“People will be able to simply select a vaccination site near them, follow simple directions to redeem their ride, and then get a ride to take them to and from a nearby vaccination site free of charge,” the White House said.

Gov. Phil Murphy said state officials were reviewing the U.S. Treasury’s restrictions on the funds, and that it was too early to tell how the money would be spent. “We now need to get a very specific sense of the parameters,” the governor said.

Announced by Mayor Ras Baraka on May 10, the program will be funded by $2.2 million from private donors with The Victoria Foundation overseeing the funds and the pilot, and city-based financial tech firm MoCaFi distributing the checks.

MetLife Stadium may be able to seat a full house after the season starts on Sept. 9 if the federal Centers for Disease Control shrinks its social distancing recommendations and New Jersey follows suit, as the governor has said it would.

“This approval would be a big step for the health not just of our state broadly, but for our school communities,” Gov. Phil Murphy said during a daily COVID-19 press briefing.

“We simply cannot expect a robust recovery and return to in-person work to be successful while workers needed in New York City are being penalized simply for going to their jobs,” Sen. Joe Lagana, D-38th District said. “New Jersey is not New York’s piggy bank.”

Under the proposal, the NJEDA would allocate $120 million for microbusinesses, $20 million for bars and restaurants, $10 million for child care facilities, $25 million for new businesses and start-ups, $10 million for the “Sustain and Serve” program which pays restaurants to prepare meals for residents in need, and $50 million in other business grants.

For the week ending May 1, a total of 14,073 new claims were received as compared to 12,322 filed the week prior, the DOL said. Nationally, unemployment trended down, with 498,000 claims filed for the week ending May 1, a decrease of 92,000 from the previous week.

The initiative enables early-stage technology and life sciences companies to sell their New Jersey net operating losses and unused research and development tax credits to unrelated profitable corporations for cash.

A number of immediate steps are going into effect May 7, ahead of the much broader reopenings which take effect on May 19. Gov. Phil Murphy states the current pace of the state’s vaccination efforts, and the downward trend in the virus, all justify these reopening measures.

“We want to get New Jersey on the right track to a new normal and to do that we need to ensure that all New Jerseyans who want to receive the COVID-19 [vaccination] have access to it,” reads a statement from the sponsor of the legislation, Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, D-37th District.

"There is no doubt business people want to bring human interaction back to the workplace, so you can say that Gov. Murphy's lifting of restrictions has come at the right time,” said Tom Bracken, the organization's president and chief executive officer.