the pot of money that pays for maintaining New Jersey's Transportation infrastructure gets to live for another five years after Governor Murphy today signed a bill renewing the State Transportation trust fund but in order to keep it in good standing the administration will raise the gas tax by about 2 cents a year and charge a new fee for electric vehicle owners senior political correspondent David Cruz has the details I could say that this is now the law of it was business as usual for governor Phil Murphy today celebrating the comparatively easy lift that became the effort to reauthorize the transportation trust fund we're going to invest billions of dollars into New Jersey's Transportation trust fund so we can keep our transportation system in tiptop shape this funding will cover the cost of Maintenance and repairs for everything from roads and highways to Bridges and tunnels to railroads and runways your tax dollars at work in other words roughly 2 cents a gallon on your gas annually for the next 5 years and new registration fees for electric vehicles starting at $250 and increasing annually up to 290 worth every penny says assembly speaker Craig Coughlin and you can tell a lot about the importance of legislation well first of all when the governor shows up and then when TV cameras show up you notice is a really big deal uh and that's what it is today it really truly is a big deal uh and we have where we have business and labor coming together Democrats and Republicans coming together people from across the state coming together to recognize how important this is for the future of New Jersey it did not have to go there one of the one of the ridiculous pieces of spin coming out of the Murphy Administration well we wanted to get this done so it didn't interfere with the budget process well that's BS it should have been an integral part of the budget process so being part of the budget process is an asset not a bug uh so it's a ridiculous line of of R of of torture rationale uh it could have waited it could have waited till the end of budget season we are not out of cash in the ttf uh there's no urgency here this is happening urgently just because they want to get it done quickly before the public has a real chance to get their head around it uh do another tax increase in addition to the billions of tax increases that are included in the budget for the governor was also his first appearance before the Press since his wife dropped out of the race for US Senate it didn't seem like the first thing he wanted to talk about but you got to ask if you could characterize the conversations that you had with the first lady regarding her recent decision nothing on private conversations David you won't be surprised by that so I'm not I'm neither the principal nor her manager but I'm incredibly proud of her um she went into this for the right reasons she stood for the right things she worked her tail off and it was a really tough decision for her there's very few people in this line of business who put party over self and that's exactly what she did incredibly incredibly proud of her he's also heard some of those out there starting to use the term lame duck when describing him I I when I see those headlines I laugh I noticed they didn't come from you so I was gratified to uh at least not yet yeah um we're sprinting through the tapine you got you if you looked at my schedule right now you would literally laugh at that statement with me we've got a lot more road to cover and uh I'm running around the state today yesterday tomorrow you name it with some weight off his shoulders the governor appears geared up for a budget season that could see some choppy Waters no place for a lame duck I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News