in our Spotlight on Business Report we're halfway through the budget season which means New Jersey's legislature has by now heard from most of the various State Department's policy experts and Advocates pleading for a bigger piece of the budget pie that massive 53.1 billion dollar proposed budget this year budget and finance writer John reitmeyer is here to give us the latest on how those budget hearings have gone and how the budget process could be impacted if the federal government can't raise the debt ceiling in time John always great to have you here to just help us understand what's happening we are about halfway through the budget season the legislature has held several budget hearings so far what are we seeing emerge as some of the greatest asks requests for funding yeah I think you know it's it's a perennial issue but school funding definitely this year the school funding formula is such a huge share of the overall state budget and we're in this process of re re-aligning sort of how the formula works and there are schools that are losing money even as the state spends more overall on K-12 public schools and so one of the big asks and we've already seen some legislation move on this issue is to get more money to some of these schools that are set to lose Aid under the formula again even as overall spending on education increases in the new fiscal year we're seeing the corporate business tax another one right that continues to be a simmering issue there's a surcharge that's levied only on the top earning businesses so those with profits over one million dollars has been in place for the last several years and is due to expire and it remains a point of tension there are groups out there that want to see this this funding that's raised through this surcharge remain in place the state has a lot of needs NJ Transit a lot of different areas where it could use some more revenue and uh the business Community has been very outspoken about it's time for this surcharge to go away and send the message that New Jersey's no longer punishing businesses with high taxes the governor has about 500 million in pandemic Aid still to spend how is he proposing spending that yeah there's actually some funding uh there's some proposals that are part of the governor's budget plan for the 2024 fiscal year so that starts on July 1. some funding for for boardwalks uh for some local governments that are having a hard time coming up with enough money to to fund increases in their employee health care costs a whole bunch of items and then there are actually dozens of items going before a special legislative committee tomorrow morning some additional federally that New Jersey has received for pandemic spending pandemic Aid and so that's teed up as well a lot of federal money moving kind of concurrently to to the state budget process but that's a gray area right now for New Jersey right what could happen if the federal government defaults on its debts if they do not raise the spending cap by June it's such a huge issue a lot of the focus has been on how a default would impact the federal government and federal programs but also States like New Jersey that are putting together their annual budgets you know there are projections that do not account for a default and the impact on the economy that that would have and so it would it would cause the administration to really go back to the drawing board when it comes to revenue projections it would be catastrophic yeah it could be for New Jersey certainly John reitmeyer thanks as always for helping us figure this all out sure you're welcome [Music]