By NJ State House News Service – Cora LeCates, Justus Wilhoit and Madison Miller
In a marathon late-night voting session, New Jersey lawmakers approved a $58.8 billion budget bill that seeks to boost spending by almost $818 million more than what Governor Phil Murphy proposed in February.
The plan, for the fiscal year that starts July 1, calls for spending to exceed revenue by roughly $2 billion, which may force the state to dip into surplus. It also may be upended by a threatened $3.6 billion federal cut to Medicaid.
The biggest share of the new funds, almost 25%, would go to the Department of Community Affairs for use on such local projects as municipal pool renovations, antiviolence initiatives and historic preservation. The Department of Human Services would get $164 million more than what Murphy pitched, and the Health Department, $112 million more.
Murphy proposed a record $58.1 billion spending plan whose revenue fell about $1.2 billion short of what’s needed. The lawmakers’ version will be considered by the full legislature and sent to the governor on June 30. Murphy will have the option of vetoing the lawmakers’ additions.
Rushed process
Discussions were contentious. Republicans complained to Democrats, who control the legislature and governor’s office, about a rushed process and a lack of transparency. The full budget wasn’t publicly available as the committees voted.
“I’m not asking for any answers because I don’t expect to get them this evening,” Senator Michael Testa, a Republican from Vineland, told his Senate Budget committee colleagues. “Getting the budget done at 9:45 on a Friday night in the summertime isn’t exactly transparent.”
On the Assembly side, some in the audience were unionized state workers who were angry about looming higher health-insurance costs caused by reduced government contributions. Eliana Pintor Marin, a Newark Democrat and chair of that house’s budget committee, called the overall spending plan “the best that we can do.”
“Some of us will be proud of it. Some of us won’t,” Pintor Marin said.
Assemblyman Michael Venezia, a Democrat from Bloomfield, voted yes because, he said, the budget would make the state more affordable.
“This budget fully funds the school funding formula. It fully funds the pension payment,” Venezia said. “It doesn’t raise taxes on working class people.”
‘A problem here’
Assembly member Nancy Munoz, a Republican from Summit, opposed the bill.
“We’re not only hearing from the union, we’re hearing from the business community and every other community that this is not a good budget,” Munoz said. “So when you have a collective opposition to a budget, we know we have a problem here.”
Among the Democrats’ priorities were additional funding for two housing programs: $20 million for New Jersey Healthy Homes and $7.6 million for the New Jersey Coalition to End Homelessness. Volunteers of America, which runs prisoner re-entry programs, received nothing in Murphy’s spending plan, but $4 million in the budget bill.
Human services programs also made significant gains. Lawmakers added more than $57 million for community-based long-term medical care, for instance.
At the same time, the bill cut $50 million for state employee health benefits, which would force workers to make up the difference. Murphy had called for $100 million in cuts.
“The governor wants you to ignore our collective bargaining agreements that have already produced hundreds of millions of dollars in savings,” said Tonya Hodges, the District 1 area director for the Communications Workers of America, the largest state employees’ union. The cuts, she said, “will cause significant pain to real people who simply cannot afford to spend more on healthcare.”
Collective bargaining
Senator Linda Greenstein, a Democrat from Plainsboro, echoed union members’ worries.
“I am concerned that the process to deal with $100 million in healthcare savings does not respect the collective bargaining process,” Greenstein said.
In some instances, the budget rejected Murphy’s priorities. It would take more than $3.5 million from transportation assistance for seniors and people with disabilities, as well as $1.3 million from care-management organizations for youth with complex needs, and $1 million from the Early Childhood Intervention Program for children with developmental delays and disabilities.
Ultimately, federal funding decisions loom over the state’s budget outcomes. President Donald Trump has proposed billions of dollars in cuts that would affect all states.
“In many ways, this budget may just be a hypothetical document,” said Peter Chen, a policy analyst for New Jersey Policy Perspective. “If those cuts come down the federal plank, and we start seeing serious revenue hits, it will be hard to make that revenue up in a short time frame.”
Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, a Democrat from Newark, shared Chen’s fear, describing what she called “federal schizophrenia.”
“We tried to make a dollar out of 50 cents in this budget, and I got to tell you, we stretched it,” Ruiz said. “If this president moves forward with the agenda that he has, it will devastate this budget in the state, as in all other states, and really be detrimental to our children and families.”
