How does NJ’s budget process work? | Chat Box

our next guest has seen his share of budgets and budget negotiations as a state senator for 20 years 12 as Senate President he just stepped back from the Sweeney Center at Rowan University to run for governor Senator Steve Sweeney joins us now Senator good to see you man it's great to see you again David so you missed this time of year of course you do when you've been involved with this before you know budgets are very important times of the year to you know this is how we fund our government and getting it right is important so yeah just because I left office or lost my election doesn't mean I don't pay attention yeah so I always wonder how much advanced notice like the Senate President a and the speaker get not as much as you think you know what I mean because the administration is trying to keep it secret until they make the announcement and that's that's fair that's not unreasonable you know so normally what we would experience David is you would be running a story about the same time I'd be hearing about it yeah you know you know so you know that's that's the way it works and and that's it's fair to the governor it's his budget you know that he gives to the legislature so you know he wants to keep it tight until he can make the announcement was it different under the previous governor no not really it's pretty much the same with every Governor I I've dealt with is that uh you know this process as you know David they'll brief the they'll brief the brief the Press they embargo the stories until certain times yeah as they're telling us you know as we're being told what the budget contains on my phone I can see the stories popping up so now what happens generally who looks at the numbers does the assembly move things along first do both houses work simultaneously both do David both houses are going to take this budget document and they're going to they'll comb through it see what they like what they don't like and once both houses get together they'll compare notes see where they agree and look where they you know and obviously recognize where they don't agree and they'll get working together on it so is this where the office of legislative Services comes in I mean uh the the lawmakers represent a dozen different uh fields of expertise but not a lot of you know like accountants for instance so is that where you get experts in well you know listen you get experts honestly from doing it like senator Paul Sara yeah he's been doing this for a long time no one knows the budget better than Paul H there's no secrets Steve Oro was another brilliant guy when it came the budgets they absolutely understand it my former colleague and now Senator belli he he understood it so like I said it's a process it's an interesting process and uh at the end of the day you really do learn how to make it work you know none of us come there as experts but you learn it after a little while yeah uh I assume that you watched on uh Tuesday uh what was your impression what stood out to you in this budget well you know David I did watch and I was actually very proud of some of the things the Govern to highlight it like getting to the full pension payment you know we started that a long time ago and to get to the to full required pension payment and now I think for the fourth year in a row you know was very important to me when we started and you to started under previous governor finish is finishing with this Governor school funding finally getting to the to the full school funding formula that you know we spearheaded back in 2018 to get to full funding and what I'm really excited about is Senator Vin gopel is following through with something that I was wanted to do which is you got to look at the school funding formula every five years to make sure it's meeting all of its goals and then David the commitment to New Jersey Transit is something Senator Weinberg and I actually proposed in February of 2020 right before Co hit it's exactly what the governor proposed it's the right thing to do we need to fund Transit uh we got to remember businesses received a 14% tax cut at the expense of States like New Jersey because the salt tax uh elimination that they did so business has got a big tax cut people in New Jersey and in a lot of these blue States got a huge tax increase so asking the business Community for some help you know by the way they can deduct this on their taxes is is you know so it even softens the blow even further to finally come up with the dedicated funding source that's all we always talked about was the dedicated funding source for New Jersey Transit and I want to congratulate Governor Murphy for you know coming up with a plan and honestly just looking back that Senator Weinberg and I had proposed this and now basically it's been accepted it's it's it's great he he's calling it the corporate Transit fee which is sort of like a less painful corporate business business tax sech charge uh is it fair to business considering the benefits they derive from reliable Transit I think the business Community is the one that benefits the most from this because people can get to work like where I live David you hear about Transit deserts there isn't any so and you hear how businesses are complaining that they can't get Workers to work so look at the end of the day they can write this off it's it's a benefit to to to the industries to ensure that they get the supply of workers that they need to run their businesses yeah so let's get back to that school funding formula uh you mentioned Senator goal uh others also have said that it you're going to be funding a broken formula it needs to be blown up are they right no no not at all but it does have to be readdressed the formula was done back under Governor Corine and under Governor Corine's formulate listen the one thing we don't do that we need to do more of is revisit laws that we passed to make sure they're actually doing what we say they're going to do yeah so no it's not it doesn't need to be blown up and redone it was this funding formula was approved by the courts there was a whole lot of hard work to get there what we need to do though is to re-evaluate the funding formula every five years to make adjustments if need be so what happen happens now the lawmakers are going to mark this budget up during and after a series of hearings is there anything in there that you think is gonna face some resistance from lawmakers there always is David you know every line has a priority to a legislator or constituency group but the reality is the money is just not there like it was before yeah so you know if you don't have it you really can't spend it you know we're spending down Surplus by a couple billion dollars and we got to be careful when doing that he also told uh lawmakers to cooler Jets when it comes to uh Christmas Tree items in fact he he mostly zeroed out a lot of the Christmas Tree items that got passed late in June last year you one of those people who says let's get rid of the Christmas Tree items or put your name on them when you propose them well number one you should put your name on if you if you're you know that's what the budget resolution is supposed to yeah do to start with but you know you only can spend money that you have they're cutting into Surplus right now in order to continue to do what they're doing you know David we have great programs but again you can't spend money that you don't have we're not the federal government they can just print more money or you know tell the tell the the mint to work an extra shift to print more money we have to live within our means and we're going have to look at a lot of this stuff the way we're funding and what we're funding and how we're funding it you know our tax relief programs are critically important to the people in this state of New Jersey and you know making them you know we got different programs trying to make them more organized or consistent or easier to understand I think is something that's important