Gov. Sherrill's First Budget Proposal

0:00This is Brian Lairr on WNYC. In case you hadn't noticed, this budget season in New York and New Jersey, New York State is deep into negotiations with an April 1st deadline. Negotiations around Mayo, Mobdoni's tax hike proposals and other things we've been talking about those in New Jersey controversies are focusing on things like property tax rebates, pensions and how to compensate for cuts from the Trump administration. New Jersey's process kicked off last week and Governor Cheryl presented her first budget to the legislature working toward a July 1st deadline. She characterized it here. This is an affordability budget. There's the headline, according to her, this is an affordability budget. It comes to $60.7 billion. It adds education funding. It gives and takes a little on property tax

1:05refunds. And let's Cheryl say she hasn't gone back on her promise not to raise taxes. To go into more detail on what's in there and have a legislature is responding and what you think New Jerseyans will open up the phones and the tax threat for you. We're joined by Michael Sol Warren who covers New Jersey for WNYC and Gothamist. Hey Michael, welcome back to the show. Hey Brian, thanks for having me. And I will say you've been here before but this is your first time I think as a coworker. So welcome to WNYC. Great to have you on board really in our news team. Overall, how does this budget compare to last year's? I've seen the word record in headlines so I'm guessing it's bigger. I'm sure this is a topic of conversation. If she says it's an affordability budget, is it affordable for the taxpayers? Yeah. Oh, it's a record in the sense of if you long jump a centimeter further than you did last week, that's a record too. It is absolutely

2:10to $60.7 billion. The current fiscal year is $58.8 billion. So really it grew less than the rate of inflation. So I've been saying it stayed pretty flat. The goal is certainly affordability. And Cheryl had gone into this. She set the tone weeks before the address really with the press conference warning that the state faced a potentially $3 billion structural deficit of revenue not meeting spending. So this budget had that in mind as it tried to reign in spending while increasing some revenue from the business sector. And now she's halved that projected deficit to about $1.6 billion. What's the biggest controversy that's breaking out so far? So far, most of the discussion has been focused on the property tax release side of things. Property tax is always a big deal in New Jersey. And there's a number of state programs

3:10that aim to help people deal with that cost in their life. There's a relatively large new program called Stay in J that was created by law in 2024 and started sending out its first checks last month. The goal Stay in J tries to help seniors specifically tackle their property tax burdens. It pays out under the current setup up to $6,500 bucks for seniors that have household incomes up to $500,000. It's an expensive program. And Cheryl wants to trim it down by scaling that income limit for eligibility down to $250,000 and cat payouts at $4,000. The administration says this would save the state $500 million and still keep 90 percent of New Jersey seniors getting benefits from it. But it's unclear how this is going to play out in the legislature. Stay in J

4:13was the pride and joy of Assembly Speaker Craig Cofflin. And he has not had much to say about it publicly yet. But it's setting up quite the intraparty fight to start the process. What is the name Stay in J supposed to represent to people in the state? You know that in New York they're having this big debate over the Mamdani proposed tax hikes and saying, oh, if you increase the income tax on people with $1 million or more incomes, they may not stay in New York. Whether that's true or not, you know, is the big subject of debate, but that's the debate. And so Stay is used in that respect in New York. What does it mean in the context of this New Jersey property tax rebate program? Yeah, it's the same kind of feeling. But in New Jersey there's a lot of emphasis, particularly in recent years, on helping seniors stay in New Jersey. And that's what

5:13this program is really focused on. It's not the only one. There's other older property tax relief programs that were geared towards seniors. But the concern has really been that you've got these folks that are on fixed incomes and the cost of living, not just their taxes, but all sorts of things are going up all around them. And they don't necessarily want to leave, right? They've got their families here and their long societal ties. But they feel priced out in New Jersey increasingly. So that was the goal. Stay in J was to help seniors stay in NJ. And listeners, whether you're a senior who is benefiting from the state NJ property tax rebate program or anyone else in New Jersey, you have a question or a comment about how Governor Cheryl is getting out, starting out of the gate in any way. And certainly since, you know, budgets are policy. What her budget proposal, her initial budget proposal represents to you in terms of what

6:19she's going to be like as your governor. 212433 WNYC 212433 9692. You can call or you can text with New Jersey reporter for WNYC and Gothamist Michael Saul one. So she's talking about an affordability budget. What I haven't seen in the coverage that I've seen and Michael tell me if I'm just missing it is the thing that she campaigned so much on to get elected. And that is affordability with respect to utility costs. Is there anything about that in the budget? So there's a lot about that in her speech and in the budget and brief documents and texts. The tricky part with energy costs and utility bills is that so much of it plays out outside of the budget process. There's, you know, those costs are driven by the electric markets themselves and through

7:24policies enacted and run by the the regional power grid PJM that serves New Jersey. There are programs that the state offers through the Board of Public Utilities that the governor is wanting to keep going or expand. But those are really paid for by either surcharges on other people's bills or through different fees charged to companies and utilities. They're not necessarily through the budget itself. So a lot of the language coming out of the governor's office on this is like, you know, we're going to pursue these programs and this kind of like intent setting. But when it comes to the budget itself, the impact it can have on utility bills directly is a little limited. So that's for other legislation. Another aspect of affordability that people are so concerned about these days is child care. And I see that there's a boost in state school

8:31aid in the governor's budget and among the things that that money would go for is enabling 2500 more children from low income families to receive subsidized child care. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So we're talking about the state child care assistance program here. And what that does is basically subsidize the enrollment of lower income families being able to put their kids in child care. So for these families, the state reimburses child care providers for enrolling the kids. There was a situation last year where essentially the program kept out and they didn't have the capability to enroll any more families. And they had to pause enrollment for I believe the first time. It kind of shits since shockwaves through the child care industry in New Jersey. And there's a campaign been big push from advocates to try to get the state

9:35to allocate more money to this program so that it can really reach the need that's there. So this proposal for another 18 million by governor Cheryl is projected to do that. And it would be it would be a big win for for our lower income families. How how young can a child be to qualify for those programs? We know that in New York what Mayor Mamdani wants is universal free child care for any kids six months or older. What's the New Jersey program? Yeah, this is it's really geared toward the youngest kids. I'm not even sure there's a limit. I'd have to double check on the how young they could be. There's like a maximum at once they get old enough to get into regular school. It cuts off there. Actually, it's interesting. One of the challenges this program has faced is that at the same time the state has been in recent years expanding state-funded pre-K programs. So it's kind of created this take from child care centers

10:45because these older kids the three-year-olds that maybe would have continued paying tuition to the child care centers are now going to their local school district for the service for free. So it's been a bit of a revenue loss for the child care centers and increasingly they're more dependent to keep the lights on by enrolling infants and ones and twos. We're getting a number of calls and texts on the stay-in-j property tax rebate program for seniors. One lesson arrives. I'm the beneficiary of stay-in-j and agree with cutting it back to save tax pay or money. My husband and I are both over 65 but not at all poor so I don't think we deserve the $5,000 or so. Now here is Damien and Hillside who has personal experience with it. Damien, you're on WNYC. Hello. Good morning, Brian. Thanks. I love your show with you, by the way. I listen

11:46all the time. It's, yeah, I'm going to be 70 and I rely on just my social security income because unfortunately I'm also disabled and it's a major made it's vital to help the property taxes are outrageous in the case the most expensive state in the nation. So as you've lived your adult life and your home has become more valuable it's incurred more property taxes along the way and so that becomes kind of financially back breaking without a rebate now that you're retired, right? That's right and I no longer have kids in the school system never really did. So that's where a lot of the property taxes go so you don't have a personal stake in that anymore. Yes and well like some states in the country once you get to a certain age you no longer are we possible for paying

12:47more taxes educational. And so is the rebate program as it stands sufficient to keep you in your home? It helps. It helps. It's been an effect the last couple years. I've all you know I fill out now it's everything's bundled into one form but I've always done this the freeze to see your freeze. Damien, thank you. Good luck and call us again. Thanks for nice words about the show. Make your voice heard again in the future. So there are kind of two contrasting takes from two listeners right on Stay in J. We hear from Damien there on the phone. How important it is to him in his situation. The text that I read was from somebody who said you know they don't need as much of a break as they're getting. Another listener writes Stay in J is geared to wealthy boomers while the rest of the state struggles. It has an income limit the

13:51reported mentioned seniors on fixed incomes which brings to mind folks on a pension or SSI. In fact the limits for Stay in J is $500,000 for a retired person to still have income of $500,000 it probably means it's all passive income from their savings so they have millions in the bank. So how do you respond to this wave? Maybe it shows some of the tension points in various directions on this. Well I think that's exactly the point. That's been a center part of the debate since Stay in J was drafted and voted on and signed in 2024. You know another major property relief program in the state anchor which benefits everyone not just seniors caps income at $250,000 and so Cheryl's proposal to scale back the state and J limit would put it in line there. So I think she's kind of banking on people taking that point of view frankly and saying you know this

14:55is a reasonable thing to do. The administration again says that 90% of seniors would still be eligible for some sort of benefit even if the income limit comes down to $250,000. One thing that Cheryl wants to cut is programs that individual legislators have traditionally been able to get included. Some legislatures call them member items. Here's how she put it. In the final working days of the last administration New Jerseyans were stuck with nearly $3 billion and extra spending. 2.5 in corporate tax breaks and 240 million in giveaways. That can't keep happening. We can't afford the process anymore. It's not accountable. It's not efficient. It's not what the people of New Jersey deserve. So what's that about? Because I think you know you take any

15:55legislator from any legislature at the city level, the state level, the federal level. One of the things that they're going to talk to their constituents about constantly is I got funding for this in our district. Is the governor saying there's too much of that? Yes and no. I think yes in the sense that obviously she's trying to curtail spending as much as possible. But I don't think she's necessarily taking aim at specific things yet. Her speech didn't call out too many specific items, although she did point out some last minute tack-ons and lame duck last year. Generally though, we're talking about like these are Christmas tree items like a couple hundred K for park improvements or maybe half a million dollars for you know a foundation funding or something like that. A lot of times even less maybe a hundred two thousand dollars

16:59or less but they add up there's a ton of them. I think that a big part of the frustration with the governor and people outside of power but across the political spectrum is how this have been handled in New Jersey for as long as I've been in the state which is that it's a very opaque budget process. Much of the negotiations among top legislative leaders and the governor's staff happen behind closed doors throughout much of the budget process. The trend recent in recent years has been that the budget bill has only introduced days or hours before the June 30th deadline and the end of the fiscal year and that kicks off this rushed voting process where there's little time for the public to gain any real insight as to what's been tossed in and then what's about to be approved for spending. So I think that kind of transparency issue is really at the heart of what Cheryl is saying there. Hey before you go let me read a couple of texts that respond to one

18:04thing that a previous caller said and that's that in some localities seniors who would presumably no longer have kids in the public schools don't have to pay the property taxes that go to the education systems locally. So one person writes just because you don't have kids in the school system anymore doesn't mean you get to just get to stop participating in the society you reside in by not paying your taxes. There are still kids who need it and someone else writes everyone regardless of their child status has a vested interest in the education system. We all require an educated populace. So is that is that the case anywhere in New Jersey as far as you know or is it an active debate in the way that the caller referenced it? I am not aware of any place in New Jersey that opts people out of their local property taxes if they don't have kids in the system. If anything

19:07I mean we know that school spending is the number one driver of property taxes in the state and that the the state's single largest expenditure every year is state aid to school districts to help defray those local property taxes. I mean there's 12.4 billion proposed in this budget for just that so I would be kind of anybody knows of a district where people are allowed to opt out of paying their local taxes because they don't have kids enrolled in the schools in New Jersey please let me know. Do you want to give serious serious question as we run out of time do you want to give an email address or anything for now that you're on the New Jersey beat for the station for people to send you any kind of tips? Absolutely if you live in New Jersey you want to talk to me my my first initial is M and last name is Warren w-a-r-r-e-n-m Warren at wnyc.org That's Michael Saul Warren who now covers New Jersey for wnyc and Gothamist we'll talk to you a lot

20:11thanks for having me Brian. Since wnyc's first broadcast in 1924 we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody award and a Dupont Columbia award among others. In addition to this award-winning reporting your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more visit