to say that he is sticking by that commitment,” said Senator Turner, D-Mercer. “A clean, safe home is a basic need that far too many New Jersey families go without every day and we’re working to bridge that gap.”

TRENTON – Senator Shirley K. Turner, Chair of the Senate Education Committee and member of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, today welcomed reports that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is expanding programs which help ease the transition of inmates back into society, but urged them to go further in supporting programs that would address the needs of inmates and help to reduce recidivism rates.

“Simply locking up these individuals is a losing proposition in the long run,” said Senator Turner, D-Mercer. “We can use the time they serve in prison as an opportunity to address some of the underlying problems facing these people and leading them to a life of crime, such as drug abuse, mental illness and lack of a high school diploma.”

TRENTON – Citing reports that say more children and families live below the federal poverty line this year than last year, Senator Shirley K. Turner today called for greater assistance for children and working families struggling to make ends meet.

“Fewer people may be on welfare, but it’s plain to see that we’re not helping them get out of poverty,” said Senator Turner, D-Mercer. “Between the sad fact that federal TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) grants have stayed the same for the last twenty years and the unfortunate truth that the federal poverty line is in no way representative of the minimal cost of living in New Jersey, we are failing these families.”

TRENTON – Senate President Pro Tem Shirley K. Turner, today urged national African-American leaders and corporate America to condemn rap music performers who use sexist lyrics in their songs as “degrading to women, demeaning to the positions men should be filling in family life and disappointing as role models for young people.”

Senator Turner, D-Mercer, who is an African American, said the professional demise of talk radio host Don Imus for sexist and racist remarks about players on the Rutgers Women Basketball Team “must lead to a wholesale purge from popular culture of references to women as ‘ho’s’ and ‘bitches.’”