So how does the governor get the legislature on board with this new transit proposal and the budget?

I'm joined in the studio by senior writer Colleen O'Dea and Budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer.

Good to have you both back on set here.

John, let me come to you first on this corporate transit fee.

What are the nuts and bolts?

And it sounds a lot like this former corporate business tax surcharge.

It's not a surcharge, but it certainly looks a lot like one in many ways.

So that surcharge that we used to levy in New Jersey on top earning businesses for the last several years went out on December 31.

This new one would actually start retroactively on January one.

But instead of hitting companies with net profits over 1 million, it will hit companies with net profits over 10 million.

That's a key difference because the pool shrinks from a couple of thousand companies to just a few hundred companies.

But the way that this tax rate, two and a half percent rate, which is the same rate of the former surcharge, the way it will be applied, it will generate around the same amount of money that was projected from the former surcharge, which is about $1,000,000,000 of which the governor wants to dedicate as a funding source for NJ Transit, which will be subject to the Legislature's approval and kind of the budget process as it plays.

Out, which is what we've heard folks advocates beg for years to have a dedicated source of funding for that.

Colleen, though, is this a budget that the legislature can get on board with?

It seems like a lot of the programs are carrying over.

Is the governor going to be able to get everyone together on this?

I mean, I think given the you know, the the problems that we're seeing in the economy and, you know, the tightness of this budget, as we understand it, I'm not sure that there's a lot more that this governor can do.

Certainly, if we're talking about school aid and fully funding that school aid formula, there's going to be some legislators and some districts were thrilled and a lot more who are not going to be thrilled because they're going to lose money.

So those legislators, I presume, are not going to be voting for anything like this.

But but I would think that most of the Democrats are going to be behind this.

John, what else stood out to you?

Because it looks like the state is going to have to tap some of the record surpluses that were built into previous budgets in order to achieve this.

Did that stand out to you?

Absolutely.

I mean, I think it's going to be beauty is in the eye of the beholder for this budget in a lot of ways.

And that's one of the ways.

Right, Because you're seeing budget reserves basically drawn down in order to sustain a spending increase.

But where is that new money going?

Most of it or a big portion is going to fund education in addition to K through 12 public schools.

There's a pre-K component.

There's also more money being set aside for property tax relief for seniors.

So that's, we're told, still coming.

But they're squirreling away money to be able to try to afford that.

So on one hand, you are seeing things like the surplus reduced and you're seeing spending go up at a rate that's higher than any growth in revenues right now, which is a concern.

On the other hand, for funding of the anchor program so it can be carried over into New Year, funding for education, funding for mass transit.

So a lot of things that a lot of groups in New Jersey would be happy to see funded at the levels that we see them in the governor's budget.

Colleen, Affordability, of course, has been Governor Murphy's tagline in every speech we've seen him give.

He's now got two more years left in office.

Is he getting closer to that with what we saw laid out today?

Well, I mean, he's not he's not cutting any of the programs, which, again, as Jeanne points out, when you don't have when you're spending more really than your revenues are increasing, that's an issue.

So at least he's not cutting that back.

I mean, we have promises that there's going to be this Sanjay program coming in probably early 26, but we're still far away from that.

So, I mean, there's there's a little bit more coming in, but there's certainly nothing huge that I think we've seen in this budget.

All right.

Colleen O'Dea, John Reitmeyer, thanks for being with me.