(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vannozzi.

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Tuesday.

Tonight, a few stories we'll get into later in the broadcast.

Congresswoman Lamonica McIver appears in federal court asking a judge to dismiss charges against her, stemming from the Delaney Hall incident last spring.

We have the latest from the courtroom.

Then, day 21, the government shutdown continues.

How long can federal services and programs survive in New Jersey without the funding?

And later, the gubernatorial candidates say they have plans to bring more transparency and accountability to the state's budget process.

How their proposals could help taxpayers.

But first, a few of today's top headlines.

State Republicans are threatening a lawsuit over ballot security just two weeks out from Election Day, demanding surveillance cameras, access logs, and bipartisan oversight where vote-by-mail ballots are stored.

Republican State Committee Attorney Jason Sina is also asking the Justice Department to get involved.

It all stems from an issue in Passaic County where Democrats on the Board of Elections failed to adopt a GOP effort for stronger security measures where those ballots are kept.

Republicans are pointing to a string of past voter fraud scandals in Patterson that didn't result in indictments, accusing Democrats of blocking transparency, including Board Chair John Curry, who also chairs the county Democratic Party.

But according to Politico, Curry sent a letter to New Jersey's Attorney General asking for guidance on the matter and pointed out the county already uses a dual lock system so ballots can't be accessed without a member of each party present.

Other state officials say elections are a state responsibility and federal involvement wouldn't be appropriate.

It all comes amid a tightening governor's race and Passaic County is shaping up to be a key battleground between Republican Jack Cittarelli and Democrat Mikey Sherrill, whose campaign announced just today that former President Barack Obama will hit the stump for her at a November 1st Newark rally.

Well, President Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to re-up his endorsement for Cittarelli, and according to reports, will host tele-rallies to help get the vote out.

Also tonight, Attorney General Matt Platkin is taking on one of the world's largest companies, suing Amazon over allegations that it illegally misclassified thousands of Flex delivery drivers.

Now, the lawsuit filed in Essex County Court by both the Attorney General's Office and the Department of Labor claims the online retail giant wrongly labeled the drivers as independent contractors instead of employees, allowing the company to skip paying taxes, unemployment and disability benefits.

State officials say drivers are covering their own costs, gas, tolls and maintenance while working long hours without overtime or sick leave.

Amazon is pushing back, saying the lawsuit is "wrong on the facts and the law" and defending its Flex program as a part-time, flexible opportunity its drivers choose.

The case comes amid a broader crackdown on worker misclassification in the state and could affect other gig economy giants like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash.

Still to come, Congresswoman Lamonica McIver appears in federal court today, fighting federal assault charges, why she says the case is political, and what happens next, coming up.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and by the PSCG Foundation.

A charged up crowd of supporters showed up today outside Newark Federal Court rallying in support of Democratic Congresswoman Lamonica McIver as oral arguments began on whether to dismiss charges against her.

All stemming from a tense confrontation with ICE agents earlier this year outside a Newark detention center.

McIver was indicted back in May, accused of assault and impeding federal officers during what her attorneys say was a lawful oversight visit, along with Newark Mayor Raz Baraka and other Congress members.

That took place as ICE operations were ramping up across the country.

Well now she's fighting to have her case thrown out, alleging it was politically motivated.

Senior Correspondent Joanna Gagas was there inside the courtroom and outside.

Jo, good to see you.

Several motions were filed by the defense.

Two asked for the case to be dismissed.

What was the basis of those requests?

Yeah, Breonna, the first motion filed by the defense argued that this case shows evidence of selective enforcement and prosecution and vindictive prosecution.

What does that mean?

Well, it's an argument that there's bias in the case that treats this defendant differently than others.

Defense attorney Paul Fishman compared the prosecution of Congresswoman Lamonica McIver to the pardons of the individuals who attacked the Capitol on January 6th.

He argues that their pardons show a clear bias from the Trump administration and the Congresswoman is being targeted for her political beliefs.

Now Judge Jemele Semper challenged that notion by questioning then why her two congressional colleagues who were there that day, Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman, weren't also arrested.

As for the prosecution, that's being led by Assistant U.S.

Attorney for New Jersey, Mark McCarron.

He argued that selective enforcement and vindictive prosecution have to show similarly positioned defendants, and their position is the Congresswoman's case does not compare to the January 6th cases.

The second motion was a request to dismiss based on legislative immunity, citing the speech and debate clause that gives immunity to congressional representatives when they're operating in their legislative capacity.

Fishman argued the Congresswoman was there in her official capacity for an oversight visit, that her role on the Homeland Security Committee includes oversight of DHS operations, and that she was still within her capacity to oversee how ICE was treating Mayor Raz Baraka, even as he was being arrested.

He argues the Congresswoman was shoved during that event, and he compared MacIver, who was there on official business, to the January 6th rioters who entered the Capitol without authorization, holding bats and bike racks.

He says she was holding a folder.

So he's trying to draw a stark contrast there.

How did the prosecution respond to that argument?

McCarran argued that her official oversight capacity ended when she concluded the tour of the facility.

They want to focus their case specifically on 68 seconds of video that shows the scuffle between ICE officers and McIver, with of course Mayor Baraka in the middle.

And that's where they allege the congresswoman broke the law by forcibly imputing federal officers, and they say, assaulting those officers.

Now after the hearing, Congresswoman McIver did address the crowd that was there rallying in her support.

I want to be clear to everyone.

This process has not stopped me from doing my job.

This process is not going to stop me from doing my job.

I'm going to continue to show up to protect us, to protect the people of the 10th Congressional District and of New Jersey and better yet of this country, because we need protection and we have to continue to hold this administration accountable.

We all know why this is happening.

I'm clear why this is happening.

It's because I was doing my job and I continue to do so.

I'm not going to stop holding this administration accountable because not because someone appointed me to do it, but because I'm going to continue to do it.

I'm going to continue to do my job and I'm going to continue to do my job.

I'm not going to stop holding this administration accountable because not because someone appointed me to do it, but because the people of the 10th Congressional District elected me to do it.

Now, Congress members Menendez and Watson-Coleman also addressed the crowd after the hearing.

They shared their take on the events of that day.

All of a sudden, a barrage of masked, fatigued, and armed individuals assaulted upon him to arrest him.

Shame!

As part of that abuse, our instinct was make sure he is safe.

That was our only reason, was to make sure that he was safe so that we could then go do our job.

When they couldn't bring charges against the mayor, they then brought charges against her.

>> Because they thought that by bringing charges against a black woman from the city of Newark, they could send a message to the rest of America not to challenge this administration, not to stand up for what they are trying to do in all of our communities.

They were wrong that day.

They are wrong today.

And when LaMonica walks away from these charges, we will show America that this administration has always been wrong.

Now, we haven't seen this before, but today, four Congresswomen came from other states in support of their colleague, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Jasmine Crockett.

Here's what they had to say.

We stand with our sister, our colleague, because we know, we know that we are dealing with an administration that is unhinged.

We know that we are dealing with a president that is lawless.

They want to see if they can get away with it.

They want to test whether they can silence a sitting member of Congress who dares to ask questions.

Well, the answer is "Hell no!"

And, of course, Newark Mayor Raz Baraka, whose charges were dropped by the U.S.

Attorney's Office several months ago, continues to stand with MacGyver.

Today, he fired up the crowd with this speech.

She's up there in a fight.

She's upstairs in a fight.

And we want them to know that fight with her.

That if you harm her, you harm us.

That the transgression against her is a transgression against us all.

That we're not going to sit idly by.

And I grew up in the same communities that she grew up in.

And I grew up in the same communities that she grew up in.

And I'm going to tell you a secret, there's a lot of people out here who grew up in those communities too.

And we all know how to fight.

And Devin, you're not going to take her without a fight.

Now as for the motions, Judge Semper will issue a written opinion, but he has hundreds of pages to review.

So no telling when that will come.

Brianna.

Joanna, great reporting.

Thank you for that.

Today marks Day 21 of the federal government shutdown and no resolution from either side in sight.

The House isn't in session all week, while the Senate failed for an 11th time to advance a measure to reopen the government.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on federal funding for programs that help millions here in New Jersey.

For all the latest, we go now to our Washington, D.C.

correspondent, Ben Hulak, on Capitol Hill.

Ben, good to see you.

You know I got to ask, what are you seeing?

What do you know?

What do you hear?

I know basically what you know at this point.

There is no movement.

Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, kept his chamber out of Washington.

The chamber has not voted, has not been present in Washington since a month ago, September 21.

And we're at a total stalemate at this point.

In fact, folks around town are really more focused on the Trump administration tearing down part of the White House, to a certain extent, than they are about funding the government.

There was a little talk from Chip Roy.

He is a right-wing Republican from Texas who represents a San Antonio area in the House.

I bring this up because he mentioned recently that he would be open to doing away with the filibuster.

The filibuster is what has been causing in many ways this logjam that requires 60 votes to clear legislation in the Senate.

And to circle back around to your question that is why we don't have a bill to fund the government.

We have the Senate has not been able to muster the votes needed to move things I mean what's the most likely scenario forward?

We're already at I believe the second or third right longest government shutdown in history.

What's the most likely path forward here.

This is the second longest shutdown in government history in U.S.

government history.

Day 21.

The first longest was the winter of 2018 into 2019.

That was 35 days.

It looks like we will approach or maybe breach that record.

The likely path to break this this stalemate is really what broke it the last time.

Federal workers not showing up services declining the public getting fed up backlogs of of waste and damage on federal lands.

That's a big thing to keep in mind.

And then of course just sort of anecdotally for me around town this might be a small thing but people are really frustrated when they come to D.C.

and basically everything is closed.

So much of the federal government here in town is is it is museums.

It is monuments and sites.

And that's sort of a small symbolic thing.

But that's something worth paying attention to.

Likely I would say though I would point to air traffic controllers.

This is the classic example folks who work TSA at Philadelphia or Newark or nationwide saying you know what I'm not showing up to work anymore.

I haven't been paid in a month.

I can't pay my bills.

I'm hungry.

I'm going to the food bank.

I'm done with this.

And then it becomes a safety issue.

Yeah which of course was what broke the stalemate at the last the longest government shutdown as you mentioned.

Where do we stand with things like the Gateway Tunnel Project, Ben?

The president of course said that he was eyeing what he called Democrat projects, projects that were funded and started under the Biden administration, sometimes even prior to that.

But he has threatened to not just withhold funding, but permanently defund some of these projects, specifically Gateway here in our region, which has been in the works for many years, dating back to the Arc Tunnel way back to the governors here in the 90s.

What do we know about the legal standing there?

Can they do that?

Has anyone on the congressional side filed a lawsuit to stop that?

- The likely lawsuit will come if it does come from Matt Platkin, the New Jersey Attorney General.

He told me, his office rather, told me last week that they are considering one.

The, it's interesting, this has sort of been a motif of the entire, of the entire Trump administration, the entire second Trump term, this running theme of the president and his budget men, his budget staffers over at the White House, trying to move or cancel or reprogram federal funding that Congress has already appropriated and specified for certain purposes.

And the general read in broad terms, that is generally illegal.

That violates a series of Supreme Court rulings and a federal law from 1974.

So also in the Trump administration, I should point out, has been smacked down on this a few times this year by the GAO.

I realize there's a lot of technical stuff, but the GAO, the General Accountability Office, is a nonpartisan agency that audits Congress, and it repeatedly has issued declarations this year, in particular on health funding, saying that health funding the Trump administration wanted to move around or use for different purposes when the administration tried to do that this year.

That has been illegal.

So the key thing here though is of course in the meantime while there's a fight over how money should be used and whether it's being used legally these programs are stalled.

So for people who ride the ride the train between New York and New Jersey or really connect with federal programs in any serious way these programs take longer.

They get more expensive.

They get more complicated.

And Gateway is just a really key example of this.

That's been going on for decades.

And it's it's sort of hemmed and hawed as Congress and administrations after administrations have taken different approaches.

And in the meantime the public has left sort of their hands in the air.

Yeah.

Although it may not be as tangible as some of the other programs you wrote about we've been reporting on snap and wick.

This provides these programs provide assistance to low income residents to mothers of infants young children.

Very quickly been in a little bit of time we have left.

What's the impact there.

As you reported the funding is going to run out next month.

I'm glad you brought that up.

We talk a lot of big numbers during shutdowns about sort of the broad picture.

But SNAP is a lifeline for about 85 or 50 thousand New Jerseyans.

These are not terribly generous benefits.

They're worth about six dollars of food every day.

And yes if Congress doesn't do anything that money will expire at the end of the month.

So that's about about 10 days from now.

These are real serious threats.

I talked to a handful of experts food experts and they this is a theme that stuck.

It's that hunger right now is at a higher point than it was during the covid-19 pandemic.

So there are so many financial and economic issues swirling here.

Hunger is at a supreme high.

It is in all 21 counties across New Jersey.

And it's also people you may not think.

It's people who often have jobs, have houses and are just trying to eat hidden hunger for sure.

You can read all of Ben's reporting on this on our Web site and a spotlight news dot org.

Ben, thanks as always.

Of course.

Well, among the many tasks facing the state's next governor will be figuring out how to spend billions raised from taxes each year.

And that's what we're going to talk about today.

But both of the major party candidates, that's Democrat Mikey Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciatarelli, also say they want to bring more accountability, transparency and oversight to how that money gets spent.

They're unveiling competing plans to reshape the budget process.

Our budget and finance writer, John Reitmeyer, joins us now to help explain what's in their proposals.

John, a lot to unpack here.

So thank you for coming on.

Clearly, both candidates see a need for this.

What was the impetus behind this?

Do we know?

Were they hearing from frustrated voters on the campaign trail?

Why now?

Yeah, it's nice to be with you today, Brianna.

And, you know, it's hard to say specifically what is bringing out these concerns from the candidates, although there has been a lot of acrimony and tretten in recent years about the way that the budget process plays out, especially in June when lawmakers are unveiling the final draft of what becomes the annual spending bill.

And then, of course, we know from public opinion polling that people in New Jersey are very frustrated with issues like taxes and cost of living that relate to the budget.

But, interestingly, they have also indicated their dissatisfaction with the handling of the state budget itself.

So we're not talking about the ways in which the state taxes or raises money from New Jersey residents to finance annual spending.

We're talking about things like the process that's used to compile the annual budget, or maybe the ways in which people from home are being enabled to keep track of how the state's raising money and spending money.

And so that's what these proposals from the candidates are really seem to be directed at.

Let's start with Jack Cittarelli.

What are the main reforms, if you could tick off for us, sort of the top line items that he wants to see happen?

Sure.

So, Cittarelli, the Republican in the race, has already come out and said he wants to be more vigilant in terms of policing spending by the state, including some of the spending items that lawmakers tack on typically at the end of June to the governor's version of the budget.

But now we have also, as part of the proposal, are focusing on Cittarelli's what he's calling for, which would be a four-week, what he's saying is a cooling-off period from when a budget spending bill can be drafted by lawmakers, which is their constitutional power to draft the annual spending bill, and then when it can be voted on.

And right now what we typically see, or at least in recent years in Trenton, is the legislature drafts a spending bill and sometimes that's voted on almost simultaneous to when the bill is formally introduced or sometimes it hasn't appeared yet in the online system and they're casting votes on it and this can be anywhere between three to four hundred pages.

It's one of the most significant, if not the most significant, pieces of legislation that gets passed each year.

So this would be what they're calling a cooling off period where that bill would have to sit, not for a few hours or even a few days, but a four week period.

So everyone has a sense of what's actually in it before lawmakers vote on it.

That would be a big change.

Would be a big change, especially since that bill is usually not ready until right up to the deadline.

Four weeks would be a long time.

Let me just switch.

And I know that there's other proposals he's made.

But what about Democrat Mikey Sherrill?

What's at the crux of her proposal for actually getting these voters to have more of a glimpse into this and that accountability?

Yeah, one of the interesting elements of her plan includes what she's calling the creation of a plain language budget.

And so for those who keep tabs on the state budget from year to year, it does sort of speak in its own language in many cases.

It's not always easy to follow where the money's coming in, where it's going.

Hundreds of pages are released annually by the administration, but of course things change in June when that spending bill gets drafted.

And what the congresswoman is proposing as part of her own accountability agenda is to create a more plain language or easy to read, user-friendly version of the state budget that she's saying would give people at home a better way to sort of track where the money's coming, where it's going.

And then she goes on to call for things like report cards on state contracts and programs, which, again, would also go to this goal of trying to give people a better ability to be able to evaluate or keep tabs on the effectiveness of the investment of their tax dollars.

And so I've been told by the campaign that this plain language version of the budget would come out sometime after July 1, which is a key date in the state's fiscal year.

It starts on July 1, ends on June 30.

And so a lot of things happen at the end of June, because if there's not a spending bill in place by that July 1 start of the fiscal year, the government shuts down much in the way that we're seeing at the federal level right now.

It sounds like this is one area, then, where the candidates seem to agree, though they have different ways of getting there.

But they both seem to agree that this process needs some overhaul.

Yeah, and it's not surprising in the sense that we've been hearing complaints about the budget process from really both sides of the aisle in recent years.

Republicans who are in the minority in both houses right now have definitely complained, but we've even been hearing complaints from more progressive or left-leaning groups in recent years as well, who feel like their voice or the voice of the people is being shut out of the budget process.

And of course, how easy it is to decipher budget documents.

They just passed a law in Trenton not too long ago, creating a plain language version of the state's annual audit or fiscal report.

And that is way, way easier for the average person to read than the very arcane or esoteric financial audit that gets released every year.

So this is sort of where things are trending anyway.

Also easy for folks to read.

You're reporting on all of this on our website, NJSpotlightNews.org, along with all of your budget and election-related reporting.

John Reitmeyer, thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Thank you for having me.

And a note before we leave you tonight.

David Cruz, longtime senior political correspondent for NJPBS and NJ Spotlight News, has been separated from our organization.

NJPBS acknowledges David's many contributions to the network and NJ Spotlight News.

We will continue our coverage of politics and public policy, reporting on issues affecting New Jersey residents on air and online.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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