[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're joined once again by our good friend, Michele Siekerka, President and Chief Executive Officer, New Jersey Business and Industry Association.

Good to see you, Michele.

- Great to see you, Steve.

- And by the way, check out our interview with Michele and a whole series of other women business leaders that we're doing in partnership with the NJBIA, Business and Industry Association.

But today, on "State of Affairs," we talk policy.

So let's just say this, we're on the back end of 2024.

We're interviewing candidates for governor, 2025.

Top two business-related issues we should be talking to them about impacting the business community, Michele?

- Well, tax reform and regulatory reform.

You know, it's all about affordability and cost of doing business and being regionally competitive here in the state of New Jersey.

And we all know currently we are not.

- So let's be more specific, regulatory reform means different things to different people.

Name a regulation that is, in your view, in the view of the Business and Industry Association, hurting business that needs to be changed, and why?

- Well, it could be permitting, for example.

It takes our companies a significantly long time to get a new project online.

I heard recently a company who, yet again, has chosen to take a new project down south because the time to get that project up and built will be a fraction of the time it takes here in the state of New Jersey.

We need to look at the time sequence of getting shovels in the ground to finishing projects.

And a lot of that it has to do with permitting, licensing, inspection, et cetera.

- Michele, seriously, you and I have been having this conversation for years about government regulation.

Every time you're with us, there's another business leaving the state.

That can't be what the current governor and the current administration want, the Murphy administration, or the next one.

If that's a fact that we're losing business jobs- - Yes.

- tax revenue in the state, in part because of regulatory problems, why wouldn't it be a higher priority to make some of those changes?

It's not a rhetorical question, I really am curious about that.

- It's a great question.

Let me just say that I wanna do a shout out to the legislature who, in a bipartisan manner, did move a bill last year, the Government Efficiency and Regulatory Reform Act, or Review Commission.

What that would do is, it would set up a review board that businesses could come to with concerns about regulations, and then they could brainstorm around why is this getting stuck.

Bipartisan; passed the legislature.

Went to the governor's desk, and he outright vetoed it.

And we couldn't understand why.

- On what grounds?

- That's a great question.

We're still trying to figure that out.

And we're having that discussion yet again right now with the legislature so that they can engage the governor to understand why he vetoed that, so we can get it back on, because the legislature would like to bring that up again this fall.

- When we have the governor for his quote, unquote, "exit interview," because his term ends in 2025, We'll have that, well, it shouldn't be an exit interview, we'll probably have a couple of interviews, but that is one of the many questions we'll ask him.

So you and I have talked about this before, put it in context, the corporate transit fee-slash-tax, not only what is it, but what impact do you believe it's having on the business community?

- Well, significant impact.

So what it is, is it's the continuation of the corporate business tax surcharge that was supposed to end December 31st, 2023.

- Who's it on?

- By the governor, that it would sunset.

It's a surcharge on the corporate business tax.

- Translate that?

- 2.5% on top of already 9%, making New Jersey the largest corporate business tax yet again in the nation, by far, outlier, not just largest, but outlier.

- The governor has made the argument, some Democratic legislators have made the argument, Michele, that this corporate transit fee is money needed from businesses earning profits of more than $10 million to go to support a struggling, ailing New Jersey transit system, which commuters are struggling to have to deal with every day.

- So then, I would say, why is it sitting in surplus for a year?

You said you needed this $1 billion.

That's what it equates to.

But rather than turn it right over to New Jersey Transit to do something with, it's sitting in surplus for this year, right?

That causes us to be suspicious about whether it's going to make its way to New Jersey Transit next year.

You know, New Jersey Transit's having all these challenges.

We want a healthy New Jersey Transit, right?

We want people to get to where they need to be without having to get in their cars.

The problem with this is there's no nexus between putting that burden and that tax on New Jersey business and fixing what you're trying to fix by way of New Jersey Transit.

'Cause many of the companies that are subject to this aren't even near a rail line.

So it's not like their employees are getting the benefit.

And others have already told me that they supplement their employees' commuter costs.

- Let me disclose, before I ask this next question, that "New Jersey Business," which is the magazine of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association, is a media partner of ours.

Along those lines, let me follow up on this.

Unemployment rising in the state of New Jersey, A?

B, why?

- Well, you know, we're sitting here right now, yet again coming through what is an economically challenging time.

And we seem to be having, you know, a soft landing.

I think we've been in a soft landing for a few years now, you know, post COVID.

- What does a "soft landing" mean?

- A soft landing meaning that inflation is reducing.

People are feeling a little bit better about their economic situation.

However, prices are still too high.

And there's a lot of things that impact that.

Certainly, you know, COVID and post COVID did supply chain challenges and otherwise.

But when you increase the cost of doing business, you leave a business in no way other than to find how to make up that cost somewhere else.

And that either means cutting jobs, cutting benefits, or increasing the cost of their product and service.

And these businesses are doing all of the above.

So what we see right now in this settling out is the fact that they gotta balance their own sheet because of inflation.

And part of that is cutting jobs, right?

Increasing the cost of services.

And hopefully not cutting benefits.

- You told our producers that there is, and you've written about this in the magazine, I've seen it, that there's a skilled-labor shortage in the state.

What are we talking about?

- Well, every day, we know how dynamic it is relative to keeping your skills up in the workforce, particularly because of technology.

- That's right.

- Every single company, you know, Steve, you and I, we don't think of ourselves as running technology companies.

Of course we are, here we are right now, right?

Everybody needs to know the basics of technology.

But that technology changes each and every day.

And when it does, we need to make sure we're increasing our skills.

But I'll shift to manufacturing for a minute, right?

We still have, you know, tens of thousands of open opportunities in manufacturing that we can't fill because we need to educate the future workforce on the opportunities in these different fields, number one.

Number two, we need to continue to create, which we're doing, career pathways to in-demand jobs.

- Excuse me, sorry for interrupting, is that the New Jersey Pathways program?

- Yeah, New Jersey Pathways is a partnership between NJBIA and the New Jersey Council of Community Colleges, with a state appropriation, thank you very much for that state appropriation, we're in our third year, to create these career ladders to in-demand jobs, like healthcare, like manufacturing, like logistics and distribution, like technology.

And the idea is earn and learn.

So you're stacking credentials, certificates.

It isn't just necessarily a K-16+, you know, academic trajectory.

Embedded in that, you have all these types of certification programs where you get a piece of paper that objectively says, "I can do this particular skill."

And with that, you can earn.

And then you can continue to stack those, and organically increase your career path and increase your salary along with it.

- And that is, in fact, the New Jersey Pathways program.

The website has been up of the Business and Industry Association in the state of New Jersey.

Go on there, check this out.

Michele Siekerka, thank you so much for joining us.

And make sure you check out our special on women business leaders that were doing in cooperation with BIA.

Thank you, Michele.

- Thanks, Steve.

- Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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