In fact, it's been more than four months since any legislation has been passed in New Jersey.

Lawmakers haven't meant for committees or votes since the budget passed at the end of June.

When they do return to Trenton later this month, it could be one of the most consequential lame duck sessions in recent years.

Budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer joins me now with a look at what's on their to do list.

John, good to see you again.

The dust has barely settled from this election, but lawmakers, they've got a lot of work to do.

What's lingering on their agenda that they haven't gotten to in the last few months?

Yeah really there's there's a whole host of issues that were sort of put to the side before the legislature really broke for the summer and then to get ready for this election.

And so whether we talk about the reforms that have been much discussed, when when we look at the veterans homes in New Jersey, which faced a lot of big issues that were exposed during the worst days of the COVID 19 pandemic, all of the clean energy legislation sort of that was an issue that percolated a little bit during the election.

But there's actually a lot of policy that's up for debate when it comes to this climate change response and the governor's clean energy agenda.

That's still still up for pending, you know, in the legislature, judicial vacancies.

We have the court system is still bogged down with a lot of openings at the superior court level when it comes to filling the ranks of the judges.

A teacher shortage.

We have concerns about NJ transit, long term financial health, too, to to take on whether that will happen in the lame duck or before we get to the next fiscal year remains to be seen.

But a whole host of issues.

And then lawmakers can also introduce a whole new batch of bills coming out of the break as well.

And so that could also play out.

Is this typical for a lame duck?

Because this has been a particularly long stretch of inactivity.

We've seen it before.

We've seen lawmakers sort of in the way of trying to avoid anything controversial that could upset voters.

Take these long pauses.

Perhaps this year's a little different because we have a lot of turnover or that's going to happen, not necessarily as a result of the election, but because we had a lot of lawmakers who had already announced that they were retiring.

So we're going to have a whole new crop come in in January.

But that also means we have a whole bunch of lawmakers who are going to be able to cast votes and then not have to sort of live with the consequences and face voters once again, because they're stepping down.

Yeah.

And with that turnover, I mean, it's about a quarter.

It is a quarter of the entire legislature that either retired was running for a different seat.

And so are there any issues that could just completely languish because those lawmakers are going to be out of a seat not too long from now?

Yeah, I think that's a really good question because on one hand, it gives them the flexibility to sort of maybe do something that they could be really good public policy, that they might not feel like they have the leeway to do when they're having to run for reelection.

On the other hand, there could be these policies that are hard to get to the finish line that are maybe not so much good public policy that then they feel emboldened to vote for because they don't have to answer to voters anymore.

So we might expect to see a little more controversial topics come up.

I wouldn't rule it out.

John Reitmeyer, budget and finance writer for us.

Thanks, John.

You're welcome.