♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gagas.

Brianna Vannozzi is off.

Coming up, lawmakers have a deal on a record $60.7 billion budget.

So when will the budget bill be released?

We'll get the latest.

Plus, we hear from one Democratic lawmaker on several pieces of legislation that may be passed in the larger budget bill.

But first, new data just released today shows a shocking uptick in the number of confirmed cancer cases around a former landfill site in Keyport.

We talked to the NJ.com reporter who broke this exclusive report.

That's next.

Funding for NJ Spotlight News, provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association and RWJBarnabas Health.

Learn more at rwjbh.org.

-Back in April, NJ.com first reported on an investigation into more than 40 cancer cases in the Keyport community near the site of the former Aero Marine facility, which closed in 1979 and is now a dormant landfill, but in just two months time, the number of documented cases uncovered has risen almost tenfold.

Concerns of a possible cancer cluster are growing in the community and they're calling on the state and the owners of the AeroMarine site for answers.

The woman behind this investigation is Karin Price-Muller, investigative reporter for NJ.com.

Karin, it is so great to have you on the show.

I know you've been investigating the suspected cancer cluster in Keyport that's around the site of the AeroMarine dump.

The you just reported are simply astounding.

Can you tell us what you found and what you released today since you started the investigation?

Sure.

And thanks for having us.

We started with 41 cases when we published our first report in April.

And since that time, we've reached out to the community and community members have come to us with concerns about cases in their families or even their own case.

So as of publication this morning, we were up to 370 cases that we considered confirmed or verified, which means we did some extra digging to try to get more information about the person who supposedly had cancer.

Then we still have a couple of dozen more that we have not yet verified.

So it wasn't a question of somebody saying, "Oh, my neighbor down the block had it."

We had to have the person's name and the diagnosis and where they lived and more information to count them as part of the entire report.

370 cases in what span of space?

What stretch of land does this cover?

So if you're familiar with the AeroMarine site, it is surrounded by the bay on one side and a creek that separates the landfill from Union Beach and then you have the key port part that's close to the landfill.

So what we considered for the study portion of this was everybody within 0.6 of a square mile around the landfill to all sides.

We did have cases that fell outside of that area and we are still keeping track.

Those are included in the 370 but as you know we had done this study taking a look at the incidence of cancer and for that we only included the people who were within that that six-tenths of a square mile.

When we talk about cancer cases can you give us some examples who is sick what are they struggling with?

It's really astounding because we have had pretty much every kind of cancer that you could name we've had blood cancers we've had kidney and liver and lung and you name the body part and people have come to us with the cases.

But what I find most interesting is so many of the people who have reported to us said that they had genetic testing done and they were told that no it's not a genetic cause it's environmental.

Now that of course doesn't mean it came from the landfill.

A person over their lifetime can come into many different environmental contaminants and so the work that we're doing doesn't show that it's necessarily from the landfill, but it is such a remarkable number of cases that everybody seems to think it deserves further study.

And there seems to be this increased percentage if you live in this very small radius, right, of getting cancer as compared to living anywhere else in the state of New Jersey?

- Yes, so the researcher who analyzed our data, what we did was take all the cases that were reported to us, which of course was not every single house in the area.

Then we had what we called non-reporting houses, and we added those sort of as a blank slate.

And to assign a cancer rate to those unreported houses, the researcher looked at the average for Monmouth County.

and after she analyzed the data, it showed that people who were within that landfill proximity in Keyport and Union Beach had a higher incidence of cancer than the rest of Monmouth County.

I know that that Aeromarine landfill has been found to have benzene, arsenic, vinyl chloride, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls, if I'm saying that correctly, also methane, which doesn't fall into the same category, but is an explosive.

And yet at the same time, I know that the threshold for the state of New Jersey to assign or designate a space as a cancer cluster is very, very high.

We saw that with Colonia.

They did not give the designation or the classification there.

What has the state said in terms of whether it will or when it will investigate this site and these cancer cases?

So there are several steps that the state has to go through and the first one is ongoing as we speak.

The Department of Environmental Protection is doing a new study alongside with the potential buyer for the site who had finally received a permit to do the testing after our story ran the first one in April.

So they're doing similar testing to what was done in 2010.

So right now we're looking at 16 years where there really wasn't additional testing.

Once those tests are completed and the data is analyzed, they're going to determine whether or not there is a so-called pathway for human exposure.

And that is supposed to tell people whether or not whatever chemicals may be found there could have gotten to people.

At that point, the data then goes to the health department, who will do its own independent analysis to see if they see a pathway.

And they're the ones who would take the next steps to determine if something could actually be a cancer cluster.

But it does take years and years to do that research.

And something else that I think is really important that the residents have said to me, that area, because of all the water surrounding it, often floods.

Not just Sandy and nor'easters before that, but there's regular flooding.

And people question whether or not the water flooding could actually be a pathway, bringing toxins into neighborhoods from the landfill, which we know was never properly cleaned up and had been leaching different chemicals and could that have been a pathway to bring some contaminants to people's homes?

So that's a big question.

Yeah, has the state indicated whether they'll consider flooding as a pathway?

They haven't really answered that question when I've asked it.

It's um, I guess we'll see.

Um, Aero Marine has been to $900,000 at this point more than 1.2 million, mo So we had this testing in there were inspections, t There were no fines when somebody was interested i it.

So D. E. P. Said that they didn't proceed with fines at that time because they wanted to see if a purchase could go through.

And time went on and time went on and that deal fell through.

I don't know exactly when that deal was ended, but there were inspections, but there were no fines until the first one in 2021, which was just $15,000.

And then it escalated.

Finally, there was a $230-something-thousand-dollar fine, and then the $900,000.

So we're now at more than $1.2 million.

And the owner of the site, Bayridge Realty, is actually trying to fight those fines in court.

So as of right now, no one is responsible.

No one's paid.

There's a community suffering.

In the end, what are local residents asking for?

They want it to be cleaned up, and they want answers.

Because it is so difficult to determine an actual cancer cluster, we may never know exactly what caused all of these people's cancers.

But it's understandable that they're worried, they're concerned, and they just want it cleaned up.

So if the current prospective buyer does go through with the purchase, they would be doing all the cleanup.

But the responsibility at this point is still on the current owner.

And yes, not a penny has been paid in those fines.

Well, incredible reporting.

Great job.

And I know your investigation continues even as we speak right now.

Karin Price Muller, investigative reporter with NJ.com, great work and thank you.

Thank you.

A budget deal has been reached.

The announcement came earlier today in a joint statement from Governor Mikey Sherrill, Senate President Nick Scatari, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin.

They said the 60.7 billion dollar budget will accomplish several things, provide tax relief including the Stay NJ program for seniors, expand child tax credit benefits for families, and cut the state's structural deficit in half.

But the details of the budget won't be known until it's released.

Earlier today, I spoke about that and more with Senator John McCann from the 27th District as part of our Under the Dome series.

Senator, it's great to have you with us.

Thanks so much for taking some time.

At the time that we're talking right now, we hear that there is a deal reached between the legislature and the governor's office.

So I'm going to ask you the question we all want to know.

When will a budget bill be released?

Yeah, I would suspect, I think the Budget Committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow, Wednesday the 24th and again on Friday.

I would suspect that the completed budget bill will be heard on Friday and that on the following Monday the entire legislature will be present to vote on a number of pieces of legislation as well as the budget itself.

I have to ask you about process because it's something we hear over and over again from constituents from other lawmakers.

Democrats and Republicans alike have been critical of the process.

They say it's just not transparent enough.

There's not enough time to do a deep dive on all the elements of this massive bill.

Do you take issue with a bill coming out on a Friday that's for, you know, the budget for the entire year and being passed on a Monday or a Tuesday?

Well, you have to remember what the bill is, is a compilation of what have been literally hundreds of hours of public hearings that have been going on since March.

So that's always not true as it relates to the transparency.

Each department, every dollar of a $60 billion budget being a matter of scrutinized over the public waste.

As it relates to the fine detail that has to do with language and things that take a lot when you're dealing with this kind of volume.

So I don't feel that way at all.

I think that this governor, as has the last, has gone out of their way to be as transparent as possible with the practicalities of coming, bumping up against a July 1st deadline.

So just to stay on that, do you see no room for improvement in terms of when and how budgets are presented?

There's always room for improvement when it comes down to it.

But I mean, for at least 48 hours it will be before it can be voted on.

So it will be passed down on Friday.

It'll be Monday until we act on it.

But again, you're leaving out the four months that preceded this going back to March with the governor's budget address, which laid out everything that she planned.

And what, quite frankly, the number that she planned on expenditures of $60.7 billion is exactly what we are about to adopt.

Not exactly that type of spending, but for the most part, just what everybody's seen for four months now.

- Yeah, not too many things have changed from what we know so far in terms of what she laid out.

But again, from what we know so far, I wanna talk specific pieces of legislation.

I don't know if these will be included in the votes next week, but I know you supported a bill that would ban micro-betting here in the state.

It would ban anyone who has a license for sports betting from offering or accepting micro-bets.

Why do you believe that that's the right move for New Jersey?

Yeah, I mean, listen, we could talk for an hour about gambling and issues.

The GD is out of the bottle.

We're the first state to do it, and thus we know that about 5.6% of people that have gambled have become problem gamblers.

That's a huge swath of people.

That's 200,000 New Jerseyans that have a gambling issue.

And we really need to do much by way of dealing with that, especially because the biggest group among that number are young men and young people in general.

But from a micro bet perspective, I mean, it's ridiculous when you think about it.

You can sit there and gamble on whether or not somebody is gonna make the next foul shot, whether or not the next football play is going to be a run or a pass.

It's the kind of thing that you could just sit on your phone and just you can imagine the dopamine rushes, the compulsion, and it leads to people spending money they really can't afford.

So we now need to do something to rein this all in.

And I think that's a great first step among many, many others.

Yeah, some people say that it allows for interference in the game.

If somebody knows that their friends could make some money on the first pitch being a ball, then the game can be compromised.

You do have a Republican colleague who voted against it, said now is not the time for New Jersey to not be competitive when it comes to online gaming.

You don't agree with that?

No, not even a little bit.

At what risk?

At the social risk of... It was one thing people have gambled on sports forever, but it was a small percentage of persons.

Now that we've opened it up and legalized it, again, there's half of New Jerseyans, 4.5 million or more of us have bet at one time or the other.

Many of the people that bet are under 21 or under 18, truth be told.

So we really need to get a handle on this.

We can't just be so addicted to the tax revenues that come from it that we're going to just turn a blind eye to the social implications.

And this is the time for us to be leaders and to move forward.

The Climate Superfund Act, you are supportive of this move that would, it's called the Polluters Pay to Make New Jersey More Affordable Act.

It requires fossil fuel companies to pay about $50 billion over 25 years for climate change damages.

Why do you support this move?

Well, I've sponsored this along with a number of colleagues and working on it for several years now.

Support this move, it's either the polluters pay, meaning the oil companies that have made record profits, multiple billions, if not trillions of dollars, or the taxpayer pays.

So, you know, you choose if you're an elected official.

You know, climate change, sadly, as much as we've tried, is here, and now we've got to pivot to climate resiliency.

This is about target hardening, our bridges, our roadways, our schools, our infrastructure, all these, our coastline.

All of this has to be hardened and dealt with, not only by way of damage, but way of keeping catastrophe from being visited on our state.

I mean, just think of the Meadowlands underwater.

Think of Port Newark, Bayonne.

I mean, it's beyond what it could do to be cataclysmic to the economy of the state.

We need to be prepared and someone's got to pay for it.

So it's either the people that are profiting or it's the taxpayer.

-A lot of lawyers in the business community, including Michelle Sikirka, who we had on the show yesterday, said that this unfairly penalizes companies that operated within the rules at the time that this is a retroactive penalty that will result in costs being passed down to customers, loss of jobs, and simply just bad for the business community here in New Jersey.

How do you respond to that?

-Yeah, total malarkey times 10.

It sounds like what the tobacco industry used to sound like, while we were just playing by the rules.

Truth be told, is this is going to create union jobs vis-a-vis the expenditure of those dollars to the point of 18,000 jobs.

The point of fact is that the way oil prices are set, just look at what's happened in the state of Hormuz, have nothing to do with New Jersey requiring polluters to pay.

And I can get into the detail if you'd like to, but we've had Nobel Prize winning economists come and testify to us to say, "This won't be passed on to the customer by one I owed it.

It just can't be the way that the prices are set."

So that's just an excuse.

And Shills, for the oil industry, who extraordinarily hasn't come out and said anything, they've got others that are speaking that way for them.

That to me, it gets me crazy because business and industry, there's 1.8 million businesses in New Jersey.

They're positively impacted by this.

Otherwise, their taxes are going to have to go into paying it.

They're standing up for what are 82 of the world's largest conglomerates that extract fuel.

I mean, give me a break.

All right.

We've got to leave it there.

Senator John McKeon in the 27th Legislative District.

Appreciate your perspective today.

Thank you.

Appreciate being here.

Thank you for having me.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

So yes, a budget deal has been reached, but lawmakers still have to present and then vote to pass the state budget.

The deadline is one week away.

So when will they get a final copy?

And how transparent has the process been this year?

Here to give us some analysis is our budget and finance writer, John Reitmeyer.

John, great to see you.

We've heard a whole lot about transparency in the budgeting process since Governor Sherrill took office.

She said that would be a big priority for her.

We are now one week away from the deadline where the state has to pass this budget.

As someone who's been covering the process for years, do you see anything different in terms of the process this year?

It's great to be with you, Joanna.

And at this point, this is playing out largely the way it has the last, you know, several years going back, you know, really about a decade in New Jersey.

Lawmakers like to take this down to the wire.

And I think when you're about a week away from the deadline, when you're going to spend more than $60 billion in taxpayer resources, that this really is, you know, coming down to the wire.

So there are still days in this process that that will play out and changes that may be made to what the governor has proposed.

So that will be the real test on on transparency.

You know, there were calls earlier this year to have this budget process already done by now.

There have been lawmakers from both sides of the partisan divide calling for a timeline that would see a spending bill in place by, say, June 15th.

Well, clearly we've missed that deadline.

And if you look around at other states that have a July to June fiscal year, many have already adopted their budgets.

Rhode Island, Illinois, Arizona, you can go around the country.

New Jersey does it very late.

And as you noted, the trade-off for doing it this way means that there's very little time for people to see what makes it into the final spending bill while the lawmakers are still, you know, considering the bill.

-How big is this spending bill?

What do lawmakers have to comb through in that short amount of time?

-Yeah, and I think two things can be true at the same time.

So a lot of what will probably be the final spending bill has been out for months, and it will be based off of a template that the governor put forward starting in March and then more detail came out a few weeks later.

It's some of the changes on the margins that can be significant changes that get added or tweaked at the last minute.

One example is funding for the Stay NJ program.

It's a property tax relief program that benefits hundreds of thousands of senior homeowners in New Jersey.

The governor has proposed significant changes to that program that would alter both who can qualify for benefits and what the size of benefits will be for many seniors.

So while that's a fraction of total spending, that's a really important issue that remains unresolved and eventually when it is resolved, word will have to get spread to all of the seniors who rely on this program to help defray their high property tax bills.

These are the types of things that when this process plays out, while much of the budget will likely remain the same from what the governor proposed, there are significant changes, even if the dollar amount is a fraction of total spending, that do impact real people in New Jersey.

And there was a recent poll that showed that a majority of New Jersey voters do not like last minute changes to the budget.

So it's not just say good government groups and reporters who complain about this.

Let me just quickly on that, you know, that you mentioned legislators who passed or excuse me, who introduced bills to change the timing.

Those all would have had to be introduced in the assembly.

They didn't happen.

It also happens to be the Assembly Speaker who's pushing for more with stay on J. Does the legislature not have much ambition here or motivation to make those changes?

So one thing to note, because there's often a lot of confusion, the state constitution requires bills that raise revenue to originate in the Assembly.

So that allows lawmakers in the Senate or the Assembly, if they wanna propose changes to the budgeting process, that's kind of fair game.

And we did see members of both party and we saw sign on from both houses for changes to the budgeting process.

Now, some of this is spelled out in the state constitution.

So you can't pass laws that change that the notion that the budget should be balanced.

the notion that the governor has what's called the line item veto.

at the end of the process, she gets to remove items in the final bill that makes it out of both houses of the legislature that she doesn't agree with while not vetoing the full spending bill itself.

so there are parts of this process are constitutionally mandated, but there are other ways that changes to the process could be made and they've been discussed now by some lawmakers, but leadership, in this case the majority Democrats who are running both the Assembly and Senate dictating what bills make it to the floor for votes, you know, leadership has clearly not made those types of changes a priority.

We have the state worker, I should say the public worker pension fund has been invested in geo group and Palantir two companies that contract with the federal government participate with ice.

There have been calls for divestment.

Where has treasury landed in terms of whether or not it will divest?

Well, the big thing is, so the public worker pension fund that you mentioned is an $85 billion fund that covers the retirements of hundreds of thousands of current and retired workers in New Jersey.

The fund has an immense amount of investments.

And in some cases, when we look at the sheets of all the companies, we do find companies that are doing things that become newsworthy.

And in this case, the investments in companies that are doing business with the federal government and specifically, Homeland Security as part of the immigration crackdown, have drawn the attention of both advocates and lawmakers in New Jersey.

What we learned recently is the Division of Investment within Treasury has sold a stake in the company known as Geo Group, which has become noteworthy because it operates the Delaney Hall facility in Newark.

And then there's also an investment in a technology firm called Palantir.

Last we checked, that was about $115 million, so a small drop in an $85 billion fund.

So just a couple seconds left, John.

Where did we end up there?

We still own the pension fund itself still owns the Palantir stake, although lawmakers are trying to pressure through law for divestment.

And of course, there was a bill introduced that would require divestment when a company infringes on data privacy to determine a person's immigration status.

still needs to move through the legislature, though.

Yes?

It's been introduced and it has yet to receive a hearing in either the Assembly or Senate, so it remains pending.

Yeah.

All right.

Good stuff.

John Reitmeyer, budget and finance writer for us.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us and we'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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