[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We are honored to be joined by Steve Sweeney, the former president of the state senate and chair of the advisory board for the Sweeney Center for Public Policy at Rowan University, one of our higher ed partners.

Steve, good to see you.

- Great to see you, Steve.

- Let's talk about New Jersey's fiscal future, an initiative that we're involved in, to try to figure out what the heck our future is and what we need to do to get on the right track.

First of all, how far off the right track are we, Steve?

- We're way off.

Unfortunately, Steve, and, you know, New Jersey does year-to-year budgeting.

Many states do multiple years budgeting.

County governments do five-year budgets, six-year capital plans.

This is not the best way of doing budgeting, and, you know, there's another thing called consensus forecasting, where the legislature and the administration get together, and they get to decide what the numbers are gonna look like, and you get a much more honest process.

You know, the books don't get cooked like they normally do.

One year, one of the governors said, "We're gonna have 7% ratable growth."

You know, Steve, and I had to score it that way, so what we're trying to do is get us to a much more sound footing, so that the promises that are being made, like I wanna congratulate Speaker Coughlin for coming up with a great idea to try to help our seniors, but what the problem is if the money's not there.

You know what I'm saying?

That's the things we're concerned with.

- By the way, Steve Sweeney, the former senate president's talking about this deal.

We're taping at the end of June, right before, ironically, the budget will allegedly be struck.

It's a senior citizen property tax.

Well, it's just, frankly, it's $6,500, capped at $6,500 if you make less than $500,000 if you're over 65 years of age.

Are are you saying, Senator, that we don't have the money for that?

- What I'm saying is that there's choices that are gonna have to be made, Steve.

You can fund anything you want.

It's as long as you have to prioritize, but if, like, the think tank or economists...

I actually get to do stuff that I couldn't do before 'cause, you know, you have to be partisan, so- - Excuse me, we're talking about the Sweeney Center at Rowan?

- Yes.

- That's the think tank.

- Yeah.

- Go ahead, Steve.

- Thanks.

Thanks, Steve, and I have independents, Democrats, Republican fiscal experts, and when they're in a room working together, Steve, it's amazing.

Like all the political BS goes out the window, and what they said is, "There's an 80% chance by 2025 "we're gonna be between 12 1/2 to $15 billion "$18 billion short "between 2025 and 2028," and this isn't including the speaker's game plan, you know, tax plan, so again, something's gonna have to give here.

- Well, hold on.

Senator, we just had this largesse from the federal government.

We had a surplus, COVID money, et cetera.

What are you talking about?

- Well, what I'm talking about is real numbers, Steve.

You know, those federal dollars were one-time dollars.

We're spending more money a year than we're bringing in.

Income tax collections went down dramatically when the treasurer reported.

I think it was a couple billion dollars, you know, so when you started looking at... And then, the sales tax just came down, you know, unexpectedly, revenues, so what we're saying is, "Yes, you can do a lot of things, "but you're gonna have to sacrifice other things "to do them."

- Yeah, and I wanna talk offshore wind in just a moment, but Senator, let me ask you this.

You understand politics, government better than most.

You served on the county level.

You were the top person in the state legislature, and possibly, we'll see in 2025, if you choose to run for governor.

That being said, why the heck is it so difficult to have a candid, honest conversation about New Jersey's fiscal future?

Not just that your think tank or at other places that take it seriously, but in government, state government.

Why is that so difficult?

- Steve, because people really have a hard time having that honest conversation.

You know, you don't get a lot of kudos when you tell people the truth.

People want what they want the way they want it, and people like myself normally make enemies when you tell people, "Hey, listen, this is great, but you can't afford it," or, "Do it this way if you want to do it."

- Or you gotta make some cuts.

- Yeah, or you gotta make cuts.

You gotta make changes.

You have to approach government differently.

Like, my point is, we're doing these rebate programs, but what we haven't done is what we were focusing on when I was in the legislature, which was shared services, school consolidations, trying to rein in cost to get the true cost of government first.

You know, the legislature doesn't do property taxes.

Property taxes are- - Local government.

- Local and county levels, so we're taking money to plug holes locally, and Steve, I can tell you a lot of times when you do find savings and you pass them back to the towns, I can tell you firsthand, they don't cut taxes.

They just say, "Oh, now we can build the park we always wanted to build," or, "We can put the synthetic athletic field down."

That's what happens.

That's reality.

- We're talking to former senate president Steve Sweeney, the chair of the advisory board of the Sweeney Center for Public Policy at Rowan University.

Senator, let's talk about offshore wind.

Where are we?

What opportunity are we missing?

- Well, our great concern and the reason why we're drawing so much attention to offshore wind right now is when we did the legislation, Steve, in 2010, the focus was, yes, we wanna reduce carbon footprint.

Yes, we wanna have clean energy, but it was manufacturing.

That's what drove me.

It was my legislation with John Burzichelli and the assembly.

We passed this to capture all the manufacturing, to make it an American supply chain, and what's happened because there's been a disagreement on some federal tax credits that other states have already given to the wind developers, we were first in line.

Everyone was coming to us to build manufacturing, probably three to 4,000 manufacturing jobs.

Now, because there's a disagreement right now between the legislature and the administration, we're losing our spot.

It's like we're on the one-foot line.

We're ready to score a touchdown, and everyone's coming running after us, and they're gonna tackle us.

- What's holding us up, Senator?

- Well, there has to be an agreement where the federal government came out with tax credits to develop offshore wind.

We're already gonna build the offshore wind.

- Has New Jersey taken advantage of that?

- Other states have already said to these offshore wind producers, "Yes, cost of inflation, higher interest rates.

"It's more expensive steel.

"Here's the tax credits."

We have not done that yet.

The legislature and the administration need to come together on it, and Steve, the thing I fear the most is Orsted, who was promising to bring a GE facility, turbine nacelle facility and blade facility to Salem is now just inked a deal with New York State to put it up there.

You know, the whole goal of offshore wind was to create the manufacturing jobs to make it an American supply chain, you know, jobs program that, you know, one, we're cleaning up the environment, but most importantly, we're creating jobs here in New Jersey so people get jobs and go to work and make place better.

- We are honored to be joined by Steve Sweeney, the former president of the state senate and the chair the advisory board of the Sweeney Center for Public Policy at Rowan University.

Senator, thanks so much, my friend.

- Thanks for having me, Steve.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Senator Sweeney.

We'll see you next time.

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