NJ legislators OK $128M spending bill criticized by GOP

By newjerseymonitor.com

New Jersey lawmakers approved a bill Monday that would add more than $128 million in new spending, despite criticism from Republican legislators that their Democratic colleagues sidestepped the scrutiny that normally accompanies such budget requests.

Two legislative panels passed the bill at the tail end of hourslong committee hearings Thursday, without inviting public comment. On Monday, several Assembly Republicans blasted that process as a failure of transparency and accountability.

The state holds five months of budget hearings and hears from hundreds of experts, advocates, and others to decide how to spend taxpayer funds every year, Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-Morris) said. Yet the Legislature’s Democratic majority introduced and passed this additional funding in less than a week, with no public scrutiny, Dunn noted.

“We tell residents that their voices matter. But what happened this week tells a very different story,” Dunn said.

The bill was one of several that lawmakers passed that will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending and tax breaks, prompting objections from several GOP legislators in the Assembly. There was no debate in the Senate.

The bill includes $20 million to the FIFA World Cup host committee for promotions (first lady Tammy Murphy chairs the committee’s board of directors), $25 million for a state supercomputer, $13 million for a new jail in Camden County, and other funding for food insecurity research and capital improvements at county buildings, schools, and a hospital, among other things.

When these types of specific spending requests are added to the state budget, they are often derided as “Christmas tree” items.

Assemblyman Brian Rumpf (R-Ocean) urged his colleagues to reject the bills, saying fiscal caution was needed because of a state budget deficit, federal cuts, and other budget stressors.

“I thought Christmas was over,” Rumpf said.

Both chambers passed the bill largely along party lines, with a vote of 46-25 in the Assembly and 25-14 in the Senate. Murphy, who leaves office Jan. 20, must sign the bill for it to become law.

It was sponsored by Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) and Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin (D-Essex), the lower chamber’s Democratic budget officer.

The new spending comes six months after New Jersey lawmakers approved a record-high $58.8 billion budget that included a number of cuts and controversial diversions that have spurred ongoing protests and calls for restored funding. That budget also included over $700 million for lawmakers’ pet projects that critics have condemned as pork spending, even though Murphy had warned federal cuts would require “hard decisions.”