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♪ >> Welcome to ChatBox.

I am David Cruz.

Things are getting tough out there, fair increases, toll increases, gas taxes, mass transit underfunded, tax revenue concerns as budget season approaches.

Meanwhile the planet is falling apart.

Flooding somewhere new every week.

We are at war with our environment on summary levels.

We will talk about that in our second half.

We begin with the growing field of gubernatorial candidates.

The first official Republican candidate joins us now.

Senator, welcome back, good to see you.

>> Good to be with you.

>> We will be talking about this later -- Republicans don't usually talk much about the environment, but are there parts of your district that did not use see flooding that are flooding now?

>> Yesterday I was in Springfield with some constituents who had flooding, I was in Middlesex where three houses are falling into a river.

Flooding is a major concern.

>> It probably won't come up much in your primary but it will in the general.

Do you have an environmental platform yet?

>> I don't have a platform but I believe in global warming.

I follow science.

There is no doubt there is a problem.

The question is how to solve it, and it will take a world.

The United States alone will not be able to do that.

But I am not a denier of global warming.

>> But you also don't support Phil Murphy's energy master plan, right?

>> I think Phil Murphy got ahead of himself.

You are saying this can be done in X number of years and thus not following science either.

You have to be logical on both sides.

>> I know your main thing is civility and balance and Trump is terrible but let's see what else you've got.

Let's talk about the NJ transit fare hikes.

The first year, 15%, 3% annually after that.

Does that sound right?

>> What's wrong is not having an open debate with the legislature around the entire budget.

Don't let small groups make a decision of that magnitude.

You have to have an open debate, ring the public in.

I just saw these increases in the last couple of days so I'm happy to get in the weeds and start looking on where to save money but I won't do it by just sending out a platitude.

Obviously people are concerned with cost-of-living.

Let's have an open public hearing in the legislature and a look at every detail in the budget.

>> That sounds like a lot for people, Senator.

We are looking for the simple answers -- do they need a dedicated funding source and is the corporate business tax surcharge the answer?

>> I don't think the surcharge is the answer because clearly we are chasing business out of the state.

But we do need a dedicated source and to ignore that is a mistake.

We have to find out how to fund transit long-term.

Everyone believes in infrastructure, everyone believes in improving transit.

But then people go, I don't want to pay for it.

We have to figure out a way to pay for it.

I've declared a couple of days ago, but I will be putting out all the information people need on where I stand.

>> So you don't want to give us a preview is what you are saying?

>> I can give you a preview but there are no short answers for these things.

You're going to become governor, you have to do it in a way where you look and study the issue and try to solve it.

Not just throw out a political statement that is red meat for certain constituents, I won't do that ever.

>> The only thing you will say about it right now is the corporate business tax surcharge is not on the table as a funding sort for NJ transit in your administration?

>> Correct.

We are already the worst in the nation in treating businesses properly and trying to encourage business to come here.

That is off the table.

We do have to figure out a way to solve the issue of long-term transit needs and costs, no question.

>> What about the toll hikes?

It was pretty transparent, the governor vetoed them just before election time and then less than a month after getting sworn in, the legislature appears -- or the governor appears ready to approve these toll hikes.

A bait and switch?

And are the toll hikes necessary?

>> I think he had a before the election position and after the election position.

My position is bring the Republicans to the table.

Let's provide the alternatives.

If you're going to push it through a one-party system, you won't see Republicans support it.

If you want two parties to look at solutions, do it, but don't dictate the answers and expect Republicans to vote on it.

>> I didn't hear you say whether you thought they were necessary to keep the roads up.

>> I am convinced I can find some savings if IMF the table.

I can't tell you it is all wrong.

But you bring Republicans to the table and I promise you with that debate, we can save some money, I guarantee that.

>> Did I hear you Roebling the other day about the transportation trust fund?

Didn't you vote for that originally?

>> Of course, and here is why -- there was no money in it.

People say you voted for the gas tax.

You bet I did, there was no money there.

It's great to argue, you shouldn't vote for the gas tax.

We also got the estate tax eliminated because we had a two-party party system at that time, Kristi was the governor and we got something -- Chris Christie was the governor and we got something out of it.

You know what we get out of it now?

Nothing.

>> I don't know how much you pay attention to social media but every time we post a story about a candidate, any candidate, every comment is a version of "that guy sucks."

Here's what they say about you, I've cleaned it up a little bit.

I will give you one word and you give me a response.

The first one is RINO.

>> I hear it all the time.

This RINO was elected the Republican leader for 10 years from every Republican assembly person from every part of the state.

So I guess I am Republican enough when we talked to every Republican official for a decade.

One other thing, when they do this stuff on social media, it gives a bad name to the Republican Party because those individuals look like they are mean-spirited, which they probably are.

>> Everybody's default position on social media nowadays seems to be mean-spirited.

Here is another thing -- "he can't win the primary."

>> That's interesting, if I can't win the primary, how do the Republicans win in the general election?

It won't be based on denying the election of Joe Biden, it won't be based on the January 6 activities being denied.

If we have a candidate who dances from that, we will lose the general.

They've said I could not win elections before with Trumpers my right and Democrats on my left and I won by six or seven points, and I won a district that Biden won by 17 points.

So I think Republicans might think we should win as opposed to being against someone who compromises sometimes.

>> You are the first guy in, a Tom Keene Senior, George Bush kind of Republican.

Some people call you a liberal but we know better than that.

I would think the main difference between you and Jack Ciattarelli is Trump.

Do you know where he stands on Trump?

>> I will let each candidate talk for themselves.

I can tell you that in New Jersey, if you don't stand up to what I believe is fabrication or what you see with your own eyes, in Jersey, general election voters will not vote for you.

So you will continue to see estate that moves to the left and certain Republicans feel as if whatever they say is more important than having a Republican in the governor's seat.

I say, if you want to win, vote for me.

>> The other question on that, will you split the so-called moderate vote and leave the nomination for a wingnut in your party who cannot win in the general?

>> We Are over a year away from any of the conventions and I think people have plenty of time to determine who is an electable candidate and can win.

I don't know who will be standing a year and a half from now and that's when we will address those questions.

For now, I'm gonna move forward and say let's finally get a Republican back into the office of governor.

>> Do you think this year particularly and year is critical for the future of your party, that we will determine is the right wing of the party going to dominate or the traditional Jersey Republicans will be able to put their candidate up?

Is this a year when we will answer that question?

>> I'm not a political pundit but I can tell you this -- if we are going to win in New Jersey, we have to basically adopt the simple terms or should I say policies of Republicans.

Small government, lower taxes, law and order.

We should not be the party of one person, Donald Trump.

We should be the party of traditional values.

And if New Jersey goes that way and sticks with traditional values, we will have a strong Republican Party, we will win, there will be balance in Trenton.

If they want to adopt a narrow view of the Republican Party, the voters in the general election will not accept it, we will have one party rule and you will watch the Democrats take us farther and farther to the left.

Those are the facts.

I can prove those facts because we keep losing.

>> One word answer -- never Trump, right?

>> I never endorsed him and I don't intend to endorse him in the future.

I don't think he represents the basic values of our Republican Party and I don't think he represents New Jersey Republicans if New Jersey Republicans want to win.

>> Alright, let's see who else jumps in as we move into 2024.

Good to see you, thank you for coming on.

I was a little doom and gloom at the top of the show but I am optimistic our panel will contextualize all of this and make us feel better.

But you know what, to heck with that -- we keep punching the planet in the face, so let's talk about it with our panel, including the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club, a policy analyst for New Jersey policy perspective.

Her beat is climate justice and transportation.

And Larry covers transportation and commuting for NJ.com.

I want to talk about the in -- the intersection of infrastructure needs and the environment.

They are inextricably tied, no?

>> Absolutely, to meet both our climate goals and the goal to make New Jersey more affordable for everyone, we need to invest in New Jersey transit.

We keep hearing Governor Murphy say you're transit is fixed.

If this is fixed, I would hate to see what broken looks like.

The reality is the recent proposal to raise fares is a Band-Aid solution to a structural problem, which is that in J transit has never had a dedicated source of funding.

The agency is forced to rob Peter to pay Paul, even robbing the clean energy fund, which is meant to advance clean energy and for structure in our state, to pay for transportation.

A double-digit fare hike is not the answer.

>> Where is the pressure point most visible between our continued physical growth and info structure needs and our environment?

Where do we see the pressure points most?

>> That is incredibly important for New Jersey because as we all know, we are an overdeveloped state because we are small but densely populated.

How we build and utilize our public transportation as well as cars is incredibly connected to how we interact with nature in parts of the state.

We have to be building creatively but also actively to climate change and the flooding we are experiencing.

NJ transit is one of the clearest examples that we need to be adaptive because of our reality in New Jersey.

>> We seem to be forever tied to the highway system, more and more of them are being built and widened where they didn't exist before.

It creates more impervious surfaces and more flooding.

You cover New Jersey transit, the port authority and DOT.

Do they even talk about this stuff?

>> They are taking a look at climate change on NJ transit, they have a sustainability committee, and they're working on a plan, a very overreaching plan to see what they can do about it.

You have resiliency projects still underway 10 years after Sandy, which addresses the issues caused by climate change and flood surges.

Trying to harden some of those areas.

I talked to some engineers and they said that is the next phase for infrastructure engineers and transportation engineers to tackle.

The gold standard used to be designing for what they called the 100 year storm.

Now they say we have to go beyond the 100 year storm to tackle some of those things like Ida where highways inland were flooding.

This is something both agencies have to deal with.

>> The politics of all this, we saw a really good example of this -- everyone says they are an environmentalist but then you have a letter from the assembly speaker and Senate President and they say the DEP is flooding the interior of Liberty State Park, when in reality they are creating wetlands to stop flooding, no?

>> That is correct.

What the New Jersey DEP and Army Corps of engineers is doing in liberty State Park is a perfect example of a resiliency project at the entire state should be looking toward building, especially on coastal communities.

Providing ways for water to actually go back to the bay area or ocean or rivers will provide us the tools of not flooding.

Creative ways of building as well as bringing in freshwater wetlands or restoration of marshes, those are creative natural solutions that will provide as with the tools to deal with climate change.

>> You can't just put up a wall, the water has to go somewhere.

>> Right, especially if everything you're going to build will be an impervious surface -- asphalt, concrete -- we will keep flooding.

The water doesn't have a route, a natural flow to go back where it should be.

>> You really see it in this discussion about Liberty State Park.

What gets me is when commercial interests tell communities of color particularly, a big sports arena is better than stopping the flooding in their neighborhood.

It is really cynical.

>> Absolutely.

We see commercial interests really overtake a lot of our environmental interests.

Like you alluded to, we are a car dependent state, and that has resulted in projects like the Turnpike expansion that will inevitably increase impervious area and air pollution.

What we see our lawmakers who are reinforcing that we are a car dependent state.

To my knowledge, there are no lawmakers that regularly take public transit.

To them, all of these numbers like on-time performance are just numbers on a page, but they translate to real-world consequences for riders, being able to pay their bills on time, make it to work on time.

Public transit is so important to everyday riders.

>> Let's talk dollars and cents.

Welfare increases and toll put more motorists f --are -- fare increases and toll increases, what it put more motorists in their cars?

>> The example is driving to New York, it's not the cost of driving that is expensive it's the parking on the others.

You have to look at not just the sum total of paying for gas, what you are spending on tolls and what you pay when you get to your destination.

The other part of the metric is time, is it faster to drive or take the train?

The wildcard is what happens to traffic.

One of the arguments being used for Turnpike widening is demand, the opponents are saying there are principles that go back to Robert Moses when he did his first bridge.

In a couple of years they had to add another deck because of more traffic.

It is a very "Field of Dreams," if you build it.

>> Cleaning the interior up and building out the phases out there, including recreation spaces, that will take much more than the $50 million the legislature has put up.

When things get tight financially in the state as they appear to be getting, these guys cut with -- don't they?

>> $50 million will not cut it, these resiliency projects are very costly.

The Sierra Club is always encouraging the state to leverage federal funds as much as possible, especially with the inflation reduction act to get this going.

He truly the time to invest in resiliency projects.

>> The corporate business tax surcharge, it has sunset.

If that comes back, you will need a Democrat in Trenton as governor, aren't you?

Republicans are going to get that for you.

>> Our current lawmakers, as I said, to my knowledge there are no current lawmakers in New Jersey that regularly take NJ transit.

In my opinion, if these lawmakers who are proposing double-digit fare hikes, who have historically tried to cut funding to NJ transit, if they regularly had to take transit we would have had dedicated funding yesterday.

The reality is the proposal to raise fares in double-digit points is one of the most inequitable ways to fund our transit agency.

It is suffering under the budget cuts that Governor Chris Christie during his administration cut from the agency.

We should reinstate the corporate is this tax surcharge because it is the most equitable way to fund the agency.

It's not a new policy because the Senate President and Senate majority leader already proposed it.

It's also an incredibly popular policy.

A recent poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University found the majority of citizens support the idea.

>> What you think about that, Larry?

Is there support for something like that to fund New Jersey transit?

If not, what will you do to fund New Jersey transit?

>> The interesting thing is I got a statement from the New Jersey business and industry Association reiterating opposing the business tax surcharge coming back.

They said even without it we have the fourth highest is this tax in the state.

I interviewed an UCLA professor who is an expert at transit funding and he said your options are very slim.

If you increase the sales tax, that is considered a regressive tax.

That will hit the very people that ride public transit and are stuck with public transit, the working poor, people who do not have cars, senior citizens and the disabled.

They are on fixed incomes and depend on New Jersey transit and they are a lot of the riders on bus.

Rail gets a lot of attention but these are the people that rode the bus and it will be more expensive.

>> Last question, one word answer -- doomed or not d oomed?

>> Not doomed.

>> This is two words, but not doomed.

>> It is two words.

[LAUGHTER] >> Commuters feel fairly doomed about a fare increase, they say we have a laundry list of what to expect.

>> I'm not sure you got the assignment, it was one word or two words, doomed or not doomed?

>> It is a little bit of both.

>> We will leave it on that mixed review.

That is ChatBox this week.

Good to see you all.

Thank you also to the senator for joining us good you can -- joining us.

You can find more content by scanning the QR code on your screen.

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.

♪