- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Making a difference.

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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kickoff the program with our good friend and colleague, Dr. Benjamin Dworkin, who's director, as you can see behind, of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

Rowan University, one of our longtime higher ed partners.

Good to see you, my friend.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, a lot of folks saw you on election night, "NJ Spotlight News", election night coverage NJ PBS.

Great stuff.

Now we go beyond the election.

Number one issue, Dr. Dworkin, that you believe is gonna influence voters in this race for governor in the great state of New Jersey, one of two races for governor in the country after Donald Trump became president, New Jersey and Virginia.

Go ahead, Ben.

- There are actually three top issues, but I think if you had to pick one as the number one, it's gonna be change.

We've had eight years of a Democrat Phil Murphy in as the governor, and the question is how much of a change do we want?

Do the voters want?

Typically, New Jersey voters do not give a third term to one party in terms of voting for governor, but this could be the year that that is different.

And that's why you saw both candidates, Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee, Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee on election night in their victory speeches talking about "We are the change, "they're the status quo".

- So it was unfair of me to ask for one issue.

You obviously, if it's two or three issues, affordability right up there, right, Ben?

- Sure.

Affordability and Donald Trump are the other two big issues.

- Donald Trump is an issue?

- Trump will be an issue.

He's a huge factor.

- Do affordability first.

Do affordability, then we'll go to Trump.

Go ahead.

- Okay, so affordability is almost always an issue in New Jersey.

The fact is it's expensive to be here.

Both parties know it.

Both parties have been trying to address it in their own ways.

Republicans talk about cutting government and they wanna get rid, you know, why they wanna replace the Murphy administration.

Democrats keep coming up with new ways to reduce property taxes, usually through some kind of rebate or check that you get from the government.

These are gonna be part of the issues, but affordability relates more to the just taxes.

It's about affordability in housing, affordability in college education, just general, the cost of living, this is gonna be a major theme in this upcoming election.

- And before we go to Donald Trump, our president, the president, how much impact do you believe a governor has on people's ability to, quote, unquote, afford living in this state?

- In some ways, the governor has a tremendous ability.

The fact is, you know, spending in this state is a direct impact on what people can afford or do.

And there are different ways of doing that.

So if you're a small business owner and the governor comes forward and pushes forward for an increase in the minimum wage, you'll say that's making New Jersey more affordable.

If you are the person who's working in a restaurant and suddenly is able to get 15 or $16 an hour, you're thinking, "This is great.

This makes New Jersey more affordable."

- But, Ben, what does it do to the business owner who's arguing, "I can't afford it"?

- Yeah, I mean, but that's why we have campaigns, that's why we have elections to debate exactly those issues.

Because there are plans out there.

The governor can shape the agenda, can shape the legislation policies, but those policies can help some people and hurt other people.

- Let's put President Donald Trump and his presidency in context with this race for governor.

Please, Dr. Dworkin, go ahead.

- Look, the most recent poll, which is from May, showed us that Donald Trump, at that time, had a 47-47 approval rating, 47 approve, 47% disapprove.

This is not the worst kind of thing.

Now, a lot of people assume because New Jersey has been so blue for so long in federal elections, because Donald Trump has run here three times and lost every single time, they think and believe that his presidency will be a drag on the Republican ticket, especially because the Republican, Jack Ciattarelli, was so outgoing in terms of getting the endorsement, they were showing it off as opposed to running from it.

But what really is gonna happen is that people don't vote today.

They're gonna vote, you know, seven weeks out as we begin our election season.

So the question about what kind of effect Donald Trump will have on this race for governor really depends on how popular he is, how the economy, the national economy, is doing when we hit October.

- Or also as we do this program in mid, late June, or international affairs could impact New Jersey as well.

But lemme try this, Ben.

To what degree do you believe, because the Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship is so important, this concept of citizenship, being an active citizen, Professor Eddie Glaude over at another university at Princeton wrote a wonderful book called "We Are the Leaders We've Been Looking For".

In that spirit, some people might think it’s an esoteric, academic question, but Ben, you and I talk about this all the time, the graphic will come up right now, Democracy in Danger.

To what degree do you believe our representative democracy is in danger, especially if citizens assume somebody else is gonna preserve our democracy?

I know that's not a simple question about tax policy.

- You have to take ownership.

- Go ahead.

- I'm sorry.

But everyone has to take ownership.

It's an old line.

No one ever washes a rented car because nobody takes responsibility for the rented car.

That's not democracy.

Democracy is something you have to take ownership of, and every citizen, the incredible thing that our founding fathers created in this country was an opportunity for every citizen to say, "I own a piece of this.

I own a piece of this great American experiment."

So it's frustrating when only 30% of Democrats and registered Republicans come out and vote in this past June primary.

It'll be frustrating when only 55% or so, 50, 55% of registered voters, of all registered voters will vote in this upcoming November election for governor and for the state assembly.

People have to take ownership of it, the threat to democracy and to the Great American experiment, as Abraham Lincoln described it, is always there.

And perhaps we are focusing on it more now than before.

And that's probably good.

And I think we need to, but the way to counter this is because we still have the vote.

People have to take ownership of what's going on in the country and hold their elected officials accountable.

- One more quick follow up, Ben.

Your understanding, your perception of our role as independent folks in media as it relates to preserving this precious representative democracy, Ben?

- A couple different things.

First of all, we have to be able to tell a story in a way that people understand.

And sometimes these are big concepts and they're complicated policies.

I described sort of the debate over minimum wage.

It can hurt some people, it can help some people, but that's the media's, I think the media has to be seen as somebody who's reliable and fact driven.

There is so much misinformation, particularly because of the rise of social media, which made everyone with a cell phone their own media outlet, and people who are followers for, you know, like, "Ooh, this is what they are saying."

Who's they?

- Okay.

- We all have a real responsibility to do that.

I know at Rowan, you know, we bring down, we had every major candidate on the Republican and Democratic side come and speak on campus, address questions from our students, from the audience.

And I think that's the way we contribute to a higher level of political discourse.

- Well said, my friend Dr. Benjamin Dworkin, director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

Thank you, Ben.

We'll talk again soon.

- Thank you, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Kris Kolluri, President and CEO of (Steve snapping) New Jersey Transit.

Good to see you, Kris.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- Kris, I gotta ask you, the website is up right now.

We've known each other for a couple decades.

You always seem to take on challenging jobs.

A, in all seriousness, why take on this job?

B, why is it so incredibly challenging to lead New Jersey Transit?

- Look, Steve, first of all, thanks for having me.

- Of course.

- Look, I love stress is the short answer.

But look, there's a more serious answer to this.

When the governor and I talked about taking this job back in December, he wanted to make sure that he finishes the job that he started.

It is an extraordinarily complex organization, as you know, with incredibly challenging problems that are some of our making, some that are not of our making.

So he wanted to make sure that I work with him to implement some of the things that he's been talking about, and I'm sure we'll talk about those as we go along.

And I consider it an incredible privilege to have this opportunity.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

- So the strike, as we're doing this program toward the end of June, the strike's over, right?

- It is.

- I'm a student of leadership, Kris Kolluri, as you know.

The biggest lesson you learned as a leader in negotiating around that strike.

- Two things, one is you never give up on your principles, two, you have to find common ground with the people sitting across the table.

It takes two to make a deal.

And the governor and I, I will tell you, never wavered on our fundamental principle, which is we have to have a fiscally fair deal.

But when we went into that room to negotiate, we knew we had to find common ground, and we did.

- Okay, so you mentioned governor a couple times now, so I'm curious about this.

Governor Murphy will be leaving in January of 2026.

What about you?

- I will be leaving with him a few days later.

My contract goes until January 31st, 2026.

It is my expectation I'll leave.

- So you're on this tight timeframe, right?

How does that impact how you do what you do with that sense of urgency?

- It's actually good, Steve, and I'll say this to you.

I am, and you are a student, not just of leadership, but you're also a student of how to move things from point A to point B.

Your dad was like that too.

For me- - He was a lot better than I am, but go ahead.

- Well, he's a lot better than all of us.

He was an extraordinary man.

- Thank you.

- And for me, these 12 months that I'm given this opportunity has really sharpened my focus on moving the dial on a couple of very important things.

One is customer service, reliability, but two, Steve, is fiscal foundation.

I think we often forget how important it is when you're running an agency this big to make sure you leave the next person with a fiscally sound organization so they can build on it.

And the third thing is, for me, this organization has been around for 45 years, and we still have rail cars that are from the 1970s.

I don't know how you run a 21st century rail system with cars built in 1970s.

So before the governor leaves office, we will have ordered every single rail car and every single bus necessary to modernize the system by 2031.

Never been done before.

I will get it done before I leave, and that's what the governor said he's mandating.

- You're talking a lot about economics and fiscal responsibility.

Along those lines, a 15% fare hike took place in July of 2024, first in about a decade.

Also, what happens is a 3% scheduled increase, literally in weeks from when we're doing this program in July of 2025.

This will be seen later.

Justify for folks, Kris, "Hey, why am I paying more if the service has not improved significantly or in any way that I can recognize?"

Help folks understand that.

- It's a very important question.

I think it's important to know that nationwide, you are very lucky on a mass transit system if you make 46 cents on a dollar.

That means for every dollar the taxpayers invest in us, we start off by not making 54 cents back.

That is the economics of mass transit.

It is never meant to be a profit-making enterprise.

It is always meant to be focused on moving people.

In order to do that, you have to have consistent input of revenue coming in, and the fares are the biggest chunk of that.

The challenge for this, Steve, and look, I've been around this rodeo now for a quarter century.

I will take some of the blame for it because and the governors past that I've worked for were equally to blame for not raising the fares on a consistent basis on small increments.

So what happens?

You try to play catch up, and you increase it by a huge number.

So what I think the governor has put in place now is a very rational incremental increase in fares so we never come back to a position we were a year ago.

This is how, and see, this is sort of a personal thing of mine.

Now, maybe my it's my age that's catching up.

We keep talking about affordability in this state and this country.

- Yeah.

- But nobody wants to take responsibility for paying for the bills today because you've seen this, and I've seen this, it is always politically expedient to kick the can down the road, and let somebody else pay for it.

- What would real, Kris, sorry for interrupting, what would real leadership look like?

"Listen, I don't want to get blamed for this.

I wanna win the next election.

I don't want people to say that I oversaw a fare increase."

But you're saying, "Hey, we're paying the price for that on another level."

- We are paying the price for it.

- You're saying just do it and take the hit and explain it?

- We are paying the price for it on another level because eventually, eventually, we all end up paying for it one way or the other.

And you know what?

It always is more expensive.

So my suggestion to anybody who's in my chair or in any other chairs of responsibility, you have to level with the people and say what it's gonna cost.

I am telling you, we are not gonna be in a state that is, anymore than it already in many instances is unaffordable according to any poll you look at.

But we cannot as a state keep saying, "We will do something that is convenient today, and let somebody else pay for it."

That's why, Steve, this negotiation I went through with the BLET was so important.

- Were they the engineers?

- Excuse me.

- Sorry.

That's correct.

- Good ahead.

Sorry.

- They're the locomotive engineers.

It would've been so easy for the governor and me to say, "We're here only for six more months, and the pay is not gonna really come into play till 2027.

What do we care?"

And I think the conclusion we came to was exactly the right one.

We just say we have to be the ones that say, "We're not gonna put the next governor in a position to pay for it for a decision we made today."

- Kris Kolluri, President and CEO of New Jersey Transit, while the governor has a tough job, this is also an incredibly difficult job.

And Kris Kolluri will be in that job till the end of the calendar year and then move on to his next very stressful leadership challenge.

Kris, good to see you, and thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

That's the head of New Jersey Transit.

We should give out his personal mobile.

No, I'm only joking.

(laughing) We'll be right back right after this.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're honored to be joined by John El-Maraghy, who's founder of Archangel Raphael's Mission, otherwise known as ARM.

And John is a winner of the 2025 Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award, and I was honored to meet him at that event that I was glad, really proud to host.

John, how you doing?

- Good, how are you?

It was good to see you again, Steve.

Thanks for having me on today.

- That was a great event.

You and a whole range of other leaders making a difference.

Tell folks, as we put up the website for your organization, what it is and how it's connected and committed to hygiene access, which people don't talk about a lot but is important.

Go ahead, John.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

So ARM is a grassroots organization that operates in Central and North Jersey.

We prioritize health, and hospitality, and hygiene as means of connecting to and supporting people experiencing homelessness and other forms of need.

- John, first of all, who are we talking about?

Who are you serving, and how do most folks wind up in a situation where access to hygiene services just doesn't happen?

- Yeah.

Absolutely.

So, you know, I always like to point out that there's about 500,000 shelter beds in the country.

It's about 100,000 feeding programs throughout the country.

And honestly, that's probably not enough, or we know for a pretty good fact that that's not enough.

But by our estimations, there's about less than 20 organizations like ARM.

So mobile hygiene, it's mobile showers and mobile barbershops.

So that is a particular need that we see in almost every community that we go in.

The overwhelming majority of folks that we serve are people that are experiencing homelessness or other kinds of material need, whether they be working class, literally homelessness or temporarily homeless.

- The mobile barbershop, talk about that.

- Yeah, so the mobile barbershop, it's actually my favorite program of the two that we run, for a couple reasons.

The first one is just a lot more inclusive.

So, generally speaking, folks that utilize our mobile shower program tend to be experiencing homelessness, whereas a lot of the folks that we serve with our mobile barbershop are children, working class families, everyday people.

So it's just, you know, it's just a much more inclusive form of service, and it's also the most visually transformative service.

You know, someone sits in a chair, 20, 30 or so minutes later, they look entirely different.

They feel entirely different.

And it's a really special thing to see.

- Hey John, where are these mobile services?

Where can people find them?

- Yeah, so ARM operates primarily in the warm weather months from about May to about October.

The mobile barbershop can deploy beyond that scope though.

And we operate in most or many cities in Central and North Jersey.

So New Brunswick, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and we're actually gonna be expanding into Montclair this year.

- I know, my hometown.

There's been a lot of talk about that.

What is the initiative, Tap into Dignity?

Talk about that.

- Yeah, so one of the things that both as a challenge for us as a grassroots organization and something that we really prioritize, is getting to know people in the communities in which we work.

So when we kind of decided to put together...

When we met up with some of the team in Montclair and we were putting together this service profile, we thought it would be fun to have just like a happy hour fundraiser that ended up being attended by about 50 or so people.

Mostly a combination of existing ARM supporters and local residents in Montclair.

And we were able to raise enough money for one deployment.

We're shooting for about four this year in Montclair, and it was at the Montclair Brewery.

It was a really great day.

- Montclair Brewery is a great place in town.

John, I'm curious about this.

How'd you get into this?

- Yeah, so I love talking about this because I feel like, you know, so many people that get into this work are personally affected by this work, and I'm honestly not.

I'm very lucky.

And it's part of that realization of luck.

When I was in college, I was honestly squandering my opportunities.

I wasn't very interested and I kinda came to the realization that the only reason that my decisions didn't have worse consequences was because I had a support system.

I had family and friends that pointed me in the right direction.

And I frankly realized that I was being selfish.

And so I decided to take the first volunteer opportunity that came my way, which my buddy was driving me down the street and he's like, "Hey, later today we're gonna go down to the train station and hand out some sandwiches.

Do you wanna come with me?"

So of course I did, and that ended up being part of the crew that ended up starting ARM.

- What triggered for you when you were handing out those sandwiches?

- I think it was a realization of, at the time I was studying public health and I was working in the restaurant industry, and there seemed to be a little bit of a disconnect between the way that we provide social services and the way that we provide other services in our community.

So you sit down at a restaurant, you know, you're greeted, you have, you know, steps of service.

There are all these things that make you feel special.

It's one of the reasons outside of delicious food and drinks that people go out.

And I didn't see that as much in social services.

And so, one of the things that we wanted to incorporate early on into our work was this sense of dignity and hospitality into the programs that we deploy.

- We're gonna put up the website again right now.

If people want to be helpful, they go on the website.

How can they do it?

- Yeah.

So you can visit www.Arm.Gives, no .com or .org after that, you know, can be a little messy with some people.

But there's a donate button and there's also a volunteer button.

If you live in one of these areas where we're gonna be operating this summer, I encourage you to check it out and volunteer.

If you're not in the area but you wanna support our work, the donation is always welcome.

- John, last question.

Many of the people you help struggle with housing issues, some of them are homeless, right?

United States Supreme Court made a decision that's allowing certain communities to vote through their municipal government to criminalize homelessness.

What's the impact of that for the people you serve?

- There's a massive impact, particularly from the hygiene lens.

I always like to point out when, you know, we all have...

These are basic human needs.

So if you have to relieve yourself and you can't find a restroom, or if you need to wash up and you can't find a shower, you have to resort to other methods like relieving yourself outdoors or locking yourself into a bathroom.

And that has, you know, cascading issues in terms of legal involvement, and what that means for your self-sustainability.

- John El-Maraghy, founder of a terrific organization, Archangel Raphael's Mission, otherwise known as ARM.

To you, John, and to all the folks that I was honored to meet, 29th anniversary of the Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award, they've been honored for 29 years, to emcee that event and to work with so many great people at the Russell Berrie Foundation and to meet leaders like yourself who choose to make a difference, you know, as the late Russ Berrie said, these are unsung heroes, people who don't seek out attention, but they make a big difference, well done, John.

Thank you for your service.

- Thank you, Steve.

Thanks for bringing us on today.

- Our pleasure.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Try to find a way to make a difference in your community.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Russell Berrie Foundation.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

Valley Bank.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

PSEG Foundation.

New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Congress Hall.

A Cape Resorts property.

And by IBEW Local 102.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

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It's what we do, at the PSEG Foundation Through volunteer hours, partnerships and our other contributions.

We're committed to empowering communities.

We work hand in hand with you, our neighbors, to educate young people, support research, environmental sustainability and equitable opportunities, provide training and other services all over New Jersey and Long Island.

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