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[light music] From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Briana Vannozzi.

- Good evening and welcome to a special edition of "NJ Spotlight News."

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

We are here at the New Jersey Planning and Redevelopment Conference in New Brunswick.

Guests of New Jersey Future and the American Planning Association New Jersey Chapter.

We're thrilled to do so for a conversation tonight with four of the candidates who are vying to replace Governor Murphy in 2025.

We have with us this evening Republican state senator Jon Bramnick, Newark's Democratic mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City's Democratic mayor Steve Fulop, and former Republican state assemblyman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli.

Gentlemen, welcome to you all.

This conversation is being live streamed on our YouTube channel, the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel, and we'll continue on there for an hour.

Tonight we're going to get into four different topics, affordable housing, protecting communities from flooding, finding funding for transportation, and achieving statewide goals in a home rule state.

That is not an easy task.

I'm Briana Vannozzi, I'll be leading us through the conversation.

Welcome to all of you.

It is great to see you.

Let's jump in, shall we?

Senator Bramnick, let's talk a little bit about affordable housing.

There's no doubt the state has a need, is in a crisis in terms of the cost to live here.

This is a very expensive state.

And when it comes to living here, it costs a lot to own a home, it costs a lot to rent.

There is, of course, a Mount Laurel doctrine that has requirements set out as far as how much each town is required.

And there are arguments to be made on both sides that there is a need, but also that towns need help ensuring they can accommodate what those needs are.

And no doubt your time in the legislature you've heard from constituents who say, this is a real challenge.

But this is the law of the land.

These are the guidelines that are in place.

So, how would a Governor Bramnick help towns plan for the affordable housing they're going to need to build?

- Well first, I would simply not assign a certain number of units to a town.

That seems to be planning that resulted in litigation for the last 40 years.

What you need to do is the legislature must really take over this issue.

I have a constitutional amendment that would take this away from the courts and put it in the lap of the legislature.

The legislature has ignored it over and over again.

We're back in the courts.

People want to maintain their communities and they want to feel as if the legislature is in charge, not the courts.

So clearly, we need affordable housing.

There's no doubt about that.

But it shouldn't be micromanaged by the courts.

In my judgment, the thing to do going forward is one, make sure its more affordable to live in this state.

Because one of the reasons that housing is so expensive is because the state of New Jersey is not affordable.

There's been very little effort for the last 20 years by the legislature really to reduce costs.

So you have to look at that side of the ledger as well.

And finally, it's extremely important that you put together real planners like the people in this room.

One thing they don't do in New Jersey is they very rarely look at the longterm issue.

Most of the time we're doing small things.

We need to concentrate on big things.

And that's why we need the experts in this room and they'll all be in my administration.

- Let me just push back though, because the legislature did have an opportunity to act for many years, and it was in fits and starts.

And that's why it ended up in the courts.

- Well, we, the Republicans, we were not in charge of the legislature for the last 20 years.

So, yes, there were many opportunities, in my judgment, that never really happened.

So you might have to ask your friends on the Democratic side of the legislature why these things weren't done.

- Thanks, Senator.

Assemblyman Ciattarelli, in your former, your previous gubernatorial campaign, you had suggested a regional approach to this.

You had said, hey, let's put a fee on developers, we'll take that money, put it in a public trust and use the public trust to build affordable housing.

My question for you, is that still your plan and who exactly would decide where the housing gets built?

- So we have two crises in the state of New Jersey.

One, we have a crisis that there's not enough housing.

Particularly for those at the lowest rungs of the income ladder and middle income people.

But we also have a crisis in New Jersey where we're taking garden right out of the Garden State by over developing our suburbs.

So one of the things I heard during the opening remarks from Sheena and from Pete was we're not incorporating all of the planning and the developments taking place and we need to do things in a smart growth kind of way.

I don't see that across New Jersey.

So, I believe, and I think most of the people in this room if not 100% believe in a regional planning approach.

I was very fortunate having served as a Somerset County Freeholder and State Commissioner in a county with a county government that had, what I believed, one of the most robust planning departments in the state.

And we took a regional approach to everything.

We've got 564 towns.

And I've never suggested that not each town should have skin in the game, they should.

But that doesn't mean that there should be high density housing in every one of those towns.

Hillsborough kind of is in the room.

I lived there for 25 years up until a year ago.

It's a 52 square mile former cow pasture with one lane in each direction called 206.

Stay off it for your own wellbeing.

We have a Home Depot, we have a Kohls, we have a ShopRite.

So there are jobs there.

But beyond that, not a whole lot of jobs.

No infrastructure, no mass transit.

And we're losing builder remedy suit, after builder remedy suit.

And four and five story buildings are going up in a town where people have to get in their car.

And we just added more idling cars to our roads.

Which flies in the face to anyone's position on sustainability.

I find it hypocritical.

There's a great many people that want to put high density housing everywhere, but then on the other side of the ledger they're saying, we have a sustainability problem in New Jersey.

So these are the crises that we face.

I believe we need to take a regional planning approach with each town having skin in the game to meet the affordable housing crisis we have in New Jersey.

We don't have enough affordable housing.

- Would it be a state body, a local body, a designated body who decides what housing is built?

Let me ask it this way.

How do you prevent that from becoming a backdoor way that housing gets concentrated in poorer communities?

- Number one, with a governor who's gonna take a lead on saying out loud all across the state we have a crisis.

There's not enough affordable housing in this state.

And then that governor has to take the lead in putting forth a proposal that's gonna mete constitutional muster.

And if it doesn't, that governor also has the ability to nominate supreme court justices that are gonna agree with him or her.

But we need-- - After they get confirmation from the legislature, yeah.

- And the governor's gotta take the lead.

No governor has taken the lead on this issue in putting forth a solution that works for the two crises I talked about in all 564 towns, all 21 counties.

We need a regional approach.

- All right, so let me then use that to segue to you, Mayor Fulop.

Because we do hear from suburban towns the concern of over development of higher density housing that they'll need.

And more specifically, the costs that come with it.

Schools, services, our sewers, everything.

Over development is a criticism you faced as mayor.

So as governor, how would you balance that concern with the court requirements?

- Yeah, so first let me just say thank you to all of you for taking some time and coming out today and being so passionate about the future of New Jersey.

Briana, in the introduction you mentioned that I've been running for a year.

It's true.

The reason I started so early was that we wanted to be substantive on policy and really detail oriented.

What you hear is the same soundbites around Democrats who control Trenton.

Or Republicans.

The last I remember, you had Chris Christie for eight years followed by a Governor Murphy for eight years.

So there is shared collective blame if you look at it this way.

Trenton hasn't moved on that and what you see throughout New Jersey is a NIMBY-ism attitude at the local level that drives the topic around affordable housing.

So then the obvious question is, if you believe in affordable housing, which we all collectively do.

And I believe the majority of New Jerseyans do, but they get sucked into this vortex of the conversation of the loudest people that are constantly saying, not in my backyard.

Most people believe that New Jersey should be affordable for everyone.

So how do you get there?

What type of policies?

First, we have so many municipalities and most people in New Jersey do not have visibility into what their municipality is doing.

Are they complying with Mount Laurel?

Are they complying with the obligations?

I believe that if most people understood and saw what their municipality was doing, they would feel a certain way about it, rather than just having the squeaky wheel move the needle on it.

Secondly, you need the carrot and the stick from the state.

You need the state to say, this is what we need you to do.

You need the state to say, here is who is complying in a transparent way.

And if you are complying, you should be rewarded.

And if you are not complying, that should also be a conversation around your state aid and your help.

Because you are not driving the agenda that is necessary in New Jersey.

So I think transparency and carrot or stick.

We have a lot of experience in Jersey City with housing.

We've built more housing than anybody in the last 10 years.

I've been an advocate for Jersey City participating in our obligations around affordable housing, because I think Jersey City should be leading from the front on this.

But at the end of the day, you do need transparency and you need the carrot and the stick in order to drive this.

And spreading it out throughout New Jersey, delaying the process.

We've seen that for 10 years, 20 years.

It doesn't solve the problem.

- Before I come to you, Mayor.

Did you want to respond to that at all?

Legislature involved there.

Chris Christie, eight years.

Governor Murphy, eight years.

- Well, Chris Christie actually had plans that the Democratic legislature wouldn't move, as you recall.

It was placed before the legislature for numerous years and there was no movement.

I don't know if it was anti Christie or the democrats couldn't make their mind.

So Christie was on the forefront of that.

Now, of course, the Democrats didn't agree with Christie's approach.

And Jack said it and I'll say it, that regional planning, not town by town, is the only way to do this in a reasonable way.

What sense does it make to say this community needs to build 100 housing units?

Nobody plans like that.

It's planned, it's a state.

There's plenty of places where you can put affordable housing next to transportation which has the available infrastructure.

And with all due respect, the legislature didn't act.

- All right, let me move on to Mayor Baraka here.

Newark obviously has a number of affordable housing programs.

It's an issue that's important to everyone.

As is evident by 500 people who are here live in the audience for us.

But there are criticisms from residents in Newark who say longtime residents, locals are still being pushed out.

Gentrification is a problem.

How would you, as governor, ensure that all three branches of government work together to deliver on these promises?

- First let me say, we're probably the only people up here who are building actual affordable housing, period.

We just got a 9% tax credit to build 100% affordable housing here.

Are we building at a rate that's faster than the city is going?

Absolutely not.

That's why we need state support and state help.

First of all, I think we need to understand how severe this problem is.

And I don't think we understand that.

There are 300,000 residents in the state of New Jersey who are low income renters where three quarters of them are burdened because they pay 50% of their income on housing.

This is a problem.

About 11,000 people in this state right now are concentrated in five cities, who are threatened to lose their housing right now because we don't have the money or the funds to keep affordability in the housing that they have.

40,000 people in the state of New Jersey right now have vouchers, Section 8 vouchers in their hand and cannot find housing right now.

On top of that, the state is short 230,000 units of housing right now, today.

This is a real crisis.

And a crisis that is just not gonna affect poor people, or black and brown people.

It is driving the cost of living up in the state of New Jersey.

There is a market.

This is why people in in Newark are complaining, because there's a market for luxury housing.

That's why Newark has the fastest growing rents.

That's why 90% of the rental units in places like Hoboken and Jersey City are above $2,000, right.

Because there is a market for luxury housing.

Because if I lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and I go to school and go to college, get a great job, I can't afford to buy a home in that community, so I go to places like Newark, like Jersey City, like Hoboken.

Why?

There are about 125,000 people in the state who can get in a house today.

Who have the credit scores.

Who have the funding.

But the mortgage, the cost is too high for housing, so they move to Newark to drive costs, to drive us out.

- So how does the Baraka administration, state administration, make sure everybody's working to get to those goals?

- There are multiple things that we need to do.

One, we need to create land trusts, as was said earlier.

To make sure there are areas and places that are affordable and maintain affordability.

That we put funding in places so people don't lose their affordable housing construct.

So they are not pushed out because rents are increasing.

That their rents are stabilized and remain the same.

When you build more housing across the state of New Jersey, not just in the seven cities that was talked about in Atlantic City.

You can't just concentrate all the development in seven, or eight or nine cities.

That's not gonna affect affordability in the state of New Jersey, it's not.

You need housing navigators to go to these municipalities and talk to folks about what land is available.

The RPA did a study.

It said tens of thousands of acres of land that is available in communities.

Newark, New Jersey specifically, that are affluent, white communities, low density, next to transit, no development in those communities.

There's not been no development there now, and it hasn't been there in the last 40 years.

Which means we can start there.

There are areas where development can happen.

- That's a perfect segue for me, because you need transportation to get to and from... [audience applauding] Your housing.

Funding New Jersey transit is a perennial issue.

It's going to get worse next year.

We know they're facing more than $700 million budget gap.

That's after the 15% fare increase that's going into affect this summer.

And the governor has proposed a corporate transit fee.

This would tax companies in New Jersey that make more than $10 million to create a dedicated revenue stream.

How many times have we all heard that phrase?

You support the corporate transit fee to fund New Jersey Transit, but beyond keeping the agency's budget in line, would you propose expanding its services and what would expand and how would you pay for it?

- So let me just say, before I get to that, you'd allow me to talk-- - We only have so much time here.

- I know, but they took a lot of it, so I'm gonna take the same time.

- I hear you.

- So, this also is about equity.

So I don't want to leave this out of the equation.

- For sure.

- Because we live in a region that is not only the most expensive region, it's also the most segregated region in the nation.

That this housing crisis, it's not just about affordable housing.

It's also about inequity and segregation and a lack of inclusion which is causing prices to go up in this state.

We are actually paying a price for segregation and discrimination in the state of New Jersey.

But let me... [audience applauding] Let me just say that I agree with the corporate business tax the way it was.

I think they should have maintained the way it was.

I think it's a kind of trick to do what has been done.

The billion dollars that are raised through corporate business taxes should be used to fund New Jersey Transit.

So they can stop using the capital fund and using it for operating costs.

- So you would bring back the previous CVT?

- Well, I think it should have remained the way it was.

I think all of this stuff is a trick based on pressures that were put on folks by political organizations, and institutions, and the people.

Rightfully so.

But ultimately, whatever it is, the corporate business community should pay for the transit.

It's a billion dollar infrastructure.

It is unsustainable to let working families, working class people pay a 15% increase to sustain an industry, an institution, that all of us benefit from.

- Thanks, Mayor.

Senator Bramnick, you have said that you do believe there should be a dedicated source of funding for New Jersey Transit.

What do you propose that is?

Is it a corporate transit fee?

A corporate business tax?

Or is it something else?

- It's something else.

During this past budget go around, a billion dollars the night before the budget was passed was used in pet projects around the state.

Now my specially designated source would be the last three years of spending money in districts, in my judgment, were benefiting very few people.

This is what I'm talking about.

Small ball versus big ball.

So, if that money had not been spent in the middle of the night on pet projects, we wouldn't be talking about a corporate business tax.

So I'm gonna start by saying during the last five years we've seen that kind of expenditures, and now the question to a Republican candidate is, now what are you gonna do?

Well, I wouldn't have spent that money to begin with.

That would have been my source.

We also, obviously, need federal help in that regard in our Congressional delegation, because these are major, major projects.

I've met with former governors on this issue and they always give you the same look.

It's difficult.

So we know how difficult it is to fix New Jersey Transit and mass transit.

But we've got to start by making sure we're not spending money willy nilly around the state on small projects.

- So all right, let's throw out my question and give that question to your Republican colleague on the stage here.

Because you've said you know a dedicated source of funding, it's the state budget.

If you were in charge of the fiscal year 2026 budget, what would you cut to pay for it?

- I'm not saying this to be critical.

In Chris Christie's last budget, the full pension payment for the state workers was three billion dollars.

Phil Murphy made it a priority and today it's fully funded with the annual contribution being nearly seven billion dollars.

He did that without a dedicated revenue stream.

But then again, he does have a dedicated revenue stream.

It's called the New Jersey state budget.

So this is all about setting priorities.

I'm all about making New Jersey a better place to do business.

If New Jersey is a better place to do business, there'll be better jobs for everyone.

If there's better jobs for everyone, more people will use New Jersey Transit.

You know, in the business world if you want more customers you make the product dependable, safe, convenient.

People do not perceive New Jersey Transit to be dependable, safe, or convenient.

So, instead what we do is we hit the corporate world with an extra tax, making New Jersey not regionally competitive.

Pennsylvania, I know the mayor loves when I talk about Pennsylvania.

- So don't do it today.

- But the democratic governor of Pennsylvania... [chuckling] I missed the joke.

But obviously-- - That's the problem.

- You got it, so.

You can explain it to me later.

- What would you cut, though?

- The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania cut the corporate business tax in half.

From 10 to five.

Because he was competing with Ohio, which is business tax zero.

So I'm not about irresponsibly lowering taxes and then leaving those without.

I'm all about making New Jersey regionally competitive and making it a better place to do business.

That will provide what we need.

But it's all about a governor setting priority.

How did Phil Murphy find four billion dollars and increase the pension payment without a dedicated revenue stream?

Because he made the pension payment a priority in his budget.

We need a governor that's going to make New Jersey Transit and our mass transit systems a priority.

I also like the European model.

The European model puts all mass transit systems in the same bucket.

We have three major revenue producing mass transit systems.

It's called the parkway, turnpike, and New Jersey Transit.

Put 'em all in the same bucket.

How much revenue do they collectively produce and what type of state subsidy is necessary to balance the books and make sure that all three hum so that our economy works.

- So let me wrap up this one part of the section, Mayor Fulop, with some news of the week which was, New York governor Kathy Hochul obviously indefinitely pausing New York City's congestion pricing plan.

You had proposed a regional plan, or a plan that would toll New Yorkers who come into New Jersey.

So is that something that you would look to in your administration, is a regional congestion pricing plan?

And wouldn't New Jerseyans get hit twice, though?

- So let me touch on the first part of that also, regarding the transit tax, because I think that's important.

In Jersey City we have more direct experience with mass transit than anybody in New Jersey.

Meaning that we started the largest ride share program.

More than a million rides, micro transit in Jersey City.

We have a large bike share program, including people, encouraging them.

25 miles of protected bike lanes.

We've gotten into the ferry operations as well.

So we have a lot of familiarity with it.

The transit tax that you referenced earlier, the first place that was proposed was part of our campaign last August.

And we were panned for it in the same place that we talked about this regional approach to what Kathy Hochul just did away with.

The reality is that, where would we dedicate funds to help on transit?

It's a good question.

I think what Jon Bramnick said earlier is entirely correct.

You shouldn't have these midnight billion dollars worth of issues coming through the budget.

There needs to be transparency to that.

At the same time, you have issues like a $10 billion turnpike widening happening in Hudson County.

Those dollars in today's world should be dedicated towards mass transit.

Repositioning that stuff immediately should be a priority.

Third, when you talk about the fees that were proposed by New York, the congestion pricing.

I mean, we are a congested state.

And what I said at the time was that New Jersey needs to participate in that in the way that we need to benefit as well from those dollars.

And there needs to be a regional approach.

You cannot just have a midtown Manhattan tax on New Jersey people.

You need to think about the people from New Jersey moving to New York.

The people from New York moving to New Jersey.

The people from Connecticut moving to New Jersey, because at the end of the day, the transportation infrastructure is all intertwined here.

- Anyone else in favor of a regional agreement with New York?

Mayor?

- Well, I think first that obviously New York and New Jersey the governors should have gotten together and had a discussion about this early on with both agencies to begin talking about how to create a plan.

That one, dealt with the environmental issues that people are concerned about, and rightfully so.

And two, create the revenue that's necessary that people are looking for in both of those places.

I would agree that we should not be widening the highways or even widening the bridges, for that matter, to create this kind of bottleneck in the tunnel that's not as wide as well.

So all that money can be used for mass transit and it should be used for mass transit at the same time.

Also, wait, one more thing.

- You've got about 20 seconds.

- The priorities, I just want to say something about the budget priorities.

Because in 2016 when these guys were still down there they cut the estate tax, which is about $600 million that is used in our budget that could be used for housing and transportation and things like that.

So the priority is to give tax breaks to the wealthy, not just the working people.

- Let me pause you there.

We'll pick right back up on that in a moment.

We want to thank you all.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Thank you to our friends at New Jersey Future, the American Planning Association New Jersey Chapter for bringing all of the candidates together.

And thank you, candidates, for this very candid discussion on really crucial topics for people in New Jersey.

I'm Briana Vannozzi for all of us at "NJ Spotlight News," have a great evening.

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