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♪ David: Hey, everybody.

Welcome to "Chat Box," I'm David Cruz.

Governor Murphy delivered his penultimate state of the state, some positive reviews.

We will take a look at reaction from the business community in our second half, but let's begin today with the top legislative gatekeeper to see how much of the Governor's agenda will actually see the light of day in the final year he has left.

The president of the state Senate is welcomed back to "Chat Box."

Welcome.

Guest: Good to David: See you, thank you.

You had a few days to consider the speech.

What did you take away from Tuesday?

Guest: Well, a strong speech, Governor is a good public speaker and he connects well with people, and he has a good record to talk about.

That is essentially what he did and he laid out additional pieces that we will see in the next five months as we consider budget talks, and then overall in his last moments in office.

I think we will get a lot done.

Not sure all of that was discussed in this state of the state, but I think we are going to be productive in a bipartisan manner that we always try to be.

David: I think a lot of people were surprised and impressed with the fact that the speech was chock-full of legislative initiatives, considering it is the final year for the administration.

I assume there was some consultation, but were you surprised that all this stuff he crammed in there?

Sen. scutari: I would not say surprised, and there was consultation, for sure, to talk about.

But it is the governor state of the state, not the legislators.

We are happy to try to work together on some of those.

David: Affordable housing, a few fixes in there to the process, the hope is that it will help expedite building more affordable housing.

I assume the votes are there for that because that was kind of cleaning up some stuff, yeah?

Sen. scutari: Well, I don't make any assumptions, you know what they say when you assume.

I would not make any assumptions on that for this very reason, it is a complex issue and divisive every time.

When you reopen that Pandora's box with affordable housing, it can get dicey, so I will not make any assumptions.

We have to make improvements on what we have already done, and we will try to clean it up.

David: What is your sense of what members are going to react to that?

I mean, it passed the legislature without some of these items.

Do you think it will have difficulty because they are trying to include these items?

Sen. scutari: I guess the devil is always in the details, and there are more details to the proposals we have to get to.

And there are always these reactions from local officials, when we talk affordable housing.

So there is always that caveat when we discussed the topic again.

David: What have you heard from your caucus on any of these, any of the other proposals in that speech?

Have you heard from folks already?

Sen. scutari: Well, we had a meeting before the speech.

We discussed some of the things.

Certainly the cell phone policy is something we already adopted in the Senate.

We adopted the morning before the speech, that morning, actually, the afternoon before we spoke, so that has already been a top priority.

The state Senate is adopting a policy regarding cell phones.

I believe in a bipartisan fashion, people believe that cell phones in our society, especially school-age children is a huge distraction and we have to have policy to deal with it.

That is one of the things I think was well received.

In fact, we are working on it.

That is a similar issue.

David: Is that something the state needs to legislate or could that be something that the state Department of Education could impose?

Sen. scutari: I don't know the answer to that question, but we have already passed it, it was a bill sponsored by Senator Moriarty, one of his priorities, and we made sure we fast track that, and it has already been moved on to the Senate.

David: Free all-day kindergarten, are the votes there for that?

Sen. Scutari: I have taken a census on that, but I believe it will be well received since essentially I would not say it is already the law in New Jersey, but most schools follow that.

I think it is something that we will strongly consider.

David: And parental leave with full pay for state workers also popular, yeah?

Sen. Scutari: That I don't know the answer to that.

Certainly, that is going to be something that is a discussion, given all the parameters that the state deals with already.

So don't have an answer on that.

David: Is it safe to say that they things that are going to cost money are the things that you need to kind of pump the brakes and give further consideration?

Sen. Scutari: That is a great segue, correct, absolutely act it.

We know that the budget this year is going to be something that we have to look at carefully, and fortunately for us, it has been really good preparation, you have a large surplus in New Jersey, so we will be able to use that for this year's budget, but we do not want to just use it all.

We would like to plan ahead.

We talk about her two-year budgeting cycle, which probably would help us with long-term goals, and would keep us from having the June kind of rush to getting this done by the end of the month, which we always get criticized about, but sometimes you need a deadline to get things done.

And sometimes some of your best work it's done right before a deadline when people are most open to discussion and getting the things done when I deadline is looming.

David: Was there anything in the things the governor mentioned that are dead on arrival?

Sen. Scutari: I would not say that.

I always am open to any of these things.

The governor and I, and speaker have a really great working relationship.

That includes the leaders of the Republican Party.

We love to discuss these things and see if we can find common ground.

I would not say that, but I also don't know how much of that stuff will get done by now.

David: We hear that you are not especially onboard with voting rights for 16-year-olds, and the idea of same-day voter registration.

Sen. Scutari: I need to hear a lot more about the reason behind that, quite frankly.

David: Behind Rich?

Sen. Scutari: Well, both, quite frankly.

I believe it is -- I forget which, it is already imposed, and it is been allowed.

A small manner of folks who were 16 years old voted in that Board of Education election, even though they are allowed to.

In addition, I think with same-day voter registration, we have got to be careful because as you already know, those in the press and in society to follow anything, our election integrity is constantly under fire, and anything that we may do to undermine the election integrity, which, if we do the same-day voter registration -- I'm not saying we will not do that -- if we do, somebody will say, well what about all the folks he will show up and register to vote and cannot prove citizenship and that are not supposed to Be voting?

Not saying that happens, but we need to be careful because our institutions have been under fire, and that runs the Gannett for elected officials.

You name it.

Government officials have not been helped, and its highest regard the last years, at least that is my estimation, and we would like to make sure we institute that.

It runs into the fabric of our country.

David: You did not end up with a lot of ballots that needed to be reconciled, right, this temporary ballot to fill out, yeah?

Sen. Scutari: Yes, exactly.

And we are just getting -- we have done a lot of valid measures the last couple of years, so we are just getting comfortable with early voting, and voting by mail and absentee voting.

There are so many ways to vote now, and really there are no impediments for people legally allowed to vote now other than there is a deadline.

And this is simply they would like to remove the deadline.

And I'm open to moving it, but moving it to election day is fraught with peril and we have to do that quickly.

Sen. Scutari: The next election for governor and all of the assembly, there is going to be no partyline.

What is your greatest fear and your best expectation about what the next primary election is going to look like?

Sen. Scutari: Well, I've already heard this because I've been in politics for decades at this point in time.

Folks always ask, who was on the line?

We have to respond that they will not be one, and they are shocked.

More of the regular voters, that they are just used for business, this is what the party endorsed candidates are, and this is where we can find them.

I now when we have to tell them that they probably will still allow them but you have to find them for the bottom portion of where their name is, they are thrown by that.

It will take a while to educate folks, that is for sure.

David: I would imagine the parties are going to proactively do an education campaign to explain to folks how everything is going to be different.

It is going to really change the culture of elections I think, no?

Sen. Scutari: I think you are absolutely right.

I have said this before, unfortunately, this will put more money into politics than ever before.

One of the things party leaders were able to utilize, they had this online endorsed candidates, and folks a lot of times will look for that.

And now that is not the case, and the folks with the most money, that is an opportunity to communicate with voters.

You don't have money to communicate with voters with a dwindling Free Press, social media becomes the only avenue by which you can communicate with voters.

And smaller voting offices, door-to-door, hand-to-hand, still the best way to win, but these larger offices we represent hundreds of thousands of people, you have to move in a different way.

David: They say the state of the state speech is where you get the poetry, but the budget speech is where you get the prose.

We talked about it a little bit, the governor talked about he will have his budget address next month, but he is talking about belt-tightening in all departments.

How concerned are you about this upcoming budget?

Sen. Scutari: Yeah, I'm concerned, but I'm optimistic we will be ready.

We have done a great job making sure that surplus survived, no matter how much additional spending is done.

And by the legislative priorities and changing opportune what the governor proposes and what we would like to see money spent on, but we will get it done, and we will get in the last minute, like we always do, probably.

But it will be appropriate, reflect our shared values, and we are hoping to work with the Republican Party to make sure that they are part of the process, as well.

David: You mentioned the surplus, and that is a big part of Stay N.J.

This is Speaker Coughlin's big tax brick initiative.

-- tax break initiative.

It seems uncertain, can we say?

Sen. Scutari: The anchor program has taken many years to take hold in New Jersey and people are getting help receiving that check, and I was also a sponsor of the Stay N.J. program, and I know we will discussions about that.

And we have a lot of property tax programs.

A tremendous amount goes to those relief programs.

I would like to ensure they all remain in one fashion or another, but we have to make sure -- the governor mentioned before, some of the things he has done in the state is the constant credit of rates for the state of New Jersey, which that is not a glamorous thing, but when you think about your credit card bill Going Down, paying less interest, that means a neutral agency means the state of New Jersey budgeting techniques are solid because they continue to upgrade that.

I think that is the governor's primary concern and one of mine, so I like to make sure that no matter what we work out in the programs that we can continue to remain strong in terms of our worthiness.

-- terms of our creditworthiness.

David: I appreciate you taking a few minutes, to live.

Estate business community always watches the speeches closely.

During the current administration, they generally have not been too happy.

Let's see if 2025 is any different.

Joining us as the president and CEO of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, Tom, welcome back.

Good to see you.

Tom: always a pleasure to be with you.

David: Takeaways, what did you members here that they liked about this?

Tom: it was basically in our estimation, a business as usual speech, basically saying the last seven years have been good, and we are going to have the eighth year basically with the same format, so I'm not sure a lot of our members were pleased with that.

Probably because there was no mention at all about the economy and the pending revenue cliff we have, the budget problems we will be facing.

So I think overall, there was a disappointment on the fact that facing fiscal reality did not appear in that speech.

David: There was very little reference to anything pertaining to business, per se.

Is there something in there that most particularly offensive to the business community?

I use the word offensively advisedly.

Tom: I don't think it is offensive because the major emphasis of the speech was to continue making the state the fairest in the country, and I think we have acknowledged in our press release that we do think this governor has made New Jersey the fairest statement the country, and a lot of what he talked about today were in more initiatives to do that, so you cannot really be offended by that because it is going to help a lot of people with their daily lives, but the fact that there is a victim balance between the fair and the stronger is a thing that I think -- there is a balance between the fear and the stronger is the thing I think people talked about.

David: The governor talked about the tax worthy program.

We hear businesses talking about where is my tax relief?

Tom: Absolutely.

All the supposed attacks relief on the real estate side, the business community got none of that.

It has not gotten any real estate tax relief.

And the business community pays 50% or more of all of those estate taxes in the state.

Yeah, that is something we have talked about since day one of any kind of tax relief bills that have passed, and it is bothersome to the business community, and there is no relief in sight that I have heard of.

David: What kind of relief would you want to see in that area?

Something like an anchor program for business owners?

Tom: I think it really involves tax relief overall.

The business community, we are most heavily business tax state in the country.

Whether it comes in the form of real estate tax relief or corporate tax really for whatever it is, any kind of relief on taxes helps the bottom line for companies, which allows them to hire more people, invest more in the company, it is something that really has to be addressed, so whether it comes on the real estate side or some other side, tax relief in general is the biggest issue.

David: We talk about the corporate business tax, you saw a decrease, and then it went away.

And now the business community is being taxed a certain number of is this community is being taxed to fund NJ transit.

You're not opposed to finding NJ transit, but you will are opposed to the increase in the corporate business tax?

Tom: New Jersey transit has to be healthy for the state to be healthy.

No question.

It is a vital part of our infrastructure and our ability to take people back and forth to work.

It is a part of our economy.

Anything that helps make that better we are all for, but I think it is a little disingenuous to have a certain number of large companies in New Jersey pay the freight for that.

There has to be a better way to do it.

I have read they are looking at cost efficiencies and having a study done to see if costs can be taken out of there that could generate more money for the improvement of NJ transit, so, yeah, the corporate transit fee was not very popular.

Because it is just one more gouging of the business community for the benefit of others, and one thing I'm very tired of and I think most of my business colleagues are, this whole comment about paying your fair share.

Businesses pay an enormous amount of tax overall in the state of New Jersey, and the percentage to the overall tax revenue of New Jersey is one of the highest in the country.

May the highest, so we pay our fair share.

Businesses pay their fair share.

To use that comment over and over for every kind of initiative the people have tried to gouge more money out of business community is very disingenuous, and it is getting very old.

David: It also says you pay more because you get more in New Jersey, is he not right?

Tom: New Jersey is an expensive state and we have a lot to offer.

I don't disagree with the fact that we have a lot of benefits, a lot of assets, a lot of graphics that most states don't, and that costs money, but it does not mean that to get us there the business community has to be the one funding every new initiative.

It seems like that has been the case over the last several years.

David: The governor says we are a growth state.

He says the climate here is wonderful.

He points to Netflix and this booming TV and film industry.

Those are pretty good.

Those will create jobs, no?

Tom: Yes.

They will be wonderful once they all come into play center working.

A lot of new jobs will be created, local economies advanced, but that is only part of the emphasis of what has to happen in New Jersey.

We have 800,000 businesses in New Jersey.

That is the foundation of our economy.

And what I have been saying and what we have been saying ever since the Murphy administration took office is you have to pay attention to those 800,000 businesses.

The more you nurture them and pay attention to them and make them feel they are really welcomed in the state, the better off we are as estate, and they would be the best cheerleading source we had for attracting new companies to come to New Jersey.

But over that same time, those companies have been overregulated, overtaxed, and basically ignored.

And that is a very, very -- that is not going to help all these new industries coming in.

There has to be a syncretism between the companies that are here and the ones coming in.

And there is a big divide right now because there is a lot of tension to new industries coming in, and little attention paid to the ones here, but to the governor's credit, three months ago, through executive order, he created the economic Council.

That is something that we have been preaching for since the governor took office seven years ago.

Which is for the first time in New Jersey meant to bring together members of the business community administration and talk about issues that are important to helping those companies that are here feel better about the state and want to stay and grow here.

The math is pretty simple to me.

We are always talking about how states need to grow and how jobs need to be created and how that will help our economy.

If only one in 10 of those 800,000 businesses added one new job a year, that is 80,000 new jobs created in New Jersey.

All the new industries they are talking about bringing in here I don't think even come close to creating 80,000 new jobs in the state.

Mackin happened if the companies in New Jersey -- and that can happen if the companies in New Jersey feel there welcomed.

We are ranked 49th out of 50th in the category of business friendliness.

I think that speaks for itself.

David: Budget season upcoming, the governor has already talked about every department having to cut.

Are you and should we be worried about this upcoming budget season?

Really quick.

Tom: There is no question.

Everybody has been talking since last budget season about the structural deficit we have.

And what I have read, the surplus that we had in the rainy day fund we have has already been spent or allocated, so the best way to help last year's budget, and that won't be available this year, so where is the structural gap going to be filled?

I'm afraid of what the alternatives are.

David: Before I let you go, the upcoming walk to Washington, back after the pandemic, same train, different site in D.C., give me 30 seconds on when it is going to be and how is it going?

Tom: February 6 and seven, it is going extreme really well.

The hotel we have a sold out.

In the back of hotel we have a sold out.

-- and that backup hotel we have a sold out.

We will have a record number of attendees and almost all the gubernatorial candidates on the train and at the reception, and our panel the next day is going to be a blockbuster networking event that people have been craving the return of for five years since COVID shut it down.

David: So fewer speeches and more chocolates and soufflés and desserts?

Tom: Absolutely.

David: Tom Bracken, CEO of the NJ Chamber of Commerce, thank you.

Tom: UI for asking me.

-- thank you for asking me.

David: That is "Chat Box" for this week.

Thank you to Nicholas Scutari for joining us, also.

Feel free to share the content and subscribe to the NJ Spotlight YouTube channel is see what else are journalists are working on.

I'm David Cruz.

For everyone here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, thank you for watching.

We will see you next week.

Announcer: Major funding for "Chat Box with David Cruz" is provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

Promotional support is provided by Insider NJ, a political intelligence network dedicated to New Jersey's political news.

Insider NJ is committed to giving serious political players an interactive forum for ideas, discussion, and insight.

Online at insiderNJ.com.

Numeral♪ -- Online at insiderNJ.com.

**reporters roundable**