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Briana: Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, more trump funding cuts.

New Jersey's Attorney General joined this coalition pushing back against the trumpet and illustrations cuts to Title X grants.

Plus, cashing in.

A legal scam that left residents starving while lining the pockets of its owners.

>> Some people need to be fed, and they would dump off a tray and people wouldn't be able to eat.

Briana: Also, NJ decides 2025.

We are profiling each of the Republican candidates ahead of the gubernatorial conversation.

Tonight, a look at state Senator John Bramnick.

>> Now as trump starts to struggle, I think potentially Bramnick makes more sense, but that doesn't mean the primary voters are ready to talk in those terms.

Briana: And lights, camera, action.

New Jersey celebrates the growth of its film industry at the NJ Film Expo, setting the stage to become the Hollywood of the East.

>> When you walk in here and you see this, you say to yourself, they've got every thing we need here in New Jersey.

Briana: NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪ >> From NJPBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

Briana: Hello, thanks for joining us.

We begin with a few of today's top headlines.

First, Matt Platkin is once again pushing back on the trump administration's spending plan.

This time, he joined with 20 other attorneys general, raising serious concerns over massive funding cuts for Title X grants.

Title X is a federal program that funds family-planning and preventative health care services, including birth control and other non-abortion services.

The attorneys general wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., saying the cuts that total tens of millions of dollars will have a devastating impact on services in their states, in some cases cutting off those services entirely.

They say the loss of funds will ultimately lead to more unplanned pregnancies and higher transmission of sexually-transmitted infections and greater rates of undiagnosed HIV and cervical cancer, which can both be life-threatening.

The letter says HHS has not proved any wrongdoing associated with the clinics whose funding was slashed, and low income and underinsured individuals will be affected the most because 10% of Title X clinics use -- patients use those clinics.

And more funding cuts from Washington.

Late last night, President Trump signed an executive order to slash funding for PBS, NPR, CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and APTS, America's public television stations.

NJ Spotlight News is a division of New Jersey's PBS station.

The legality of the order has been called into questions by the leader of each entity because the appropriation of that funding flows to the media networks.

Congress has allocated those funds through September of 2027.

President Trump took to social media recently, calling on Republicans to defund NPR and PBS, that he calls "the radical left monsters that so badly hurt our country."

Leaders from all four entities have vowed to challenge the order.

The CPB is suing the administration for attempting to fire three out of five of its board members.

Also tonight, a look at New Jersey's school spending.

The school often prides -- the state prides itself on having the best schools in the nation.

A new Census report shows New Jersey ranks fourth in the nation for per-pupil spending.

The data is based on the 2023 fiscal year and it shows physical spending of a little more than $26,000 per student.

That is about $10,000 higher than the national average.

The report does break down where the money goes, and more than half is spent directly on instructional costs.

That includes teacher salaries, benefits, and classroom expenses.

A portion also goes to admit a straight of costs.

That would be leadership like superintendents.

New Jersey is home to more than 600 school districts, a fact that has contributed to those administrative costs being higher here than in other states.

Although comparatively, New Jersey ranks about middle of the pack.

Criticism of New Jersey's nursing homes is nothing new.

Many have been accused of providing poor quality care.

And during the pandemic, they were blamed for failing to meet health standards but ultimately contributed to the deaths of thousands of patients.

But now the state comptroller has called out one nursing home is one of the worst in the state, accusing South Jersey Extended Care of siphoning funds to a side business.

Briana Vannozzi sat down with guests who broke down the story and the allegations that could see this provider kicked off the state's Medicaid program.

Briana: Thank you for coming on the show.

Ted, let me start with you because I know you dove into a lot of this data.

What made you start investigating these nursing homes and how they spend their money?

>> Sue and I have been working on nursing home stories for many years, and food has always been at the top of a lot of complaints of the people we speak with.

So, that is what we started doing.

We just started looking at nursing home citations and issues and numbers involving food.

Briana: So, it leads you to find that most of these nursing homes, or a majority anyway nationally are spending as little as $10 a day to feed their residents.

Sue, where is the money going?

Can you break it down for us in plain terms what you are able to uncover?

Sue: That is what is so interesting and frustrating about this research.

Nursing homes are expected to report how they spend their money, but nobody audits those reports.

And they are allowed -- it is a perfectly legal process to create entities within their own company and farmout services like housekeeping and food service and real estate and what have you.

And what we find is they are able to pay themselves for these services.

They can charge what they want.

Again, perfectly legal.

What it comes down to is that the money goes to themselves in a lot of situations.

And as the data has told us, you know, the median cost of three meals a day, not just one, is $12, and one in four, $10 a day.

Briana: So, can you give us an example -- Sue, I will stay with you for this moment -- an example of a place where they are doing this, skimming the money by paying sister companies or side companies, however you want to frame that?

Sue: Sure.

The process is called tunneling, skimming.

Like I said, perfectly legal.

But the Jersey comptroller has done excellent work in identifying some of these actors, and we have incorporated his work into our report.

South Jersey Extended Care is an actor who has been cited for fraud, because you reach a certain point and it becomes fraud.

I will let Ted pick that up and where that led us in terms of the money.

Briana: Go ahead, Ted.

Ted: What we did was we looked at a lot of research on skimming and tunneling, and we were trying to quantify it.

We knew that the comptroller was looking at it, at one nursing home.

We wanted to know how extensive this was nationwide.

What we did is we obtained the cost reports that every nursing home has to file.

We got an electronic version of all that.

And with the help of Rutgers University, we parsed that data to help separate out how many nursing homes nationwide were doing this, and we found out that something like over 60% of them were doing this.

Briana: But it is legal, as Sue pointed out, right?

And on paper, these companies are reporting, the care companies that run and operate the long-term care facilities, are saying they operate at a loss.

So, how do we square that?

Is this blatant fraud, if there is a paper trail you can follow?

Ted: It isn't fraud because they are allowed to do this.

What is fraud is when they are doing it without a paper trail.

Which is what was charged with South Jersey Extended Care.

Typically -- well, the way the law works is when you file a cost report, there is a worksheet that you have to note on their how much -- note on there how much you are paying a related company and how much you can actually -- whether that amount is exceeding the allowed cost for those services.

And again, what we found was of those 63% that are doing this, more than half were charging more than the allowed cost for those services.

Briana: Sue, I will ping back over to you.

Were there examples you found, obviously the food being one, where patient care was affected?

What you are explaining is these companies are giving money to another company, I think you used the example of a physical therapy company perhaps where they are contracting out, but it is their own company paying them.

Were there cases where outcomes or patient care was affected because of the way this system is set up?

Sue: Yeah.

We saw the whole gamut where we talked to residents who were OK.

They were somewhat healthy.

They were there to tell the tale of how they had gone without meals because they couldn't identify it, or we spoke to a man in Connecticut who would take his wheelchair and go out and troll looking for food in New Haven because he -- and out of his own pocket, because what he was getting at the nursing home was not nutritious or palatable.

But then there's extremes, and there were some lawsuits, really galling situation where a man was not fed.

It is not just the quality, the food, but it is the staffing issues that are so prevalent in nursing homes nowadays.

It is so hard to find people to work in nursing homes and stay.

Some people need to be fed.

They would dump off a tray and people wouldn't be able to eat.

They found lawsuits, situations where people were allowed essentially to either choke, because a lot of older people have swallowing disorders, or they just didn't get the nutrition they needed and died.

Briana: It is horrible when you consider how vulnerable these folks are to begin with.

Ted, how did the industry respond to this?

There is this narrative they need more taxpayer dollars, they are chronically underfunded.

What did they have to say?

Ted: That is always in the response to a lot of issues with nursing homes, and that is what they said here as well, that a lot of nursing homes are on the brink of financial ruin.

They need more money, they need more Medicaid funding, they need a higher reimbursement rate.

And in terms of the food deficiencies that we identified, they argued that most of them were not life-threatening.

Briana: Wow.

This there any accountability, are there accountability measures beyond suspending from Medicaid, which we saw with the South Jersey facility, Sue?

Sue: Right.

You should know there has been a bill pending for at least one legislative session that would require more financial accountability, more reporting, parsing out this money because what Ted worked with with Rutgers University, crunching the data, these reports are public but it is very difficult to make sense of them.

So, Senator Joe Vitali has a bill that has been installed that would allow more accountability.

And it has not gone anywhere, and we are hearing that there is some interest in getting this bill going again.

But accountability is not something the federal government has required.

They require these cost reports to be filed, but nobody checks them.

And if they just did spot audits, perhaps there would be people caught fudging the numbers.

There would be an incentive to be aboveboard.

Briana: And perhaps more staffing and lives saved.

Great reporting.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Joanna: Today, we join NJ advanced media in mourning the loss of their lungs -- their longtime political reporter Matt Arco who died at 39 years old.

He died of natural causes.

He made a name for himself covering the world of politics, from Governor Chris eat a Governor Murphy and the Trump presidency.

He was a trusted research -- resource.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones during this difficult time.

There are only two months until the primary election in New Jersey, where each party will choose their candidate for governor.

And the challengers are all making their final push to reach voters and try to secure the support.

We will take a look at each candidate, their campaign priorities, and the issues they are running on.

First up is Republican candidate John Bramnick, who is making his first run for governor.

David Cruz takes a closer look.

>> I saw this guy on TV.

He's nice, he's normal, he's a family man, and he is not crazy like these other politicians.

David: State Senator John Bramnick is a funny guy.

The self-proclaimed funniest mayor in New Jersey.

He may have launched his career in a comedy club, but his run for governor is no joke, he says.

While the other candidates in this primary trip over themselves to curry favor with President Trump, Bramnick is the leading anti-Trump Republican in the state.

He is counting on party voters to look beyond the race for Trump's heart and the mega mindset -- MAGA mindset.

>> It is interesting.

If I can't win the primary, how can Republicans win the general election?

It can't happen denying the election of Joe Biden.

It can't be denied based on January 6 activities.

If we have a candidate who does that or hides or dances from that, he will lose the general.

They said I couldn't win elections before when the Trumpers are on my right and the Democrats on my left and I won by six or seven points.

David: Bramnick says New Jersey's Democratic Party has led to unchecked state spending and out of step policies on everything from the environment and immigration to taxes and housing, which his fellow Republicans probably agree with.

But Trump -- >> The first problem we had is Trump won the presidency.

Now as Trump starts to struggle, I think potentially Bramnick makes more sense.

But that doesn't mean Republican primary voters are ready to talk in those terms.

They are not ready to talk about criticizing Trump.

So they will be the last ones ready to criticize Trump.

David: For all this talk of Trump in how he is playing in New Jersey today, who knows what voters will be preoccupied with even a month from now.

For Bramnick, he says he is trying to keep a baseline ethos for his campaign, which he expressed at a recent forum in front of the progressive New Jersey Institute for social justice.

>> I thought it was more important than ever to come here and show unity.

[applause] And more important than ever, we need to stand together as one country and as Americans and work together and love each other and show respect, and that is going to be my goal as governor of the state of New Jersey.

David: That is the most aw shucks moment you're probably going to hear in the entire primary season.

It is a stance Bramnick has held since day one.

Whether the rest of New Jersey's Republican primary voters share it is going to be key to his success.

I am David Cruz, NJ Spotlight News.

Joanna: And next Wednesday at live right here on NJPBS will be the first of two conversations with the gubernatorial candidates, in partnership with WNYC radio, whose host Michael Hill will join David Cruise to moderate the Republican conversation.

Again, that is Wednesday, May seventh, beginning at 7:00 p.m., airing here and on WNYC radio.

In New Jersey's quest to become the Hollywood of the East, the economic development Authority held its inaugural NJ Film Expo, a show for all the capabilities possible in the state.

Industry leaders joined with creative developers and more than 60 exhibitors at the Meadowlands yesterday, where they met up with Ted Goldberg to explain why the state is so suited for the film and television industry.

>> Seeing is believing.

When you walk in here and you see this, you say to yourself, they've got everything we need right here in New Jersey.

Ted: The inaugural New Jersey film Expo was equal parts celebration and networking event for people in film and TV.

>> We are taking advantage at the NJ Film Expo to show what we are about.

And as a director, to inspire others.

I am definitely somebody who is here to network.

I am here to meet new faces.

Ted: There were plenty of faces at Meadowlands Arena, and around 70 exhibitors, including purveyors of lights, cameras, and even prop rats.

As New Jersey hosts more production statewide, more companies are starting or expanding to New Jersey to serve them.

>> We moved to New Jersey specifically to follow all of our customers that were coming here to start their productions.

The stars need a luxury SUV, the crew and cast need transit vans to get to location, maybe a bus, and you need trucks for the lights and props and catering tables.

Ted: That is where companies like Edge auto rental step in.

As of March, the state says 42 film and TV projects are committed to shoot in New Jersey during the first and second quarter, putting the state on track to beat its production of the last two years combined.

John Crowley, leader of the state's motion picture and television commission, says there are a few reasons why.

>> You can go from a mountain with Snow to the ocean in 90 minutes.

It is a geographically compact state with a wide variety of looks.

You can have a queen and or Victorian next to a midcentury ranch.

You have a little town like Mayberry, or a big city like Times Square or D.C. Ted: The recent catalyst, some say, is tax credits for production companies.

>> What shifted is in 2018, Governor Murphy reopened the film incentive, reopened a tax credit that allowed for our clients based all over the world to understand the economics of how to do b business in the state of New Jersey.

Over two years, you saw a flood of businesses.

>> Our competitive tax credits make it rewarding to film your next product -- project here.

Ted: The governor says -- including the recent Bob Dylan biopic, which was filmed in several places in the Garden State.

>> Productions are saving money while hiring New Jersey's talent and spending their dollars here.

>> Not everyone has the special close relationship I see you guys developing, and that is critical because it means you can move quickly.

>> We make the assumption it is a studio only Perry but you have pre-and post production, makeup artists, all of these services are part of the productions that take place.

Ted: Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach sits on the motion picture and television commission and hopes to bring more productions to her town.

>> I'm always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

The last film that was done was "turbulence" in the 1980's.

Ted: Tax incentives are just part of the equation.

There are also more places to shoot, like the Cinelease S tudios, or the upcoming studio at Fort Monmouth.

>> They did not a real -- they did not originally realize how good New Jersey is as a shooting destination.

Now there are soundstages here in Jersey.

It is an option for them.

Ted: The screen alliance of New Jersey hosted this Expo and hope it helps New Jersey become Hollywood East.

It is now becoming closer to reality.

At the Meadowlands, I am Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.

Joanna: That will do it for us this week.

Before we go, download our podcast anywhere you listen and watch us any time by subscribing to the YouTube channel.

Plus, follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up-to-date on all the big headlines.

For the entire team here, thanks for being with us.

Have a great weekend and we will see you back here on Monday.

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