From today’s NJ Spotlight, regarding news that Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) has introduced his (flawed) charter school bill:

Diegnan chairs the Assembly’s education committee and is the lower chamber’s most prominent voice on school policy, so his vision for overseeing charters carries a lot of weight with its Democratic leadership. His latest bill contains a few of the ideas he’s been espousing for the better part of a year… It also pushes one of his more controversial positions: local voter approval of all new or expanded charters…[Senator Teresa] Ruiz [Chair of the Senate Education Committee and working herself on a highly-anticipated charter school law proposal] has shown no support for local approval of charters, and she has pressed for multiple authorizing organizations outside the state Department of Education.