>> Major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz is provided by our WJ Barnabas health, let's be healthy together.

And JM insurance group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey business magazine, the magazine of the New Jersey business and industry Association, reporting to executive and legislative leaders and all 21 counties of the Garden State since 1954, and by Politico's New Jersey playbook, a topical newsletter on Garden State politics online at Politico.com.

♪ >> Too many guns and not enough restrictions were just too many restrictions?

Hi, everybody.

It is Reporters Roundtable.

Matt Friedman is a reporter for political and author of the New Jersey playbook.

Charles style is the political columnist for the record USA Today network, and John Wright Meyer is the budget and finance writer for NJ Spotlight News.

We get to the panel in just a few minutes, but we begin today with the debate over guns and New Jersey.

A court ruling this week overturned most of Governor Murphy's gun carry restrictions.

At the administration had tried to restrict guns from certain sensitive areas.

Our guest today a plot of the routing and chided Democrats for trying to infringe upon the Second Amendment.

Republican assemblyman Brian Bergen joins us now.

Welcome back to roundtable.

>> It is great to see you.

>> The ruling also struck down the requirement that gun owners carry insurance.

What is wrong with requiring insurance?

You cannot drive a car without insurance.

>> The biggest problem is you cannot even do it here in the state right now.

Governor Murphy by executive order restricted the availability of insurance, so the law contradicted his executive order, so it was not possible for people to follow, and that point was brought up to the drafters of this bill that they were putting a bill out where people could not even comply with the law that they were doing, because it was in direct conflict with Governor Murphy's executive order, and also part of the reason why it is not a great thing to require a certain level of insurance for gun owners is because you are forcing people to pay x more dollars to exercise their constitutional right to carry, and then it restricts people who cannot afford that, so you are limiting the number of people who can do what is constitutionally their right.

>> You talk about constitutional rights, everyone talks about the second amendment.

What does the Second Amendment say to you?

How do you interpret the Second Amendment?

>> You have the right to bear arms.

We have the fundamental right -- >> It does not exactly say that.

>> I have it right in front of me.

>> That is your interpretation them.

It means an individual as a right to bear arms.

Let me just be clear on that, we are in an era of mass shootings pretty much every week.

Do you think it is good public policy to allow guns in parks and plazas and bars and concert halls?

>> It is not -- listen, concealed care he has been vilified by the Democrats here in the state for a long time.

The reality of it is allowing concealed carry does not increase crime.

It does not increase gun violence.

It does not increase mass shootings.

Concealed carry is not the issue.

Concealed carry happens in many other states and is rarely if ever the source of an issue.

People who conceal carry our responsible gun owners who do so safely.

The problem with the gun law is when they started restricting all of the different little places you can and cannot do and started having people have to load and unload guns when they got in and out of a car and take the gun out here and take the gun up there is they made it less safe, because when a gun owner has to take a gun out of the holster and remove the ammunition and store it, that is when there is risk of an accident.

When a person is a gun on them concealed and they do not remove it from the holster, that is safe.

There is no logical reason to restrict people from carrying in these places.

It happens all over the country, and there are no problems with it, so there is no reason to do it here.

>> Charlie, you have a question?

>> On this issue, we can debate the Second Amendment.

I do not think we have time for that, but clearly -- let me ask you this.

Do you see kind of a middle ground here?

We are in uncharted waters here.

They state is a pro-gun control state.

If the idea of suddenly allowing concealed weapons in public on nerves a lot of people, so where can we find a middle ground on this?

Obviously we will not get far in the courts for people who support concealed carry, but weighing that versus the anxiety , we are now going to be a set of laws that await us with the South or gun friendly states.

>> I understand what your question is, what I think it is an extreme that does not exist.

As an example, people were allowed to concealed carry in the state of New Jersey last year in the year before that and the year before that.

It was just a small troop of people, and they had to have a justifiable need, and those people did not have these restrictions.

There been people concealed carrying in the state of New Jersey for decades, and we cannot -- have not had a problem with those people that I am aware of.

This is not a brand-new thing, and they were allowed to carry in all of these places we are now attempting to restrict.

Since the decision happened, from then until now, people have been carrying guns and all of those places, and we have not seen any issue.

The Democrats in the state of New Jersey are trying to paint this as this particular decision and allow people to conceal carry is going to great this wild West with people running around willy-nilly with guns strapped around their chest.

That is not the case.

People who carry concealed our responsible gun owners.

There is not a lot of risk associated to it, and there is not a lot of danger in allowing them to carry, so in fact most people who get Concealed Carry License will not actually even carry.

Most people want it so they do not have to worry about New Jersey's overly restrictive laws in terms of transportation, and they just want their freedom to take the gun to the range and back without going to jail.

>> Let me move on to quick questions on budget.

Treasury says collections are way down, there is a $53 billion budget out there.

Is this a disaster waiting to happen?

>> Yeah, there is only so long you can continue to increase how much the government spends.

It is a ridiculous approach to governing, and we are overtaxed, yet the budget continues to grow and taxes continue to get added.

These numbers might not be exact, but ballpark.

$36 billion budget when Governor Kristi Noem left office to a 53 billion dollars budget, and the question I would ask people is is your life fundamentally better because of that?

The answer most people would say is "no."

What is all of that money going toward?

Most of it is being wasted on things we do not need and people are being taxed for things that are not justifiable.

>> I had two questions and two answers, literally 30 seconds.

Are you guys going to flip either of the houses in November?

>> Absolutely, we are definitely going to flip the Senate and I am hoping we can get the assembly.

I am committed.

>> How about this one.

Do you have a pic for governor in 2025?

>> Jack Ciattarelli.

>> That is early.

Good to see you, man.

Thank you for stopping by.

Pennell, Matt, Charles, John, good to see you all.

Let's start with this going ruling.

What is the impact of this going to be?

Charles, this is a done deal.

Gun control is over?

>> I do not know about that.

We have a raft of very strict laws.

I just do not -- he had mentioned people who have been using concealed care he in this state have been permitted to carry it in public, but those are very committed -- that was a very limited class of people.

He does not see that there is any middle ground.

I do not know -- I do believe we are in uncharted territory.

Maybe the governor's law and the restrictions we put out was a bit of an overreach.

I do think that maybe there is some middle ground, but I do not see any mood for reaching some sort of bipartisan rational middle ground on this.

>> Go ahead, Matt.

>> New Jersey will be kicking and screaming.

I think there are a couple of points.

I cannot speak specifically to conceal Garrick, but the statistics on gun does speak for themselves when we talk about the effectiveness of gun control.

A lot of them are suicides, but if you look at a chart of states based on how strict their gun laws are and how many gun deaths there are in those states, it is almost exactly inverse.

The stronger the gun laws, the fewer gun deaths.

This is a constitutional right, the Supreme Court says it is, but it is.

Gun control does decrease condenser.

A lot of those are suicides, but that does not mean those people would necessarily be dead if there was not gun control, because obviously suicide with a gun is much more final than my -- my most of her methods -- bite most of her -- by most other methods.

-- That is just a fact.

We can talk about the constitutional rights and how it is interpreted that the Constitution guarantees the Second Amendment is right now very loosely interpreted, and that changes depending upon the cord.

People talk about it like it is some inalienable right that is self-explanatory.

For generation after generation and has been interpreted differently.

It is interpreted this way by a conservative court, and future generations will interpreted differently.

The cat is out of the bag.

>> We will not solve this one here.

Let me move on.

Lots of action as we head into the final turn on budget hearings.

John, today we faced no crisis, says Liz, but collections are down, and lots of groups are still clamoring for money in the budget that is up to $53 billion.

That is your cue to give us the highlights of this we can budget.

>> Collections are not down, so I think what has gotten lost in some of the headlines this week and may be my own is back in February, the Treasury Department revised projections for their current fiscal year by more than $3 billion, so we have strong collections during the first part of the fiscal year.

We have yet to get up into some of the bump in as we have seen in the economy with things like the banking industry and bank failures, you are interest rate hikes that occurred by then, and so what they have announced recently is that the rejection scaled-back for the current fiscal year by a billion.

We still have these huge surpluses that we have been building up in recent years as there is been tremendous revenue growth, so to answer the assemblymen because of his question, where is the money gone?

A big portion of it has gone to paying obligations to the public worker pension fund, which were decades was ignored in New Jersey.

We have a property tax relief program, and education aid has been increased significantly.

If you want to look at where the spending is occurred, those of the good places to start, so we are not down revenue, but we are going to get a little less than we thought we were going to get in February and adjustments had to be made as a result of that.

>> How did moyel do?

>> She came in and had the strength of having these big surpluses.

If you remember just a few years ago when the pandemic began and we had a shortfall and we did not have such a robust surplus, they were talking about pulling back property tax relief, holding off on education increases in aid, there was some talk that did not come to fruition of delaying increases in engine contributions, so we are not in that situation because the administration built up a decent surplus.

She was able to speak from a position of strength.

The one catching all of this is headed into the new fiscal year, the base is now smaller, so we have not seen the administration scale back its spending ambitions for the new fiscal year.

In fact, there is a slight gap between what they planned to spend and collect.

The economy could turn worse, revenues could drop a little further.

Then we have a real structural gap, whereas right now it is just the projections are a little lower than they thought a few months ago when we still were building up big surpluses, and now we are building up a little less of a big surplus.

>> Governor Murphy nominated as Supreme Court Justice.

Union County, Hudson County, former public defender.

Charlie, you were at the event.

State Senator John Brad Nick won the day with his comments on friends and working together.

What did you think?

>> There was no doubt.

It was a rare display of bipartisan cooperation, something you do not see often in Trenton or certainly in Washington.

Certainly helped that this was a law partner that he was very close to.

>> It plays well if you want to run for governor, right?

Let's all work together.

>> That is clearly delaying John brandick will run in as the bipartisan lower I ideological Republican, one who knows how to work on both sides, so this is a showpiece item or Murphy.

Get off the stage of comedy night and get on the big stage for governor.

>> Did you get any wind from discontent behind the scenes from Latino lawmakers who had their own candidates in mind?

>> no, but I cannot say I was calling a ton of them.

I was working on some other stuff.

I know there was some talk about wanting a Latina, but it looks like this guy will sail through.

He has got enough votes.

>> The governor conditionally vetoed the bill on the dresses of government officials.

I thought, change of heart, with the bill was only vetoed because of a technicality over dates.

We had CJ Griffin on Chat Box this week, and she was explaining how you will not even get to know if you're married and where he says he lives there it John, you have been down your share of rabbit holes.

How hard would it be to find out anything about our leaders?

>> Definitely will make it a little bit harder.

I can remember doing some reporting where at issue was a second home that a lawmaker owned, and having the disclosures, you can pull those mortgage records and make sure they were saying was accurate.

I was not using those records for anything nefarious, more fact checking and double checking the finances of lawmakers, which is part of our job.

They be it comes harder for us, harder for the public.

It is a balancing act.

We do live in a dangerous world.

The public records law, so much as changed technologically since it was drafted, it is a huge lift, but it really does need another look.

Just think of the technological advancements in the last few years let alone the last few decades.

Public records laws have big -- become outdated.

>> We heard Paul making noise about working on reforms.

That sounds promising.

>> Yeah, taken on its own it sounds promising, because the law could use updates.

>> That was a sarcasm link there -- wink there.

>> Based on the track record of the legislature which is been over the last couple of years, steadily swallow chipping away at transparency measures.

John mentioned a vacation home.

On their financial disclosure forms, they not only had to list to the address of their vacation home or their immediate home, they do not even have to list if they own them unless they are renting it out.

I think that is ridiculous.

For public officials, we should be able to know these things read we should know where their houses are.

There been a lot of scandals in New Jersey over the years of public contractors doing work on private homes.

I think it is sort of like the lobster in the water.

Everything looks like a little change, but these things are starting to add up, and Daniel's law, and public records officials, what happened to Judge Esther Allis is a huge tragedy, but look up records right now, and they are rejecting everything for everyone.

It is a complete overly broad reduction of addresses and everything.

Look, a democracy to function, you need a good measure of transparency, and it is not going in the right direction.

>> I would also add one of the big things you might want to know sometimes is who is financing the second homes.

That would take knowing the address, knowing the property, and, yes, you could probably still find it, it will be harder.

>> Real quick -- >> In April the County Clerk shut off online access to public records.

Now you have to travel to the Gloucester County clerk's office like it is 1991, OK?

That is not good.

This is ridiculous, and I do not have much faith that the legislature is going to go in approach transparency direction.

>> We are getting reports of Christie announcing for president is imminent.

Do you think you and I are going to run into each other at a bar in Nashua sometime next February?

>> Given our company's travel budget, probably not.

>> [LAUGHTER] >> Yes, it may be, maybe for a little while.

Maybe Chris Christie and his Trump bashing routine could gain some traction.

I do not see any evidence of it.

We do not have confirmation of it yet.

>> Evidence of a rationale?

>> It plays well to the never T rumpers.

For the ardent base that is really with him and put them in front what her status, I do not see how that persuades anybody right now.

>> Time for our only interesting moments, headlines and notes that are quintessentially Jersey.

Let's start with you.

>> I went to bring attention to some pandemic relief spending that the legislature approved recently.

Only appropriate that in New Jersey where we have already heavily subsidized that there is more public intervention.

The argument is this will bring Taurus -- tourists to the location.

>> Charlie, got one?

>> I think that is a laughable use of money for pandemic relief, sorry.

But I also think even more laughable is $3.5 million for this NMA cage fighting at Preudential Center.

What I do not understand is that money was approved by The Sports Authority.

It is not responsible for the Preudential Center, so why are these -- where we financing this to begin with, and why did it go that way?

And they approved it several days before the event took place.

>> It is for the economy.

Matt, in his home.

-- bring us home.

>> Classic Trenton power play.

Good government to prevent constitutional officers like County Clerk's, surrogates, and sheriffs from being cap teachers.

Just happens the bill is sponsored by Democratic Senator, and the Republican chairman is the sheriff.

>> I wish there was an emoji for that.

Mine comes from Hoboken.

The superintendent of schools Dr. Christine Johnson has been going by Dr. Christine Johnson for over 14 years despite the fact that Christine Johnson only just got her doctorate last year.

Not once in any public record or public gathering during her eight years superintendent of schools did Johnson try to set the record straight.

Now, and doctorate is not a requirement if you want to be superintendent of schools in Hoboken, although you would think it would be.

You have to assume honesty is a requirement, and in that regard students of Hoboken, your superintendent gets an F. And that is roundtable for this week.

Charles, Matt, John, good to see you.

Thanks to assemblyman Brian Bergen for joining us.

You can follow this show on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for more stuff, including live streams and web extras.

We are off next week for the holiday.

From all the crew here at the Gateway Center, thanks for watching.

>> Major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz is provided by our WJ Barnabas health, the state healthy together.

And JM insurance group, serving the insurance needs of New Jersey residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey business magazine, the magazine of the New Jersey business and industry Association reporting to executive and legislative leaders in all 21 counties of the Garden State since 1954.

And by Politico's New Jersey playbook on a topical newsletter on guard state politics online at Politico.com.

♪