Bramnick and another case of mistaken identity

State Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Westfield) has once again found himself accused of a crime he did not commit.

For the second time in less than a year, Bramnick’s distinctive “XX” license plate was entered on a ticket that had nothing to do with him.

This time, a sergeant with the New Brunswick Parking Authority issued a ticket on June 23 using XX as the plate number.  The summons charged Bramnick with violating alternate-side parking rules on Bethany Street.  The enforcement officer, Tina Hillsman, wrote the ticket for an Acura, which is not the car the veteran lawmaker drives.

When the $47 ticket went unpaid, the municipal court added a $10 penalty and sent Bramnick a failure-to-appear notice warning that the court could issue a warrant for his arrest, impose additional penalties and report him to the Motor Vehicle Commission.

Spoiler alert: Bramnick is innocent again.

New Brunswick Court Administrator Kimberly Milligan told Bramnick on Monday that the ticket had been dismissed.

“I spoke with the NBPA regarding this matter,” Milligan wrote in an email obtained by the New Jersey Globe. “The ticket in question was a ‘test’ ticket issued using the plate number XX.  As this is an actual New Jersey plate number, I advised her not to use it for testing purposes in the future.”

The episode closely resembles one from last summer.

On July 1, 2025, Bramnick was issued a summons for abandoning a vehicle on private property in Palisades Park.  There was no license plate on the abandoned vehicle, so an officer entered XX because the system required a plate number.

That sent the summons to Bramnick, who learned about it only after receiving notice that he had failed to appear in court. He had an alibi: he was at the Jersey Shore and had witnesses.

Palisades Park also dropped the ticket, ending Bramnick’s time as a wrongfully accused scofflaw.

Senate President Nicholas Scutari had a similar experience after his election to the Senate. Scutari’s license plate is NS, which New York police and parking officers sometimes use to mean “non-specific” when they cannot determine a vehicle’s plate number.  He received a large number of summonses as a result.