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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, under the dome as lawmakers in Trenton pass a record $58 billion budget bill, advocates from both sides of the aisle are criticizing what's in and what's been cut.

Plus, the budget calls for diverting millions in opioid settlement funds away from community groups to the hands of New Jersey's largest hospitals.

AG Matt Plotkin slams the plan.

These dollars are supposed to go to best practices to combat the opioid epidemic and nothing else.

Also, chronic understaffing.

A new report finds several nursing homes are lacking in patient care.

And Crisis Nursery, a non-profit in Monmouth County, is providing free child care for any family in need.

It takes strength to ask for help.

And these are their children, their most prized possession, and that they would give us the honor of taking care of their children, to me that just says that they would need us.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

>> Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Monday night.

I'm Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with tonight's top story.

It's a marathon voting session at the Statehouse.

Lawmakers are approving scores of bills as they race to meet a midnight deadline for passing a balanced budget.

A record $58.8 billion spending plan that largely keeps Governor Murphy's blueprint intact.

It's the last of his time in office.

But added another roughly $720 million to the tab in what's known as Christmas tree spending items in a process Republican lawmakers today decried as rushed, opaque, and a freight train of spending.

They blasted Democrats for raising taxes and unveiling the full plan at 8 o'clock on Friday night where lawmakers stayed late into the night in order to get an agreement in place for today's vote.

Majority leaders instead, though, pointed out that the state's largest ever budget includes a record amount of property tax relief and fully funds both the public worker pension system and the school funding formula.

The question now is will the spending pad state programs should federal cuts materialize or leave a deficit for the next governor to fix?

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the latest as part of our "Under the Dome" series.

After political speech making and special interest protesting, New Jersey Senate voted 26 to 13, mostly along party lines, to send Phil Murphy the final state budget of his career as Jersey's governor.

A record setting $58.8 billion spending plan that raises several taxes to make ends meet.

Democrats carried the day.

I think it's an outstanding budget.

It certainly plans for a future that's not known because Washington, D.C. is going to be acting on their own big beautiful bill.

Democrats had already reached a budget agreement with the executive office late last week.

This spending plan makes full payments into both public employee pensions and the state school funding formula and it invests millions in property tax relief programs including Stay and J.

It also leaves the next governor a more than $6 billion surplus to backfill looming congressional funding cuts.

It puts $6.7 billion into surplus which is an unprecedented amount of money.

It also funds all of the priorities that the Democrats and the governor spelled out.

It also makes sure that there is no tax increases on any working class families.

I think it needs to be a much more transparent process.

It's very unfair.

None of the Republicans had a seat at the table even those of us who serve on the budget committee.

Republicans savaged the budget for raising taxes to help pay for an extra $700 million in spending.

Many items added at the last minute.

There's over 700 million additional pork line items.

That's inappropriate.

We need to have much more transparency and accountability.

The budget drew fire from some Democrats.

Two critics noted it boosts aid for NJ Transit in part by once again raiding more than $100 million from the Clean Energy Fund.

Look, we made some difficult choices in this budget but it's clear moving forward that we have to look very carefully at the Clean Energy Fund and ensure that it's going to protect our environment, clean air and clean water for all of New Jerseyans.

The budget also contains controversial language that ensures Medicaid funding flows to nursing homes, even those with the worst records.

Officials would no longer be able to block new patient admissions until care improves.

The budget language that prevents the commissioner from allowing new admissions into a failing nursing home, that's everything.

It takes away her ability to protect senior citizens going into a really poor, poorly run, unsafe nursing home.

Removing the state's teeth to deal with deficient nursing homes is really problematic as it is the same kind of consequence for your environment that I think creates so many problems that we have in 2025.

But this is a bad concept and a bad bill.

Lawmakers pointed out they did not give the governor every tax hike he wanted.

They zeroed out so-called fun taxes on recreational games like bowling and laser tag and while the budget did raise tax rates for online gambling and sports betting to 19.75 percent, that's less than the 25 percent Murphy originally requested.

But Republican Brian Bergen opposed it.

Our kids are getting addicted to gambling right now.

They're gambling in schools.

Instead of the state of New Jersey doing what's right and restricting this and preventing the epidemic that's coming, everybody gets so elated with the fact that you can tax it.

Lawmakers also modified Murphy's so-called million dollar mansion tax increase so that the sellers, not the buyers, must now pay Jersey's realty transfer fee.

The fee will double to 2 percent as properties go up in value, then increase on a sliding scale up to 3.5 percent for homes and businesses worth 3.5 million or more.

Lawmakers also raised taxes on cigarettes and nicotine vapes.

The budget bill is expected to pass the assembly again along partisan lines.

This budget carries a lot of political baggage with the entire 80-member assembly up for re-election and a hotly contested governor's race in November.

At the Statehouse, I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Also tonight, tucked away in that massive budget bill is a proposal that sparked major uproar from community groups all the way to the attorney general's office.

It calls for diverting $45 million in opioid settlement funds into the coffers of four hospital systems in New Jersey, money that advocates say should be going directly to groups that treat people struggling with drug and alcohol abuse.

Harm reduction workers point out they didn't learn about the change until this weekend, and the language diverts the money with no strings attached or requirement that the hospitals need to account for how it's spent.

The proposal calls for sending $15 million each to RWJBarnabas Health and Cooper University Hospital, $10 million to Hackensack University Medical Center, and $5 million to Atlantic Health System.

Just weeks ago, the state's Opioid Recovery and Remediation Advisory Council laid out recommendations for where the money should go, with a focus on community-based groups.

Well, the New Jersey Hospital Association defended the decision, arguing that hospitals have been on the front lines of the opioid crisis.

Attorney General Matt Plotkin, though, compared it to mistakes the state made in the past diverting tobacco settlement funds.

I asked him about that earlier today, along with his take on the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Birthright Citizenship case, in which he helped lead the challenge.

Attorney General, thanks for your time.

Before we get into this issue with the Supreme Court ruling, I want to talk about a more local matter.

The budget, as it's being proposed, calls for diverting some of this opioid settlement money.

Your reaction to that, because your office oversaw a report from the Recovery Advisory Panel that basically said this money should be in the hands of folks who are on the streets doing this work.

Yeah, look, as a general matter, I typically defer to the legislative process and the budget.

But when it comes to these dollars, which my office for years fought against companies that profited off of the opioid epidemic and brought back hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, that by the terms of the settlement and by the terms of a law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, are supposed to go to evidence-based solutions to the epidemic.

And the council is supposed to be the body that makes the recommendations for how the state will spend its share.

And again, this is an epidemic that continues to take the lives of thousands of New Jerseyans every year.

And I just can't stand idly by and watch us spend this money outside of the process that we all agreed to in a way that reminds me of what we did a few decades ago with the tobacco settlement fund dollars, which were diverted away from their intended purpose and something we're still dealing with the consequences of.

So, you know, I don't take any issue with hospitals getting funding.

I understand they're stretched thin right now, but these dollars are supposed to go to best practices to combat the opioid epidemic and nothing else.

What oversight, if any, will you leverage then, if this money does end up going into their coffers, those hospitals, to determine that it's being spent on these efforts?

Well, we're going to make sure if this funding goes forward as proposed, that the hospitals that receive it are spending it in ways that are consistent with the settlements.

Again, on best practices to support vulnerable populations struggling with addiction.

And I think we all know folks or their families who are dealing with this devastating epidemic.

And my number one priority through these settlements is to get them relief.

That's it.

Attorney General, let me switch gears.

I know that we've been talking quite a bit here and you have as well about this decision from the Supreme Court.

You have said publicly that you feel confident that the lawsuit that you brought, along with other attorneys general, will be successful in getting a nationwide injunction on the birthright citizenship issue.

Why are you so confident to that end?

Well, I think it's important to note what the Supreme Court did not do last Friday.

It did not apply on the merits of birthright citizenship, again, because the merits of this debate are very clear.

They were settled 157 years ago after the Civil War when we said as a nation, never again will we debate whether babies born on U.S. soil are in fact citizens.

And the second thing they didn't do is they didn't say states can't get nationwide relief.

What they said is we just need to show that we can't alleviate all of our harms as states without nationwide relief.

And the reason why we haven't shown that is because when we were at the court, the trial court the first time, the federal government didn't put forth any argument that they had an alternative to a nationwide citizenship process.

They never said there are alternatives to how we could treat people born in Philadelphia different than people treated or treat people differently than those born in New Jersey.

And, of course, the administrative and just significant challenges that would flow from doing that are extraordinary.

And we'll be I'm confident we'll be able to meet the standard laid out by the Supreme Court.

And I would just note, thanks to the decision we got on Friday, but this was evident even before that, I don't think it's ever been more important who the state attorney general is, because now with nationwide injunctions severely limited and with states really the only bodies that can go in and get nationwide relief, in many cases, your rights and privileges or the funding we receive as a state will be dependent on who your attorney general is.

And that is a significant change in how we function as a nation.

If we do end up with a patchwork system, which is what some of the critics of this decision have said could happen, is there a scenario in which you see New Jersey being sort of a sanctuary or a haven for folks who are undocumented, who are delivering their babies?

Is that something that's even within the framework of your mind right now, or are you just focused on the next set of court hearings?

I don't think it's my job to tell the federal administration how they can administer or how we would administer a blatantly unconstitutional order.

They have to come to court.

They have to explain how somebody who lives in New Jersey but happens to be in Pennsylvania when they go into labor, how that child is treated differently than if they had been at home in their house in New Jersey when they gave birth.

We have not treated people differently in terms of their citizenship status based on the state they reside in since slavery existed before the Civil War.

I don't think anybody seriously thinks we want to go back to that type of America.

And let's be clear, for states, New Jersey is a great example.

People cross state lines to give birth.

People move.

So if a child is born in Pennsylvania and then their family moves into New Jersey, are we really supposed to have to parse through whether that child at the time of his birth was a citizen or not a citizen, who their attorney general was, and try to decipher what types of benefits they're entitled to?

I mean, it's absurd.

It's why we have the 14th Amendment, and it's why I'm confident that we'll prevail.

Is that why you feel that you'll be successful in terms of arguing the point that that's why nationwide relief in particular is needed?

I mean, you may have seen the interview Attorney General Pam Bondi did last week when she was asked this exact question, "How will you administer a system of citizenship by states?"

And it was just deer in the headlights.

It's like they didn't even think when they issued this unconstitutional order on day one how they would possibly administer it.

And so there is no good answer for how we would do this.

I wonder, though, Attorney General, if I can jump in on that, if that was part of the strategy, that maybe this administration never actually intended on seeing an end to birthright citizenship, but a really smart legal maneuver to get rid of these nationwide injunctions, which you know and I know administrations on both sides of the aisle have taken issue with.

And look, I share concern about nationwide injunctions generally.

We've always said they should be limited, even in our argument where Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum argued at the United States Supreme Court.

We said these are reserved for limited circumstances.

But one is clearly when we're talking about the interpretation of an amendment that provides citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil, impossible to administer differently in different states.

And so, again, I'm confident.

In fact, nobody seriously thinks we're wrong on the merits.

And I'm confident that the reason why the Supreme Court left the door open and froze everything for 30 more days so that we could go to court and make our arguments, I'm confident we'll get the relief we're seeking.

And ultimately, I'm confident that we will prevail on the merits in this case.

Attorney General Matt Plotkin, thanks for your time.

We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

And three New Jersey nursing homes are being ordered to repay more than $2 million in Medicaid funds after an investigation from the state comptroller's office revealed the facilities were chronically understaffed.

Now, the report zeroed in on the Bell Care Nursing and Rehab Center in Trenton, Barnegat Nursing and Rehabilitation, and Barclays Rehab and Health Care Center in Cherry Hill.

82 patients at the nursing home in Trenton were found to have gone through three full shifts without a single staff member on duty.

The comptroller's office says it observed the homes for a full month, and each of the nursing homes failed to meet the legal staffing requirements every day.

State law requires one certified nurse's aide to every eight residents during the day shift, one direct care staff member to every 10 residents in the evening, and one to every 14 residents at night.

Long-term care officials have brought legal challenges to that rule, arguing it's just too onerous.

The comptroller's office is planning to withhold 10% of all future Medicaid reimbursements to the nursing homes until the penalties are paid, and as Brenda Flanagan mentioned, the ability to do that could change under proposals in the new state budget.

Support for The Medical Report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Well, every day across the state, parents face emergencies, a medical crisis, no child care while at work, a single parent dealing with trauma.

When stress hits, that's when Pinwheel Place steps in.

It's the state's first and only crisis nursery, offering trauma-informed care 365 days a year to any child age 6 and under, no questions asked, completely free.

As Raven Santana reports, Pinwheel is more than a nursery, it's a refuge, providing care, wraparound services, and a whole lot of love.

I mean, it takes strength to ask for help, and these are their children, their most prized possession, and that they would give us the honor of taking care of their children, to me that just says that they would need us.

Founded by mother-daughter team Lynn Hawkins and Kwati Simmons, Pinwheel Place is the only crisis nursery in the state that's designed to feel like a home, but once inside, families are offered free trauma-informed emergency child care for children from birth to age 6, 24/7 confidentially and without judgment.

So we provide a lot of emergency child care for moms who are domestic abuse victims, and starting their lives over and need a safe place to leave their child while they're going on job interviews, or even going to court to get restraining orders.

You don't want to bring your kids to court with you when you're trying to get a restraining order.

We have a family that one of the parents has cancer and is getting an aggressive treatment, and the other parent still needs to work, and they need a place to keep their kids while the one parent is going to work.

We've had families who have gone into the hospital, single parents who've gone into the hospital and had nobody to watch their kids while they were in the hospital.

So we're bridging that gap, filling those spaces where traditional child care doesn't fill.

Though funded in 2019 and funded out of their own pockets, Pinwheel Place moved into a permanent home in 2023.

We got a tour of the new Monmouth County location, which includes age-specific rooms, an outdoor play area, a private conference space for parents, and storage for diaper and baby supply distribution.

But their work goes beyond the nursery.

Pinwheel Place also provides diaper deliveries, infant essentials, and welcome baskets for new parents, all part of a wraparound approach to family support.

I feel it's important, too, for the families to have that dignity.

When they walk in, you want the house to be welcoming and nice, and that's something that they don't have to worry about.

They can go take care of all the other stresses that they have going on in their lives, which bring them here.

But they know that their children are in a warm and fun place.

So how do you keep something like Pinwheel Place going?

It's a struggle.

Again, not many people know that we're here, so that also applies to funders and grantmakers.

So we're always looking for people to support us in that way, just like any house.

You have to pay the bills, the electric, the water, the food for the kids, even like arts and crafts supplies to keep the kids busy.

They have done an incredible job with creativity and know-how to make this happen on almost nothing.

So now it's up to me and my board to help bring more funds to help them amplify their incredible mission.

That's where Carol Delia, the newly appointed chairperson of the board, comes in with a mission to raise awareness and resources.

Delia emphasizes that Pinwheel Place is more than child care.

It's part of a larger effort to prevent child abuse before it begins.

We consider ourselves the first line of defense for child abuse prevention because we get the enormous struggles that these families are dealing with, to try to just survive and stay above the line.

So many families are literally just paying for child care barely by working.

And there's nothing left afterwards.

The struggle is so profound.

Now we are licensed as a family child care center with a maximum capacity of five children at a time.

And so we see being able to hopefully expand once we solidify this wonderful space.

Both Delia and Hawkins agree community support is essential.

From child care volunteers to diaper sponsors, every contribution helps keep this lifeline going.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

And finally, if you're a New Jersey transit rider, prepare to pay more starting tomorrow.

Fares are increasing July 1st to help pay for the agency's more than $3 billion operating budget.

Tickets will go up 3%, so for example, bus fares will increase from $1.80 to $1.85 for a one-zone adult trip.

A one-way rail ticket from New York to Princeton Junction, for example, will bump up 50 cents from $18.40 to just shy of $19.

Light rail fare increases will vary by line.

The increase is the first of what could be a permanent annual 3% hike and comes a year after prices went up 15%.

That was the first time, though, in a decade.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is calling on riders and advocates to push back against the fare hike, asking them to write and call their state lawmakers before the New Jersey Transit Board of Directors meets in the next three weeks.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

But a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

I'm Brianna Vannosi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great night.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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