Ask Governor Murphy: May Recap

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. By the way, one quick correction from what I said going out the door of the last segment. I said election day is on November 9th, it's actually on November 5th, just saying. Now as some of you know WNYC and Gothamist, Nancy Solomon hosts and Asks Governor Murphy call in once a month, and she usually joins us on this show the morning after, with some excerpts from an analysis of things the governor said. We're going to talk to Nancy now. Some of the context right now is that Murphy and legislative leaders have until the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30th, to agree on a budget deal.

There's also a lot of politics right now. Some of it is on campus with protests on New Jersey campuses like everywhere. Another thing the station is doing is that there is a US Senate primary debate Monday night, Michael Hill's going to be moderating that. This is those people who want to replace Robert Menendez, and the Menendez trial is also coming up. Enough to talk about with Nancy Solomon today. Hey, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Hey, good morning, Brian. There is a lot going on.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Where do you want to start? What do you think the headline was last night from Ask Governor Murphy?

Nancy Solomon: I think probably the fact that he said quite confidently that he thought he could get both his new tax on corporations to fund New Jersey Transit into the budget for next year agreed upon with the legislature. That that was not going to imperil a very major property tax cut for seniors that's been in the works for a couple of years and would take effect in 2026. There's been criticism that the state can't do both and that the legislature was going to push back on the transit tax because of that.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of the governor on exactly that.

Governor Phil Murphy: I feel really good about the relationship that we have with the Senate president and the Speaker of the General Assembly and their respective caucuses. None of this is easy, but I am highly optimistic that we'll land in a good place as we always have.

Nancy Solomon: We're going to have close to a billion dollars extra funding for NJ Transit. In 2026, those of us over the age of 65 or 62 are going to get 50% property tax cut. Yes?

Governor Phil Murphy: God willing.

Nancy Solomon: [laughs] Okay.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, were you playing the guitar and he was playing the piano?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, we like to run soft jazz all through the whole show. [laughter]. That was before we went to a break.

Brian Lehrer: Pretty good multitasking trip before you went to a break so you had that bad music there. That's pretty ambitious actually, right? Trying to rejigger the tax system, so seniors pay less on property taxes and companies pay more. Corporations.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, the property taxes aren't related to transit, so they are in some ways very separate things but this is budget priorities, classic budget priorities. What the governor wants to do is tax companies that earn more than $10 million a year in profits, an extra fee on top of their corporate taxes that they already pay. That would basically generate close to a billion dollars a year for NJ Transit.

That's one pot, but the interesting thing about the senior property tax cut is that written into the bill if they don't have a surplus in the budget, they can't do it. That's why legislators are really concerned, like, "Wait a minute, you're going to tax companies and put all this money into transit, but what about the surplus that we need to make sure that seniors get their tax cut?"

Brian Lehrer: Another question related Murphy support for widening the New Jersey Turnpike extension through Jersey City. We'll play the governor's response, but first, what's the context there? What's proposed?

Nancy Solomon: Right. They have decided to spend $10 billion, B, billion to widen the two lane road that goes over Newark Bay and as you said through to Bayonne in Jersey City. This is how when you drive to the Holland Tunnel, this is the road that you take from the turnpike that takes you right to the Holland Tunnel. Some of the criticism about it is they're not widening the Holland Tunnel obviously. What good does it do to widen that road and have all the traffic continue to back up the way it does now?

Brian Lehrer: Here's what the governor had to say about the New Jersey Turnpike extension.

Governor Phil Murphy: It's only a matter of time till most of that's electric. The pollution arguments are accurate today. They will not be accurate by the time this project is done, so we need to do and both.

Brian Lehrer: That's a pretty optimistic take on cars of the future. They're all going to be electric soon, so pollution from cars in Jersey City if there is more traffic, more congestion, because as you said, they're not going to widen the tunnel itself, that's a time-limited issue. Pretty optimistic from an environmental standpoint.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, and this has been his position all along. I mean, it is true that he has pledged and legislated that the state will be emission-free by 2035. I mean, that's 11 years away. If he can make those goals, then he's right that we're still going to need roads. We're just going to need them for electric cars and trucks. Opponents say fine, but you need to be spending that money on mass transit, and that would be the most effective thing. We talked about that last night.

The governor objects to that comparison, and by the way, we get calls and questions on this all the time of people proposing specifically that like, "Hey, wait a minute, why don't you spend this money on NJ Transit, which has got a budget deficit?" He says, no, this is New Jersey Turnpike Authority money that's being spent, and they're bonding for it, so meaning they're borrowing and it'll be paid over many, many years. He made the argument last night, and I haven't been able to have time to fact-check this yet, but he says that it's not possible to take that money and put it into NJ Transit. He is full on board with this. I mean, that was the interesting thing I thought last night is there was no wavering in any way on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: The corporate tax hike would be to fund NJ Transit.

Nancy Solomon: Yes. NJ Transit is facing a huge deficit, and there have been arguments among Transit advocates for a long time that NJ Transit needs a dedicated source of funding that it gets rated and robbed of its operating funds on a regular basis. He's trying to address that request. He was also being beat up over the fact that he had sunset this exact same corporate tax, but for companies who earn more than a million dollars in profits, so many more companies than the 10 million profits.

He had been getting a lot of criticism from progressives about sunsetting that particular tax. He's re-upped it for transit and it's expected to raise close to a billion, maybe more because as inflation goes, profits go up and so the revenue would go up. It would start at about 800 million in the first year and go up over a billion pretty quickly, they think.

Brian Lehrer: This relates to our previous segment. I don't know if you were listening or if you would know the answer to this question, but we were talking about President Biden's bipartisan. It's not just President Biden's, it was the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act that Biden signed and how people are seeing road signs around the country on a lot of road construction and bridge repair work that's taking place.

I don't know if any of that money feeds what you've been describing for New Jersey so far, but another big piece of that I would imagine has to do with mass transit because that's infrastructure too. That's obviously transportation infrastructure too. Transportation infrastructure that Biden should be very interested in as somebody who cares about the climate. I wonder if you're seeing, or if Murphy or the legislature, to your knowledge, is talking about money flowing into the state from these federal acts, that one and the climate-related Inflation Reduction Act that might also help the train system.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I haven't seen that specifically, which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I haven't looked for it and I haven't noticed it. Governor Murphy certainly hasn't brought it up as far as I know on the show. What I will say is there is one major federal investment that's going on in New Jersey, and that's the Gateway tunnel. That will improve train service immensely.

I don't have at my fingertips how much money they're spending on that, but it's many, many, many billions, and it should have been done already. Thank you, Chris Christie, but we are going to get it eventually, another 10 years from now, and that is going to help train service.

Brian Lehrer: For people who don't know the history. That was a sarcastic thank you, Chris Christie, for delaying it as he did when he was governor.

Nancy Solomon: He killed it, and then the state had to go back and beg for the money all over again, and that took another 10 years.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any questions for Nancy Solomon? You can be the commentator as well on anything New Jersey that has to do with Governor Murphy or the state legislature or the Senate primary coming up on Tuesday, June 4th. Democrats and Republicans, too, I've been focused on this democratic primary because that's been in the news and how the change in how the ballot is laid out seem to be driven by the Democratic side. Is there a Republican primary too?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, there is. Two Republicans are running against each other. Curtis Bashaw, who is a real estate developer from Cape May, the very southern tip of the state, and Christine Serrano Glassner, who is the mayor of Mendham, which also happens to be Chris Christie's hometown, but not relevant in this case. Yes, they're both fairly conservative. There's been a lot of who can be more Trumpy than the next kind of thing going on in that primary. It doesn't get a lot of attention, the Republican side of this election because the last time New Jersey elected a Republican to go to the Senate was 1972.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but the governor's race was closer than it was supposed to be when Murphy got reelected.

Nancy Solomon: Sure.

Brian Lehrer: Do you handicap this as a shoe-in for whoever the Democratic nominee is, or is it not that simple in 2024?

Nancy Solomon: Listen, I would say this. If the Republicans had put up a candidate who was well known and well respected in the state, and a candidate who was really going hard on the corruption issues that Democrats in New Jersey have, and reminding people of the Menendez case, and maybe that's still going to happen. If it was a candidate who could reach moderate and independent voters, then I would say, "Oh, this is going to be a real competitive election come November."

So far, I haven't seen that. These two people may be good candidates, but they're not known by voters. It's hard to run a statewide campaign in New Jersey. We have no local, statewide media, I mean, we have statewide media, but we don't have television stations that are New Jersey stations, so the advertising is very expensive. You have to advertise in either New York or Philadelphia, and it makes a statewide campaign very hard.

I just think they're handicapped by the fact that they're first-time statewide candidates, that they don't have a real profile, and that's going to make it really hard to beat. The likely winner of the primary will be Andy Kim, and he's doing a bang up job of really addressing corruption and integrity issues, which I think are the issue of the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Also, not a statewide household name, though, Andy Kim. Right?

Nancy Solomon: Well, a little bit. First of all, he's been in Congress since 2018, but he really blew up the night of the riots at the Capitol January 6th when he was photographed cleaning up garbage from the floor of the rotunda. He was down on his hands and knees, and he was wearing a very sharp blue suit. That really captured the moment, like here is an actual Congress member dressed all day to be in Congress, and there he is on his knees picking up trash.

That went viral and people, that's how they know who he is, and that has become his brand is being humble, having integrity, doing the right thing, that's what he's pushing, and it worked for him when he had a serious uphill battle against First Lady Tammy Murphy, who has since dropped out. That messaging was really working for him.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, quick reminder that we will be airing a New Jersey US Senate Democratic primary debate moderated by Michael Hill on Monday night at eight o'clock. That's going to be on the station. We're going to talk about it on this show. We'll break down highlights and low lights. There's always lowlights in debates. That'll be Tuesday morning on this show, but listen to the debate itself moderated by Michael Monday night at eight o'clock here on WNYC.

I was inviting callers to join us, Nancy, and the only thing I didn't do was give out the phone number, so for people who don't keep it on your speed dial, it is 212-433-WNYC. New Jersey caller's first priority, 212-433-9692, call or text. We were discussing the NJ Turnpike extension and the controversy over whether that would add more pollution than it would traffic relief. Anthony in Jersey City is calling in. Anthony, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Anthony: Yes. Hello. Good morning to you both. I didn't hear Governor Murphy's speech last night, but I heard Miss Solomon's summary of it earlier, and I realized that he covered the pollution aspect with this electric car prospects. We'll see about that. I live near the Holland Tunnel, and traffic is absolutely unbearable between, let's say, 7:00 AM and as late as 10:00, 10:30 AM. I don't know what time these people get to work, but it's incredible to me that they're sitting in traffic at that hour. I'm wondering if he addressed or if anyone addressed. If Ms. Solomon can address the effect the extension is going to have on traffic regardless of whether or not we're driving electric cars.

Nancy Solomon: Yes. It's a very good point. I've heard from advocates. I did a story quite a while ago about this proposal and heard from people who were lamenting how this is only going to make traffic worse, not better. Governor Murphy last night said that he believes the widening of the extension will relieve some of the bad choke points that occur along the way and that he doesn't believe it's going to add to traffic. It's hard to imagine that it wouldn't. Yes, that was basically his response.

Anthony: Yes. Excuse me. When you add more roads, you add more cars. That's normally the way it goes. In conjunction with that, however, congestion pricing might reduce more cars, although, I don't know what the status of the lawsuit is and whether that congestion pricing is going to go through or not. Traffic is abysmal in this area, especially during rush hours, and I don't see how the extension is going to mitigate that in any way.

Brian Lehrer: Anthony, thank you. Thank you very much. Hassan, in Patterson, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon [crosstalk].

Hassan: Brian, longtime--

Brian Lehrer: Governor Murphy calling. Hi, Hassan. Yes.

Hassan: Brian, longtime listener. I have the dearest respect for Nancy. Nancy, you're doing a great job.

Nancy Solomon: Thank you.

Hassan: I gave you a tip last time about the bosses down the Southern tiers. You should check on the two guys that they got arrested by Camden, but I didn't call you for that because you are after one boss that caused a person which was running the Camden Hospital die. You should look at the cops, and that's how he's got those properties. Now, $2 billion property is sitting up there and doing nothing. The reason I called you, I tried to call you last night.

The New Jersey Transit boss is Governor Murphy's neighbor, and he's trying to completely privatize New Jersey Transit. I am begging you, next time you ask him, he couldn't find any qualified person except his neighbor that used to work for a major construction company. They're a nationwide construction company. I don't want to name it, but once you check his resume, you will see that. He's the neighbor of the governor. Nancy, do a good job. Brian, longtime listener. I hope you both be around for many, many years, and thank you very much for taking my phone call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your phone call. I didn't understand the issues that he led up to the main question with, so I'm just going to acknowledge that.

Nancy Solomon: I think those are related to my podcast, Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery, and Camden George Norcross and the death of John Sheridan, who was the CEO of the hospital there.

Brian Lehrer: Of course. That amazing podcast series, by the way, I just didn't pick up that connection. I don't know who's this neighbor of Governor Murphy. If he's got that right, who runs New Jersey Transit and is the governor trying to privatize it, which I think was the main allegation in that call.

Nancy Solomon: I have not heard anything about privatizing. He has said that he believes that New Jersey Transit someday could be self-sustaining, which no mass transit commuter agency I know of in the country has ever done. Advocates say, "No, it's a public good. It needs state funds. That shouldn't be the goal." He's been talking about that lately. The head of New Jersey Transit is, I'm Googling him right now, Kevin Corbett. I do not think Kevin Corbett is a neighbor of Governor Murphy, but I'm going to have to fact check that. I'm not sure exactly what Hassan is talking about there.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, we know the MTA in New York says, the money from congestion pricing, a lot of it is going to go to improve mass transit and that's the whole calculus. If you look at it in a holistic way, it's supposed to get people out of their cars, onto mass transit. Those who continue to drive and pay the fee, that money's going to go into improving mass transit. It's supposed to be good for congestion itself. It's supposed to be good for the climate, but none of that money flows to NJ Transit. Does it? If people are going to be charged more to drive into Manhattan from there, then there're presumably going to be more riders on the New Jersey railroads, no.

Nancy Solomon: No, I think that's exactly right. I think the proposal and the plan would've at least muted some of the outrage that's going on among New Jersey residents and politicians. If there was some dedicated funding to NJ Transit. I think that's reasonable that you're going to tax drivers coming in from New Jersey, why not help undergird the system that gets people out of their cars. I understand the MTA has great needs and is a great public service. I think it would've been a little bit more popular. I am not saying they wouldn't have still been fighting this thing, because they seem really driven at this point to fight it.

Brian Lehrer: Did they have projections as to how much more crowded the-- I remember when you were on recently and you were saying unlike the subways in the MTA, ridership is not returning to pre pandemic levels or as close to it as it is on the New York side. Is that still the case, and do they have a projection as to how much more crowded the trains are going to be once the fee takes effect?

Nancy Solomon: I haven't seen that projection, but yes, it's true that ridership has not returned to pre pandemic levels, and it's not clear it ever will because so many people are doing either hybrid, both work from home and coming in fewer days per week or not coming in at all. There's still a significant number of people riding. When I take the train in, it's not anywhere near as crowded as it used to be but it's not like it was during the pandemic. It's not empty there. I don't know if they've done a study that would show an increase in ridership if congestion pricing actually goes through.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. I saw the stat, 80% this week for the percentage of subway riders back from the depths of the pandemic. I wonder what it'll be. It's a different situation. Anybody commuting, I wonder what MTA or what Metro North and Long Island Railroad are too. I don't have those in front of me and I don't have New Jersey Transit, but my guess would be, we'll have to look it up, that it would be less coming from the suburbs because there are more people with the privilege of continuing to work remotely full-time or part-time. Jeffrey in Marlborough, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Hi there. Thank you for getting me on the show. I love your show, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Jeffrey: My question is a little bit different on the senior tax twist. If one were to buy a new home in a township, I'll just say Manalapan, New Jersey. The home is 2,000, 2,200 square feet. The tax effectively would be about 20,000 a year. In an adjacent senior community, these are both 55 plus communities. A 3,000 square foot home has a tax base of approximately 14,000. My question to Nancy is if she can ask the governor at some future point to talk about why this is allowed to happen. I know this is not a topic from the discussion yesterday, but it's something that is on my mind.

Nancy Solomon: I would suspect the answer to that question is that the tax rate has to do with the assessed value of the property not the square footage. It could be possible that the senior living development, the real estate prices are lower or values are lower than the market rate for the house in Manalapan.

Brian Lehrer: Hopefully that answers your question, Jeffrey. You might try to call the next time the governor is on. They do that once a month. The Ask Governor Murphy call in, "Oh, here's Robert in Mendham who thinks he has the answer to the burning question of where the head of NJ Transit lives.

Nancy Solomon: Mendham.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Well that's-

Nancy Solomon: Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Spoiler alert. Robert, hi.

Nancy Solomon: I wasn't going to be beat.

Robert: Hello.

Nancy Solomon: Hey, Robert.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: You can't scoop Nancy Solomon. You got to learn that much, Robert.

Robert: Well, I'm not trying to scoop anyone. Just an open question and had a moment to figure. I'll just chime in-

Brian Lehrer: Sure, of course.

Robert: -and to confirm that the head of New Jersey Transit does not live in the same town as Governor Murphy. He does live in the same town as former governor Chris Christie and hopefully that answers that question.

Nancy Solomon: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much.

Nancy Solomon: Maybe Hassan was talking about somebody who's on the board of New Jersey Transit. I don't know, but-

Brian Lehrer: Certainly possible.

Nancy Solomon: -Kevin Corbett is the boss.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, we just looked up the percentage of riders compared to pre pandemic on NJ Transit, and according to ABC News, it's about 80%. That would be similar to the subways if we've got these various numbers right. Let's see. Can we do one more? Oh no, you know what? I want to play this one clip that we haven't gotten to yet. This one's about the proliferation of warehouses in New Jersey. Murphy says the state in some ways is a victim of its success, because busy ports mean more warehouses and those warehouses are beginning to encroach on farmland. Here's that clip.

Governor Phil Murphy: We're a victim of success. The ports of Newark-Elizabeth in New York City are booming like never before. They are neck and neck with Long Beach, California is the largest port in the country. The problem is the proximity to the port is largely in New Jersey. When you combine that with the explosion in eTail e-commerce that's been a lethal cocktail. The short answer is I don't have a crisp answer.

You're right that a lot of this is local and we are trying like [unintelligible 00:28:32] to juice up the farmland preservation programs that we have. As you rightfully pointed out, we've thought about mandates including potentially taxes that could perhaps play a role here. While I don't have a crisp answer for you, it is a problem that is front burner for us that we are committed to solving.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting Nancy, when we unpack it. Was he saying that another impact of the pandemic is that people continue to buy more of their goods online as opposed to in stores? There's more delivery. We're getting a lot of stuff from China as we always do, and maybe elsewhere overseas. The ports are doing more of a business than they did before. That benefits New Jersey which has a big port, but then you got to put that stuff somewhere until it goes the last mile to people's homes, so more warehouses and the warehouses encroach on farmland.

Nancy Solomon: Exactly. Where are you going to put those warehouses? You're not going to put them in Brooklyn. They are going into the excerpts and what's left of the rural New Jersey. It's been interesting because we get calls on warehouses pretty much every month. I've watched the governor of evolve on this because I think the first time we took a call on it, he was like, "Oh, that's interesting, and I understand that would be a problem."

Now, you heard it. He's like, "This is top of mind. We're working on it." If we take him at his word, I think we might see some state action. One of the big problems is that these decisions about who gets to build on vacant land is made locally. There is no state policy that's directing any kind of way to direct this stuff off of farmland or into the more suburban urban areas and create some zones that are left as rural areas in New Jersey.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, Nancy, let me ask you to reflect at the end of this segment, the way you started last night's segment with the governor, and that's with an acknowledgment of the passing of Congressman Donald Payne Jr., who died last month. Anything you want to say about the late Congressman Payne?

Nancy Solomon: He died at 65, which is just too young. He had been open about the fact that he had diabetes over the course of his time in Congress. I didn't know him personally. I've been told that he was a very nice man, very easy to deal with and easy to approach. His father was the first Black member of the House from the New Jersey delegation and represented Newark for many, many years. Donald Payne Sr. also died while he was in office, and Donald Payne Jr. ran for his seat and won.

I've been told that Donald Payne Sr. was more of a lion, was a very strong personality, and that his son was much softer and milder and much more pleasant to deal with. Boy, am I going to get some calls on that. There was a nice story that we discussed on the show last night that I had to talked with one of our-- The producer of our show is Doug Doyle, who's the news director at WBGO in Newark.

He had interviewed Donald Payne Jr., and talked with him about the fact that the Payne family lived on Box Street in Newark, and he had spent his whole life there. He was born into that house, and he still lived in that house when he died. The lieutenant governor, Sheila Oliver, who also sadly died about a year ago also grew up on that street and was his babysitter. Two real important figures in Newark politics who've been lost over the last year.

Brian Lehrer: We'll leave it there with our Nancy Solomon who hosts Ask Governor Murphy every month on the station and comes on with us usually the next morning, like today, with clips and analysis and to take your calls. Nancy, your next assignment, I think, is covering the Menendez corruption trial.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I'm on it. Monday morning, jury selection begins. It's going to be a wild ride.

Brian Lehrer: We'll be looking for your reports. Nancy, thanks a lot.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian.

 

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