While the deadline is fast approaching for lawmakers to finalize the state budget and negotiations between the governor's office and legislative leadership are underway.

But one of the biggest sticking points left to finalize is how to fund NJ Transit.

Governor Murphy has proposed a two and a half percent corporate transit fee on businesses earning more than $10 million in profits.

Those funds would be dedicated to NJ Transit.

But now, with just about two weeks to go, he's adding a new proposal to fund the failing transit system.

I'm joined now by our budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer who can help to explain this new plan.

John, great to talk to you.

So the governor's proposed a new plan that would be a $100 million purchase of land owned by NJ Transit.

Can you help explain this?

Sure, that's right.

And it's great to be here this morning.

The the idea is that you would take money that right now is is going would go into the general fund.

So the interesting wrinkle of this new budget proposal, the tax that the governor wants to enact on these companies that make more than 10 million in annual profits every year.

That was originally going all into the general fund, and it would be in the next year that the money would go to NJ Transit for its financial problems.

This gets 100 million right away to NJ Transit.

And it's not just sort of a bailout, it's 100 million that would be used to buy properties that right now NJ Transit owns and is not maybe using them to reach their full potential.

And so the idea would be that you could create these developments.

That's where the State Economic Development Authority comes into this.

The state economic development authority would be put in charge of turning these these properties, maybe a parking lot or something else near a train station into what's known as a transit oriented development.

And that could be residential.

It could be mixed use, which would mean it would have a retail component and it would really be trying to bring these properties, bring out their potential where right now they might not be getting as much out of them as possible, especially in a really hot real estate market.

I think that's an important element of this is we were told by state officials that they're trying to take advantage of a really good real estate market right now.

So we've heard proposals from folks out on the ground, advocates saying NJ Transit should be leasing its own property.

They should be turning those into profitable sites.

I'm thinking of Hoboken and the space that they hold right there next to the train station.

What's the logic in this proposal of the EDA doing that versus NJ Transit?

Yeah, I think it's a really good question.

When you think about what NJ Transit's core mission is, I mean, and it's it's something that they're having to kind of get all hands on deck right now given their financial challenges.

It's really a transit company and a train and bus and light rail company and the EDA does do real estate development.

And so you're sort of taking something that might be a side project for NJ Transit and you're you're giving the responsibility here to really an agency whose core mission is economic development.

And I think that's where the idea is not necessarily, say, a knock on NJ Transit, real estate development capabilities, but you're putting it sort of in the hands of people who do this really on a day to day basis.

Well, in an agency that's already struggling, we know just to keep its operation running, we can't avoid the topic of timing here because we have two weeks to go until the budget deadline and this new proposal.

How does this get done?

Does it get done?

And if so, multipart question does this just add to the criticism that so much of New Jersey's budget is done in these backroom closed door deals?

Yeah, maybe it's all of the above, right?

Certainly, we're you know, other states already have their budgets passed and enacted by governors.

And we don't even have a bill yet in New Jersey.

This is a big tax that Murphy's asking for.

And we don't have that legislation yet.

And I'm sure the companies that would be hit with this tax would really like to see the the moving parts of it, because there are a lot of contingencies.

It could be retroactive to January one for example.

And so a lot has to get done.

There's only less now that less than two weeks in in other, you know, you would think best practices would be to have this all out on the table right now for everyone to look at.

But that's not the way it gets done in New Jersey.

You would think, John, Reitmeyer thank you so much, as always for the insight.

You're welcome.

Support for the business report is provided by NJ MEP, a partner to New Jersey's manufacturing industry, focused on productivity, performance and strategic development.

More on NJ impact on.