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[MUSIC PLAYING] Power plays, backroom deals, and late night meetings.

Tell me it's the end of the budget season without telling me it's the end of the budget season.

Hey, everybody.

It's Reporter's Roundtable.

I'm David Cruz.

It's our season finale, so we curated a best-of panel from this season, including Colleen O'Day, senior writer and projects editor for NJ Spotlight News, Charles Stile, political columnist for The Record, USA Today Network, and Matt Friedman, reporter for Politico and author of the New Jersey Playbook.

The panel is going to wrap up the season with a pretty little bow in just a few minutes.

But first, let's settle this budget business already.

Peter Chen has taken one for the team at New Jersey Policy Perspective and followed this process closely from the beginning.

He's a senior policy analyst there, and he joins us now.

Peter, welcome back.

I thought this thing was settled last week.

Well, you know, David, it's budget season in New Jersey.

It always goes down to the wire.

So we are going to get a budget vote tonight, so Friday night at 8 PM, probably later.

And then the full legislature will vote on it Monday, and it will be signed by the governor.

They'll just walk it down the hallway and get it signed.

So but wasn't there-- I mean, I remember reading, reporting last week that the deal is set, and it's going to be early, and everybody's going to get a jump on the holiday, and this was going to be voted on this week.

Did something happen?

Was it a patented Trenton last minute snag?

I think it was less that it's a last minute snag and more that writing a 580-page budget that divvies up $58 billion is actually very hard.

Especially when there are lots of new legislation that have to be passed in order to go along with that.

So whether it's an expanded realty transfer fee on property over $2 million or changes in online and sports gambling taxes, those are things that are really technical, and they require a lot of review.

And they can't just be passed with the snap of a finger.

So we heard about disagreements between the front office and the speaker.

Was that happening, and what was it about?

Stay NJ?

So neither the speaker nor the governor gave me a call to tell me about it.

But my understanding is that the governor has been very committed to preserving the cash reserves of the state, sometimes referred to as the surplus.

And New Jersey has fairly robust cash reserves for the first time in a long time.

And certainly previous governors would only leave about a few hundred million dollars in the state savings account, so only a few days worth of state spending if something were to go wrong.

And that led to a lot of bad decisions and financial turmoil for the state.

And by preserving as much of those cash reserves as possible, it keeps the state in good shape when it comes to potential federal cuts, as well as a possible economic recession.

So preserving those cash reserves, even though it's not a really sexy issue, I think was particularly important for the governor in making sure that their budget remains responsible moving forward as he looks to this as part of his legacy.

All right, so let me make sure that I understand what the process is now.

The Senate Budget Committee and the Assembly Budget Committee are meeting, as we gather here, on Friday afternoon.

And then there'll be-- those committees will vote tonight, which is Friday.

And then Monday, they're going to come back, and the entire legislature is going to vote on the thing, right?

That's correct.

Now, one thing we don't know is whether the members of the committee will have seen the actual budget bill before they vote on it.

A number of members of the committee may not be there and may leave their votes before the budget bill was even finalized.

And so that's part of why there's a cooling off period between when the committee votes on it and when the legislature votes to pass it as a whole.

I love that you said that some of them will vote without having seen it, which is just like, yeah, that's a Jersey thing.

So do we know what's in and what's out of this budget yet?

So I never try to predict anything before I've seen the final document, because there are so many little things that-- right.

But some things that we know are likely to be included are, as I mentioned, the expansion of the realty transfer fee on property over $2 million in value.

It's a relatively small percentage of overall property transactions.

I think it's like 2% or 3%.

And that will raise substantial revenue for the state, particularly for affordable housing, which we know is a huge issue statewide.

We also have-- the budget committee has passed legislation surrounding increases in tax rates for online gambling, as well as cigarette and liquid nicotine taxes.

So there are a number of revenue raisers that are expected to be included in the budget that have passed those committees already.

Yeah.

Also, maybe you can explain to folks this agreement between the governor and lawmakers to find-- is it $100 million in savings in the state health benefits plan?

What makes that necessary?

So this is kind of a separate issue, but is related, obviously, because it's all money.

The state health benefits plan is the health plan for-- health insurance plan for state workers, as well as a large number of local government workers.

And that plan has seen substantial cost increases over the last few years.

And so there's a concern that those increases are not going to be sustainable, and municipalities may drop out of the program entirely.

And this is a serious concern, because so many folks rely on the state health benefits plan.

Now, as far as the specifics, we have not seen detail on what this plan entails.

Our understanding is that it's going to be included in budget language.

The budget itself is a bill.

The appropriations bill has a bill number and is a law like any other.

And so oftentimes, changes in policy are written into the bill text of the Appropriations Act.

And our understanding is it's going to be written in, and we're all going to learn what that bill text says when they have the budget bill text available, which who knows when that will be.

Which we assume is going to be before midnight on June 30, at the very least.

We hear a lot that-- sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, that's definitely true.

But unfortunately, it won't be available for the public before there is any opportunity to testify.

And this is something that the minority party often notes as part of the budget process, that the rushed nature of it means that the public has very little opportunity to testify on the budget bill before it's voted on and heads over to the full legislature.

Which is something, frankly, that happens every year here in our process.

We hear from a lot of folks in both parties that this is going to be-- the budget is going to be the next governor's problem.

Is there something that you can say to explain that to folks?

Well, many of the big cost increases and revenue cuts that the state might see, especially as a result of whatever happens in Washington with the potentially disastrous, big, beautiful bill that's being negotiated in the US Senate, those cuts are going to come in next year's budget.

So this governor will be gone.

There will be a new governor in place.

And New Jersey budgeting is famously short-sighted.

It's focused on one-year goals of just balancing this year's budget and worrying about next year, next year.

But unfortunately, I will still be here next year.

And most of the legislature will be, too.

And the reason why it's so important to shore up the surplus in this budget is because next year will happen.

And we will need additional revenue in order to cover rising costs and potentially to cover a lot of people who get hurt by the federal tax bill going through DC right now.

All right, Peter Chen predicts next year will happen.

He's the senior policy analyst at NJ Policy Perspective.

Peter, thanks for coming on with us.

Have a great summer, man.

All right.

Thanks, David.

Always a pleasure.

All right, panel, Colleen, Charlie, Matt, welcome to you all.

Meet the new budget process, same as the old budget process, huh, Colleen?

I tell you, I cannot believe-- well, I guess I can because I see it.

But the number of complaints that just-- and they keep increasing.

I mean, I think the voices keep getting louder and louder every year.

And yet, here we are again.

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee announces at 7 or so last night to this group of people who are waiting for this budget, well, we're not going to have it until 8 o'clock tomorrow night, being tonight, right, Friday night.

And so who will have read it?

I mean, I'm going to bet almost no one will have read it by the time it's passed.

And again, as Peter said, the public will have had really no opportunity to weigh in.

It's just-- it's the definition of dysfunctional.

Yeah.

Matt, a rant to share about this process, this budget, this legislature?

Well, it just-- without any sort of benchmarks in place that are statutory, I think the very nature of politics and human nature is always going to push the deals into the end when they have to be made.

I don't think-- I think it's sort of a bonus for the legislators in power that a lot of the controversial stuff just gets buried, and you don't figure it out until off and after the budget has been signed.

And you don't see that-- you don't get a good idea of the pork items.

But without some sort of more clear statutory steps in place to make sure that there's-- if there is a requirement for a draft of the budget, that's really-- I don't know how to do it.

But by the nature of our system, it's always going to be pushed to the last minute.

And yeah, it's extremely frustrating.

It's extremely frustrating to cover it.

They're supposed to have it at 8 PM tonight.

But all week, it's been like, OK, they're going to do it Monday.

They're going to do it Tuesday.

Now it's Thursday.

And now it's Friday night.

So look, I mean, what's the latest they can do it Saturday night?

I'm not 100% convinced they'll get it done tonight.

I mean, they probably will.

It sounds like they have a deal.

But it's just-- unfortunately, these things always get pushed back.

And how much-- I mean, how many millions and-- how many hundreds of millions of dollars do we use or lose over the course of these years just by this sort of inefficiency and oversights and things that are probably unpopular getting through?

Because no one really has a chance to digest this all.

Yeah.

Charlie, an 8 PM Friday night budget hearing, would you call that bald face?

Or would you be more eloquent?

Well, so I agree with-- yeah, bald face is fine.

You want to run with that, Dave, headline it.

I don't care.

But I agree with what Matt said about the human nature and the process and what is not accounted for.

But I really think this-- I think it's a lack of-- I think the people who are in charge of the process now, particularly, are not going to change.

They're not going to do anything different unless there is public pressure to do so.

And there's pressure squawking from the press.

And there's-- and from some advocates.

But by and large, they know, cynically know, that the public is not tuned in.

And I think this is a theme that runs right through the Election Transparency Act, the bill that actually gutted public disclosure-- I'm sorry, the elect bill and the others that were related to it.

It's a common denominator theme that we can do this.

We have the power to do it.

And on balance, despite the criticism we hear, no one really in the public is going to get alarmed about it.

So let's deal.

Yeah.

This is really the next governor's problem.

I asked Peter Chen about that.

Colleen, right?

That's the next governor is going to get all the impact of federal budget cuts and terrible economy, et cetera, no?

Oh, absolutely.

And again, we have not seen this document.

So we can't speak with total confidence.

But it doesn't seem, from what we're hearing from those who are negotiating this, that the state has made allowances for the cuts that we're expecting to come in Medicaid, which we're expecting could be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

At the very least, there are other cuts in federal money that are likely to come.

So we're not hearing that this is something that has been a priority that the budget has been designed about around that.

Maybe it has.

But we're not hearing that.

And so, yes, it's going to be up to the next governor to figure out what to do if there are giant gaping holes in this budget in the middle of the year.

Yeah.

Let's switch to the governor's race.

Matt, let me bring you back here.

I think it's safe to say that neither candidate's going to be embracing this budget.

Before we head into vacation season, what is the case to be made for either of these candidates?

Is there an authenticity gap?

Is Trump going to be the wind beneath Cittarelli's wings?

What do each of them have to do over this summer leading into the fall?

Well, I think it's kind of interesting that for the last two days, Jack Cittarelli has been attacking Sheryl over the mayor of New York election and the likely winner of that, who is a Democratic socialist.

I think it's an interesting strategy to try to associate your opponent with radicals.

That's what Democrats have been doing, except Trump is the president, not the mayor of a city across the river with slightly fewer people than New Jersey has.

Obviously, the mayor and the governor are going to have to work together, but that seems to be like all their energy right now is trying to put Sheryl and every other Democrat in the same boat as Mondani.

And I don't know.

I really question the effectiveness, especially as even though Republicans should have a leg up in a way in having eight years of straight Democratic control of New Jersey and all the problems that come with it and high energy bills like that, I'm not sure if this strategy-- I don't really get it.

I don't really think it's going to resonate.

And especially-- He's not even mayor.

Yeah, he's not even mayor yet, and he won't be during the election.

And I'm just not convinced.

And also, Democrats had a more enthusiastic primary.

There's right now probably a bit more energy on their side and with Trump sort of driving political involvement.

And if the first Trump administration is any guide for the situation we have now.

And what does Mikey Sheryl have to communicate?

I'm not a radical?

Yeah, she's kind of-- honestly, a lot of people-- I asked her about Mondani, and she issued a statement.

She's basically-- I have a lot of differences with him, but at least he won on affordability, and Jack Ciatarelli is tied to Trump and whatever.

But I think I've been hearing grumbling from Democrats that Sheryl's message is just not really very pointed and really just sort of more triangulating than getting in there with voters' real feelings.

Right.

Charlie, I wouldn't call it an accent, but the way Mikey Sheryl says certain words like "cost," she says "cost."

It's noticeable to a lot of people.

I mean, I've noticed that people have mentioned it to me.

I think it stands out.

Is it just me, or is there-- somebody got to talk to her about being a little more Jersey?

Well, yeah, it is noticeable.

But I mean, we had eight years of Tom Cain sounding like a Boston Brahmin, and I mean, really suck him.

I think the bigger concern about Mikey Sheryl is her caution.

She seems still reading from a script at the NJBIA event, where Jack Cittarelli got up there and was polished.

And I mean, he's had three campaigns to practice, or this is his third campaign.

But she seems to be playing it safe, kind of continuation of the primary strategy.

And probably, to a certain extent, this is early in the race.

People aren't really tuned in as much, so why put your chin out there?

But I think at some point, people are waiting to see her put her chin out there and start fighting back and not being, as Matt mentioned, triangulating, playing this sort of Clintonian safe zone.

And so that's some of the grumbling I hear.

Yeah, a couple of random stories floating around here that I wanted to get to from over the past week or so.

Matt, the legislature wants to take the state police out of the AG's office and make it its own department.

Given the state police history in New Jersey, what could go wrong, right?

Yeah, I think it's interesting.

A lot of this is sponsored by a George Norcross guy and by Senator James Beach of Camden County.

And it has Republican co-sponsors.

Interestingly, Senator Linda Greenstein, the chair of the Law and Public Safety Committee in the Senate, is a co-sponsor of this bill.

So and she's never been particularly critical of Attorney General Matt Plattken.

A lot of the people on here have been.

And the weird thing is, Plattken is probably not going to be attorney general if and when this takes effect.

But that's clearly what's driving this.

And I do think if you look at-- there is a lot of scandal with the state police.

I mean, you can take the tiny scandals, like why was the guy with the Hitler tattoo on the force for so long?

And then you put up a picture of him, and everyone was like, hey, why has that guy got the tattoo with the Nazi slogan?

And the first response was to take down the picture.

It's not like-- come on.

Everyone saw that.

People saw that tattoo.

Or the widespread with racial profiling scandals, despite the decades old stuff, that these are still popping up.

But it does seem like, at least on the Republican side, a lot of that seems to be driving.

The resentment of having a liberal in charge of this police force and saying, hey, you can't-- you have these racial problems and traffic stops and everything.

And hey, maybe it's a bad thing to stop enforcing traffic enforcement, because you get called out for potentially having racial imbalance and traffic stops.

So yeah, all this frustration is bubbling up.

Charlie, the attorney general has kind of put himself in this position where people might want to legislate against him, no?

Yeah, he's-- I can't think of-- maybe I can be correct on this, but I don't recall an attorney general being this activist.

And that activism has put him at odds with the state police and created that tension.

And he's unapologetic about it.

And so yeah, some of this is bubbling up from the Norcross area, the Norcross machine.

And you're also-- I mean, Greenstein comes from-- represents Hamilton Township.

There's a lot of state troopers that live out there.

The culture is very much integrated with that Trenton district.

And I think they were waiting-- I think this is coming now at the end of the Murphy term.

And they're taking a shot, one last parting shot at Platt.

Colleen, Senator Mike Testa wants to rename the Delaware Bay to the Bay of America-- I'm sorry, the Bay of New Jersey.

Why?

This is just the height of silliness.

Why?

What's the point?

I mean, obviously, we know that the president renamed the Gulf of Mexico.

Can a New Jersey governor rename a bay?

First of all, I don't think so.

And secondly, again, why?

This is just-- it's silliness.

There's a heck of a lot more happening in the state that is important that maybe legislators should be focused on.

I mean-- I think we should just annex Delaware.

[LAUGHTER] It would be the Bay of New Jersey, not the Bay of America, David.

And also, this bill was paired with some sort of compact regarding the borders.

It seems like it has something to do with that dispute over-- what's the name of that little, tiny, several acres of land that belongs to Delaware that seems like a pimple on New Jersey.

And I think this has something to do with that.

Why exactly?

I don't know.

Someone pointed out, hey, there's a new-- they want to build more nuclear reactors.

This is near Lower Alloways Creek.

Potentially.

I don't know.

Testa didn't return my call about it.

Oh, my.

All right.

Colleen O'Day, Matt Friedman, Charlie Stile, thank you.

Thanks also to Peter Chen for joining us.

And thanks to all the reporters who've joined us this season.

Your numbers are shrinking, and you are all overworked, underpaid, and worse, frequently underappreciated.

We see you, though, and we say thank you for taking the time to join us all season long and for putting up with our antics.

That's roundtable for this week.

And let me add a thank you to our loyal viewers.

You know, there are people in government and elsewhere who would rather you not have access to public affairs programming like this or the independent journalism of outlets like NJ Spotlight News and others.

We'll tell you everything you need to know, they say.

Well, don't you believe it.

As much as they want to say that the press is negative or exaggerates, remember who it is that exposes their dirt and explains what it really means when they say what they say.

Journalists and independent journalism have never been more critical to democracy, especially on the state and local level, where democracy is most frequently corrupted.

I'm David Cruz.

For our producer, Jen Eckert, associate producer, Brendan Smith, our director, Elvin Badger, and the entire crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, have a great summer.

We'll see you in the fall.

Major funding for Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz is provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let's be healthy together.

[MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)