New Jersey legislature budget appropriations debate; Budget Wrap 1 of 2

OK. OK. OK. OK. For a. Moment there was this is what. You firstly for and for me that this is a man ok and go

OK here or river for everybody you know. Oh yeah. My theory. OK. Here it is. Why are you all right. Why or for that matter right. When I first met her. And they're like yeah right. You're right very much better but I understand.

OK now you know I think of you. As I like to present you and your family and. I'm. Not. Lying. For your sake a week ago they were. There for fear of getting. My reshape or you know. Something. But here it. Is. Now. The. Republican form of the Center with more. Here there you go. Great campaign. But I really want more. What are some of. The word may get.

My. My very right. Here is your friend. But when I was young. And I got here my friends and women were standing beside me. I know. That you know like. Listen like you suggested that you mean this is usually the minimum age. We thought OK then why do you say. What you think. What do you think that. Was that begun to propose. And he was a free grocer see her say OK this is a letter to her. For. My. Wife. My.

God. You know. Whether. It was. Right. For you. A week and where you are an AWA either player was a week to it. OK in looking over this highlight from the Democrats they're calling it.

A fair budget and says it's going to provide increased property tax relief. Republicans in the debate said no we're going to see property taxes go up because of loss of school. Right. Well I guess fair is in the eyes of the beholder. We feel that there have been a number of programs that have been severely impacted by the joint appropriations committee action. We realize of course that the failure of the gasoline tax in the Senate has had a major impact upon these programs and therefore upon the action the joint Appropriation Committee had to take. So I feel that there are a number of areas asportation corrections. Possibly even in areas of education and so on that have been impacted by the failure of the gasoline tax to pass all property taxes go up on a local level to compensate. Well I think that's a very hard thing to say I mean after all it depends on the locality depends on their budgets it depends how they plan to spend their money so I'm not going to predict in any kind of a universal sense what's going to happen to property taxes. Governor Kaine has left it up to you where to make the cuts in Medicaid Social

Security. Can you tell us where you're looking to make these cuts. Well that's the decision for the governor to make over the next two days will be looking after the revenue picture which will have to certify and present to the governor. And of course most people when they talk about a budget talk about the appropriations side. But the governor also certifies what the revenues are going to be. And once he establishes a revenue number which is recommended by our department then he has to determine if the appropriations level is too high. And if it is he has to bring that down to bring the budget in balance. Do you think their revenues were estimated highly by the Democrats. Well I'm a little concerned about some of the revenue estimates that they have in the budget and I'm also a little concerned about the size of the surplus as you know they took that surplus down in fiscal 83 to practically nothing. Why do you need a large surplus. Well I think that you have to understand that any large organization like the state functions in the state's budget needs to have some kind of contingency of fiscal contingency to pretend that nothing's ever going to go wrong to pretend that everything's going to go on as you planned in the

budget is risky and it's not healthy to not allow for contingencies. So surpluses are needed. OK. I think we just need to get some kind of a long process. And I suppose you know to be able to get a budget reported out of both the assembly and the Senate and to get a review sure we must have a budget by the 1st of July. It's something that cannot be tolerated not to have a budget by the 1st of July. There's a lot of things in that budget that I would prefer to be different I obviously would have liked to have had the gasoline tax because I think we're going to sacrifice a lot in the area of transportation. You're also going to be facing another deficit possibly with that federal budget. Do you have a handle on that yet. We do not time's concerned about next year as I've been saying. There's a lot of unknowns we could be facing the problems that we have right now six seven months from now again when the gas tax help that it would you need something more than a nickel gas tax washer the gasoline tax would have helped after all it would have provided a fairly stable

source of revenues for the area of transportation. We've been getting almost to the day simple in their analysis on the budget that we felt would pass from the various departments we have now. Some of this is still preliminary because the full impact obviously hasn't been assessed and will be over the next over the next 24 hours at least since we only got about 48. But the initial the initial things some of which are obvious obviously every job producing program that we had in the budget has now been eliminated which is serious to me in a time of recession. In the area of Corrections. We do not have the money to relieve under this budget the prison overcrowding problem. I would say are in danger of court mandated relief at some point given the funds

available to us which when taken out has the money to staff. Some of the new facilities. And transportation I don't think I have to go over with you what happened in transportation and mass transit fares which is going to be at least 20 percent over and above the rise of the rise. It's already happened when processing it and those are all cut out as if they typically look for the items that were going to computerize and save money on line item them out in their own calculations. And again they cut out the payments that we have to make in areas like social security. They suggested we don't pay our phone bill so they that they've cut down the items. We have to put in a figure in the budget to cover that they've cut back which means presumably if somebody want a case against the state we should pay them. Those kind of items Social Security payments phone bills toward the

other things in that area as a large item in the budget for that. Obviously those items cannot be cut with a Social Security we've got to pay to get the place thought somebody was and so the result is that those large cuts have got to come out in other areas in those other areas involve people in jobs programs and the fine for the legislature an Appropriations Committee to say you know what we'll have to do it but it would not find those cuts don't involve human beings and don't involve problems for people in the state that they're going to need. Great concern is the cut they made in the Medicaid area talking to the butler. In this particular area we believe that cut when combined with the potential cut in the federal budget and the line item which does not allow us to charge. When you combine those things together I can well spend the belly end of what we call optional services and

Medicaid which is something New Jersey's always been very proud of just supplying people who can't afford them otherwise eyeglasses crutches. Some writers that is in serious jeopardy by the kind of budget the kind of budget the Appropriations Committee in the legislature is now giving us might say also in the area of general assistance and welfare cut and the cut and welfare are well spent spell the end of medical assistance for a number of people. In the area of capital construction obviously I just got off the coast. They've simply cut out capital construction areas. Most of these one area of repairing roofs removing a specialist where it was a health hazard where people work with people and service. If you look through the various items you'll find out that these are things that have to be done every day or put them off simply not only increases the hazard but obviously increases the cost to the taxpayers eyes full of shit

got to gardeners in these areas. I could go on I mean these are things that we wouldn't benefit as a private. Early on I mean what are you. Well that's what we're going to with that's what we're going to be examining tomorrow they do yeah addition of course they left that totally irresponsible surplus in the budget of the stars. I'm going to have to restore it. At least the surplus that we had. I'm going to have to use the red pencil to do so. Nobody nobody you whatever whatever suggest that 7 million dollars in the budget of this size is a proper surplus. So we're going to have to get into that area of revenue estimates or something else we question whether some of the monies that came up with was simply in terms of suggesting that we're going to be more revenues than than are available and we're going over those revenue estimates with the Treasury tomorrow and we're going to come up with one of the most honest revenue estimates we can use when there's a stated goal was done showing the same fiscal capability in fiscal prudence of the state has always shown

and we're going to proceed on that basis. I'm going to be obviously going over item by item to find out what I will have to do given these things use my red pencil on where I find their items that the legislature has cut out which I find absolutely essential to the running of the state programs of the state needs I am going to line item enough items in the appropriation bill to create the necessary money to fund those programs. And I'm simply going to suggest to the legislature that the money is now available and I will accept a supplementary in those areas. Yet you never will know because we haven't they're going over the budget events enough and I haven't been able to. I haven't had time to go over it in enough detail to and the departments have not all got back to this is you see the department saw this thing for the first time this morning and so they've been trying to analyze as best they could the impact on their various various departments in various areas and they got back to

Wasn't some of the areas.