While thousands of New Jersey families sat in cold, dark homes over the last several days, Trenton’s political machine hummed along uninterrupted — proof that in this state, electrical power may be optional, but political power is not.
By any fair standard, New Jersey’s latest power-outage crisis is both a moral failure and a political one, and those responsible must be held accountable.
As of last weekend, Jersey Central Power & Light’s own data showed more than 23,000 customers without electricity across its service territory — including over 6,500 in Warren County, 5,000 in Sussex, nearly 5,000 in Morris, more than 4,000 in Hunterdon, and hundreds in Somerset. Tens of thousands of residents — seniors, families with children, and medically vulnerable individuals — were left without heat, light, or refrigeration just days before Christmas.
This was not a freak act of nature. It was a predictable collapse of a system that has failed repeatedly over time.
JCP&L is a protected monopoly serving roughly 1.1 million customers across central and northern New Jersey. It collects its bills promptly from hardworking residents, yet cannot reliably deliver the most basic service — electricity — during routine winter weather.
Every major outage follows the same script. Power goes out. Residents are left to fend for themselves. Local police, volunteer fire departments, and EMTs are forced into emergency response mode. JCP&L issues vague statements blaming “storms.” And weeks later, nothing changes.
Let’s be clear: local emergency responders — funded by property-tax dollars — are subsidizing a private utility’s chronic failures. When infrastructure collapses, the public pays twice: once through high utility bills and again through municipal budgets stretched to cover a mess they didn’t create.
This problem is well-documented. State regulators have reported a multi-year decline in JCP&L reliability, culminating in a ten-year high for outages in 2024. Regulators have even ordered the company to explain why it should not be penalized for failing to meet state standards. Large-scale outages — affecting tens of thousands of customers — have become a recurring feature of storms that were once considered routine.
Yet when families freeze, Trenton goes silent:
* No emergency legislative hearings.
* No fines.
* No leadership changes.
* No real consequences.
New Jersey residents pay the highest property taxes in the nation and endure one of the heaviest overall tax burdens in America. Still, when basic services fail, our elected leaders disappear. Democrats issue carefully worded press releases. Republicans tweet sympathy — then move on. Neither party seems willing to confront a protected utility monopoly that continues to fail the people it serves.
Infrastructure neglect is not an accident. It is a policy choice. Every winter, routine weather becomes a crisis because failure has been tolerated for years.
If the state can micromanage nearly every aspect of private and civic life — from plastic bags to personal medical decisions — it can absolutely demand reliable electric service and enforce accountability when utilities fail.
Yet here we are. Again.
New Jersey families cannot endure another winter or holiday season left cold and powerless due to corporate negligence and political cowardice. At a minimum, the state must demand:
If lawmakers cannot protect access to basic services, they have no business claiming to serve the public interest.
New Jersey pays premium prices for second-rate results. That must end — not with another apology, press release, or social-media post, but with action, accountability, and consequences for those who keep letting our families freeze in the dark before Christmas… Again.
About the Author: Robert D. Kovic is a New Jersey attorney, co-founder of the New Jersey Property Taxpayers Coalition, and publisher of “The Conservative View” and “Inside Sussex County” on Substack.
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