Bill could withold payment to tax delinquent vendors

Legislation approved Thursday by the Assembly Labor Committee would send a simple message to vendors the State of New Jersey has under contract: if you don't pay your taxes we're not paying you for services rendered.

Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Hamilton) called the measure he sponsors a common sense bill.

"In the past couple of years with the detrimental unemployment in the state of New Jersey, the UI Fund is depleting itself. Through internal audits, we've come to find out that as of June 2013, there's about 170 state vendors that owe the Unemployment Insurance Fund over $36 million," DeAngelo said.

Under the measure, the state would withhold payments to vendors if the Department of Labor and Workforce Development determines they've failed to pay their required contributions to the UI Fund, the state disability benefits fund or the Family Temporary Disability Leave Account.

"The premise of the bill is if you're not going to pay us, we're not going to pay you and that's the way we really have to do business. We can't have these vendors owing the state money and us continuing to pay them. It just makes no sense," DeAngelo said.

Jobless New Jersey residents deserve help and every taxpayer deserves to know the benefits system they pay into is protected from fraud that, in the end, costs everyone money, DeAngelo said.