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- From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

- Hello, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

We're bringing you a special NJ Spotlight News edition of Reporters Roundtable, where I'll have a roundup of the top political stories of the week with the help of a panel of local journalists.

Reporters Roundtable starts right now.

We've talked about it for months and the deadline is now here.

The state budget has to be approved by Tuesday, June 30th to avoid a government shutdown.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

This is Reporters Roundtable.

We've got a panel of journalists here with us to help break down all that's happened in the last week of New Jersey news.

Let's meet our panel.

We have Colleen Wilson, Transportation Reporter with The Record and NorthJersey.com.

We've got Brent Johnson, Politics Reporter for NJ Advanced Media, and Dustin Racioppi, Editor for Politico NJ.

Well, on Tuesday, Governor Sherrill announced that she reached a deal with the Democratic Legislative Leadership on key budget items that they say will, quote, "make the Garden State more affordable and protect the state from the Trump administration's dangerous policies that harm residents."

Brent, I'm gonna come to you.

We still don't know when this budget bill will be released, but I know you did speak with a source earlier this week who gave you some detail on StayNJ.

That's the property tax relief program for seniors.

What can you tell us about how that program will be structured as we know now?

Yeah, that was a big sticking point in negotiations.

In her budget address in March, Sherrill said that she wanted to cut the income eligibility in that in half from $500,000 to $250,000 and to reduce the maximum payout from $6,500 to $4,000.

So, they met kind of somewhere in the middle.

Craig Coughlin, the state assembly speaker, was the big sponsor of that program.

So she had to work with him.

And they came to a deal where they would lower the income eligibility even lower to $20,000, but lower and moderate income residents would get more of a payout.

$200,000.

$200,000.

No, sorry.

$200,000.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

And that it would lower the income eligibility, but also keep the high-end maximum payouts for lower and middle-class residents.

So it's kind of a meet-in-the-middle type thing.

It changes, it makes broad changes to the program, keeps it intact.

And sources told me that Cawthon was told that there's assurances that this program will continue into the future.

So that was a sticking point that was resolved.

But there's a lot of other things about this budget we don't know yet.

We do know that there has to be a certain amount of money in the surplus in order for the StayNJ program to be funded, according to the legislation that wrote that program.

But Brent, we're seeing early indications that she did increase the surplus or is planning to, yes?

Yes, the surplus will go up from about what she proposed, a little over five billion to six billion in the end.

But there's also, you'll also hear lawmakers say they could change the language in the budget to make sure that that program is included, even if it doesn't meet the law's threshold for surplus.

There's a lot of, you know, maneuvering that lawmakers do to make these things work.

Yeah.

Colleen, I want to talk to you about NJ Transit and what funding looks like in this budget.

I know that they adopt their budget in July.

What are the numbers, the early numbers, obviously, without seeing the budget bill that NJ Transit can expect?

Yeah, look, as far as I know, all we have to go on is that New Jersey Transit is supposed to get a pretty good bump.

New Jersey Transit routinely, annually asks and provides a budget to the governor, and then oftentimes it gets slashed with a new proposal that gets proposed in February like everyone else.

But this year, New Jersey Transit put forward a budget that would be around $1.67 billion, which is a $230 million increase from last year.

And Sherrill accepted that and included that in her budget, which I know Chris Collori has said is unprecedented.

So as far as I know, that is still intact.

I haven't heard anything about that getting slashed.

It's always possible.

So we'll just have to see.

But that was kind of a big deal for New Jersey Transit to get a pretty fair bump, especially given the budget climate.

Where does that money get spent?

What have they outlined?

Yeah, so that is their operating budget.

So that's going to be on labor costs.

That's going to be on World Cup costs that are going up.

And we're seeing kind of a deficit there because the ridership isn't as high.

I'm sure we'll talk about that more.

So that's going to be what it costs to literally put buses and trains on the system and fix up train stations, take your smaller fixes and things like that.

Yeah, Dustin, during all the years of the Murphy administration, every time they announced the budget, there were these key points.

It was, we funded schools, we funded the pension.

Now, interesting to see that the two top line items that were put out in this announcement, first was the StayNJ program that we just talked about, but the second was this child tax credit.

Can you explain what that is?

I'm not even sure that most New Jerseyans are fully aware of this.

- Well, yeah, that's why you have to have an accountant who knows about it and explains it to you, because I'm kind of in the same boat when I do my taxes.

But the long and short of it is that, parents with children under a certain age, I think it's five years old, they get a thousand dollar tax credit when they go to do their taxes.

And what the legislature is proposing here is bumping that up by 25%, which for all practical purposes, any little bit helps, especially in this climate where housing and cost for everything is so high.

So every little bit really helps.

And it also helps the lawmakers too, because they can go out on the campaign trail next year and say to the younger families, look at all the money that we put back in your pocket and they can say the same thing to the seniors with Stan J and say, when you guys go to do your taxes, you're going to be in a lot better shape thanks to us, not thanks to Donald Trump.

What do you make of the strategy really when you kind of step back and look, the fact that as you just said, they're really highlighting families with young children and seniors.

There's a whole chunk of, you know, kind of middle of the road families and individuals in this state who are also dealing with affordability issues that aren't really highlighted in these top line items.

What do you make of the strategy?

Well, I mean, I guess you can't please everybody all the time.

You know, people like Governor Sherrill can say, yeah, we're trying to freeze, you know, broadly, you know, energy costs with her executive order.

But, you know, I don't know if anybody's really actually feeling that and saying, oh, my gosh, look at what the governor and political leaders are doing for my energy bill, because people are still feeling it there.

They're still feeling it when they pay 65 or 75 dollars for gas and they, you know, walk out of the grocery store with one bag of groceries for 100 dollars.

So, yeah, there's always more that could be done.

I don't know if there's anything else on the horizon for a more, you know, broad based relief for folks.

But at this point, it doesn't look like there's anything else in the budget.

And that's part of the issue, is like, we don't know what's in there.

But if there was something more broad-based, they certainly would let us know about it.

Yeah.

It's the Christmas tree items that are always kind of the biggest point of contention at the end of the process, because those are the add-ons that we see where legislators can make requests for various funding items.

Brent, when it comes to Christmas tree items, the governor said she wants to do away with them completely.

So I'm going to ask you first, do we have any indication that she's going to allow some of those back in?

Yeah, well, there's, sources have told me that she's allowing, they agreed to $400 million for across both chambers of the legislature.

It would be $200 million for the Senate, $200 million for the Assembly.

We don't really know what those are going to fund.

Those are still being worked out.

That's one of the big question marks as we go into this mad rush to the final deadline on Tuesday.

But her people who support her, her allies, will stress that she did say in the budget speech and since then that if you make additions, you have to find some subtractions too.

And that's what she said they did in the deal, was that she found cuts to offset those additions, but we don't know what they are yet.

And that's part of the problem.

So just to put that in context, that $400 million is down from during the Murphy administration at one point about a billion dollars in add-ons that we saw at the end of the budget.

Yeah, last year I think we saw more than $700 million.

Yeah, last year we saw more than $700 million in the end.

I spoke to Republican Budget Officer Declan O'Scanlan earlier this week and he said, "Look, we see all of these funding cuts for really important programs like various health programs and various non-profits around the state."

He said, "That's where we should be putting our money."

So do you have a sense of what was cut?

How many programs, how many non-profits saw drastic, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding cuts?

That is the big question.

Again, we don't, part of the thing is they had this deal on Tuesday and they highlighted certain things, some details, but a lot of details were left out.

And I feel like some of that is still being done behind closed doors right now, so there's no list yet.

That's still the mystery.

And that's one of the things good government advocates, progressive advocates, and Republicans complain about, that this should be done earlier because there's too much of a mad rush in the final days of trying to figure all this out and the public is left in the dark.

So I guess we'll find out more as we get closer to Tuesday's deadline or maybe, you know, it's possible they could pass this budget and we still won't know exactly what it's funded until afterwards.

Yeah, and we did hear a whole lot from the governor talking about transparency and that this was going to be a year that looked very different than other years.

Give me a thumbs up, thumbs down if you think this looks very different and much more transparent.

Again, we won't really know until right now.

No, we don't know a lot of details.

And that's part of the problem that critics are saying is that we don't know enough.

Well, we're talking on June 26th.

I think the facts just speak for themselves.

It's Friday, June 26th.

The budget's got to be signed within four days and nobody knows what's in it except for like three people.

So there's your answer.

- There you go.

Colleen, you said we'll probably get into NJ Transit and the funding for World Cup.

We are, you are correct.

I did speak with Chris Calori, President and CEO of NJ Transit and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority this week.

I asked him, what do they expect to be their revenue losses given the fact that they planned for about 40,000 riders, maximum 40,000 riders per game.

Right now they're averaging somewhere between 22,000 to 25,000.

Have you run those numbers?

Do you have a sense of what type of budget hole they're looking at?

- Yeah, I did start running those numbers.

And again, they're kind of back of the envelope math, but if they're supposed to make somewhere around $3.9 million, if they sold out every single match, they are allotted 40,000 tickets for each World Cup match.

So based on that, they would get around $3.9 million at $98 a ticket for 40,000 people per match.

So they're only getting, they're taking in a little over $2 million each match.

So they're down, again, by my math, like a little over $6 million.

So that's good.

I think that New Jersey Transit's goal was to break even on this.

They've been pretty clear about their numbers and trying to justify that $98 ticket price.

But I think there is a lot going on that to try to explain why they aren't selling out or why they're not even getting close to selling out.

Yeah, and you could say competitive pricing from New York, who dropped some of their shuttle prices right before the World Cup started.

And so that drove people onto the roads rather than the trains.

I did ask Kalori, what happens if you have this budget hole?

How do you make that up?

And he said, I promise right now, I will not go to the governor.

I will not go to the legislature to ask for a penny more.

Okay, how do you make up the loss unless you're increasing ridership costs?

Where does he come up with those funds?

How do you do that?

Yeah, I asked him the same question last week and I got the same answer.

And so what that means is, again, we haven't gotten more information about, and frankly, because we don't know what the, what that cost is going to be yet.

So it kind of depends on the scale of it, I suppose, where you cut.

But here's the thing to remember, New Jersey Transit riders are getting a 3% fare increase on July 1st.

So right in the middle of this tournament, where they have already endured, you know, a lot of accessibility issues getting through Penn Station and Secaucus and other major hubs because of this tournament, in addition to other delays and problems that they've encountered this year and service problems, especially as they were trying to get Portal North Bridge online and the second track is going to be this coming year.

So basically, the point is they have endured a lot of inconvenience to put it nicely, I think, and patience.

So going to them seems, you know, politically unlikely.

I don't know.

It would be, that would be a big hit for riders.

So what does that leave you with?

That means cuts at the agency.

What that looks like, where they can cut, who knows?

Yeah, I mean, they did get creative and brought in some sponsorships.

And that did help drive down some of the ticket prices.

I'm not sure if he's planning anything like that.

I don't want to put words in his mouth.

But and we should also note that that 3% increase is grandfathered in right under legislation passed during the Murphy administration.

So this is not a Sherrill administration, piece of legislation there.

But Dustin, I want to just go ahead.

I'm sorry.

One other thing I just thought of is that, you know, they the big one of the big plans from Calori has been the land plan and their assets and their their property.

So, you know, is that a good in a quick kind of an easy way to offload property and bring in cash quickly?

That's something that we might see?

I wonder.

Yeah, yeah.

Dustin, let's switch gears because do we have a reemergence of Congressman Tom Kaine Jr.

in District 7?

We're supposed to.

He said that he will be back to work on the Hill on June 30th and said that's when he'll start, you know, spilling the beans on where he's been since March.

And hopefully, presumably, that will bring a lot of answers and for his sake, an end to the stakeouts outside of his various homes and properties.

He's been pestered by reporters for months now, and everybody's really eager to hear what he has to say, because it's almost unprecedented for a sitting lawmaker to just vanish like this, with no explanation whatsoever to the public, to his constituents.

So, you know, come June 30th, when he shows up in Washington, he's going to be surrounded by probably a large swarm of reporters with a lot of questions.

And for anybody who knows Tom Koehner has dealt with him, he's not exactly the most outgoing or press-friendly person.

He's just a more reserved person, naturally.

Doesn't offer up a whole lot of answers on things, but this is a point in his career and extraordinary circumstances where I think he has to be 100% forthcoming.

Well, as I understand it, there's an invitation to a fundraiser that was circulated among press on that same day that he's coming back.

So he's coming back and he's immediately going to start asking for money.

My question to you is, do Republicans have any choice but to coalesce around him?

Do you think that that absence makes any difference?

Because they understand that I'm sure District 7 is important?

Yeah, it's extremely important.

It's one of the country's most competitive races come November.

Every indication that we've gotten so far from Republicans and people close to the representative are that he's going to be running for re-election.

The fundraiser indicates that.

Because we don't know the circumstances of his absence, it's kind of hard to try to get like a gauge of, you know, how he will act going forward.

But the presumption at this point is that he's gonna, you know, hit the ground running, so to speak.

And he needs to raise money because it is such an extremely competitive race.

So in that sense, it makes a lot of sense to be holding this fundraiser on the day that he gets back.

And look, to be fair, he's always been a very strong fundraiser.

And so you would imagine, I would imagine that he might get a really solid turnout here.

We will be watching.

But Brent, just looking more broadly at the Republican Party, you wrote a story this week looking at where the party's headed.

I'm curious what you heard from leaders and just elected officials within the Republican Party as to where they see their future.

Yeah, big debate going on after what happened in last year's elections.

Basically, the thought was last year's governor's race was going to be close, and Sherrill ended up winning by 14 points, giving, and the legislature now has their lowest number of Republicans since the Watergate era.

So there's a lot of questions about how to go forward.

One of the big debates is, you know, do they move away from Donald Trump and MAGA?

Jack Ciatarelli, the Republican nominee for governor last year, had a more open embrace of Trump last - this time compared to previous campaigns.

And then the question is, well, maybe it's not even Trump's fault at all, is they just have to be more authentic and more aggressive, and you're seeing some of that in the legislature.

But yeah, some people worry that the party's kind of rudderless right now, but they also think that there's a path here because the Democratic Party is starting to lean more left, and they think that maybe getting back to the middle, voters in the middle will be the way to go.

But that's a big question mark.

This is the lowest the party's been in a while in New Jersey.

It's a very blue state, more than it's ever been.

And that's something that I guess next year we'll start to figure out as we get into the final stretch of Donald Trump's presidency and we have legislative elections in both chambers next year.

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, the midterms are going to set a tone nationally as well.

And sometimes the needle swings back.

So we'll be watching to see what happens there.

Colleen, you know, we talked a lot about NJ Transit and World Cup.

I want to just get into this a bit more.

The New York-New Jersey Host Committee, it's important to note, led by former First Lady Tammy Murphy, you've been taking a close look into how they've supported or not supported New Jersey through this whole World Cup coming to the state.

Just give me your assessment there.

Yeah, we did a deep dive into who's on the host committee staff and the board and the foundation that supports the host committee.

So just to be clear, the host committee is this kind of unusual middleman organization that has to navigate the local governments and partner agencies like New Jersey Transit, the MTA, and so on, to make the state police and that sort of thing, to make an event successful.

But they also are kind of working on behalf of FIFA.

They have certain expectations that FIFA has of them to accomplish, like the FanFest and things like that.

So, they're already just kind of this weird, unusual group that is right in the middle.

But yes, it is mostly stacked with Murphy allies and associates, both individuals who have worked on his campaigns, worked in his administration, but also firms of, you know, like fundraising firms and law firms that have links to him or other folks like Alex Lazzari, who's the CEO of that committee.

And so that begs this question, which is what the article was really about is, on the one hand, you have a lot of government officials who know the landscape and know the environment and can work through those, you know, unique processes more astutely, perhaps than others.

But on the other hand, is this a way of advancing the interests of Murphy Alleys?

Is it a way of rewarding people who have worked with him?

And we really don't know the full answer to that yet.

We're still waiting to see really how successful this tournament is for the state of New Jersey from a fiscal perspective, a tourism perspective, and everything else.

- Yeah.

Quickly, Dustin, I know Congresswoman Lamonica McIver had her hearing before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia this week trying to dismiss the case.

What can you tell us about the arguments and whether there's any indication how the appellate court is going to decide this?

It's an open question.

I mean, she went before a three-judge panel in Delaware earlier this week, you know, making the case that she is a political target akin to people like Senator Mark Kelly, former FBI Director James Comey.

But, you know, there are, there were, you know, like fair questions that were raised about, you know, her role as a Congress member versus, you know, raising questions about constitutional protections that she had, like, just a lot of hair splitting that just raises questions about, like, we don't know where these judges' heads are at.

So it's, as she puts it, it's a pretty frightening time for her.

She faces up to 17 years in prison, and she showed up to court very visibly pregnant.

So there's this prospect of a sitting Congress member going to prison, but there's really no way to divine how the judges were thinking coming out of that hearing.

And of course, this is just a motion before this goes to trial, right?

Trying to dismiss before there's a trial.

We just have a little bit of time left.

Brent, very quickly, do you expect that lawmakers will be working over the weekend?

Yeah.

Right now, what I'm hearing is that it's likely they might come in Sunday night to try and vote this out of committee and then have this done Tuesday.

I had a source tell me yesterday that Tuesday is looking like the day for a final vote and this to be signed into law.

But I'm also hearing that maybe it goes, maybe they don't vote again until Monday.

Who knows?

This is Trenton drama at its highest.

It sure is.

Colleen, just a minute left.

You wrote a really great story.

Of course, this is our 250th anniversary as a nation.

You talked about these iron mines in New Jersey and how they contributed to the Revolutionary War.

Just about 30 seconds.

What can you tell us?

Yeah, it was a really fascinating piece.

I mean, there's as many, many know, especially because of the sinkholes on Route 80 in the last year or two, there are hundreds of mines around New Jersey, and they became very valuable commodities, and the ores there became very valuable commodities, especially iron, which is abundant in New Jersey, or at least was abundant in New Jersey.

So, both the Patriots and the British were trying to take over those mines at various points throughout the Revolutionary War, and it could tip the scales for one side because you can, you know, create armaments and, you know, mine, or that could be used for cannons or cannonballs.

So that was what I was looking into, and it was a cool piece to write.

Yeah, just one of the many, many ways that New Jersey contributed to the Revolutionary War to really making its mark in history.

We had on someone this week talking about all that you can find in New Jersey connected to the history.

So check it out on our website.

- Well, I'm so excited about Colleen, Brent, Dustin.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

You can follow me on Instagram @JoannaGagisNJ and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

That's gonna do it for us.

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

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great weekend.

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