Committees approve idea of a budget

Nearly 36 hours after legislators were first scheduled to convene yesterday for a vote on the Fiscal Year 2024 state budget – and with less than an hour to go before a critical procedural deadline – the two budget committees of the New Jersey State Legislature approved a budget bill today on party-line votes, with full chamber votes scheduled for Friday.

But the actual existence of the budget document remains somewhat in question. Democrats insisted that they had seen the complete budget, but it wasn’t made publicly available to the public or to Republican legislators; the two committees voted with only budget scoresheets and language changes in front of them, and some Republicans questioned whether those were even accurate.

The vote caps off a strange two days of delays in the legislature – delays that happened in spite of the fact that a deal on the budget was reached on Monday. The obstacle to holding an actual vote appears to have stemmed from problems with the Office of Legislative Services (OLS), which struggled to put forward the multi-hundred-page document in time.

In total, the budget appropriates $54 billion in state funds and $26 billion in federal funds, a modest increase from the spending in last year’s budget. It also includes a surplus of nearly $10 billion.

The committees did narrowly avert a procedural headache by approving the bill before midnight. Bills released by committees must wait one calendar day before they can be considered by the full legislature; had the process continued past 12 a.m., that would have prevented the budget from being able to be considered on Friday, the budget deadline. (Bills can come to the floor ahead of schedule if a supermajority of legislators approve an emergency, but Republicans would have been likely to oppose such a maneuver.)

The budget has formally been in the works since February, when Gov. Phil Murphy delivered his annual budget address. That address focused heavily on fiscal responsibility and affordability, and much like last year’s budget steered clear of many of the highly controversial topics that waylaid the process in the Murphy administration’s early years.

Since then, the standard process has ensued: Murphy has engaged in discussions with the legislature throughout the spring, while the two budget committees held dozens of public hearings on different aspects of the budget.

On Monday, the New Jersey Globe reported that the governor and legislative leaders had come to a deal, staving off any lingering worries of a genuine shutdown. But there were evidently still substantial issues with getting the budget into working condition in time, given that the bill was meant to be voted on in committee yesterday before steadily being pushed further and further back.

During the vote in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee at 11:30 p.m. today, Republican senators objected to the entire process, particularly the fact that they were voting on a bill they said they didn’t actually have.

“We’ve gotten nothing official from OLS,” said State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver), the top-ranking Republican on the committee. “We’ve got people handing us stuff in the halls of the statehouse. And we just heard that the budget number put on the record tonight is a billion dollars more than the scoresheets we were given.”

Senate President Nick Scutari (D-Linden), who temporarily joined the budget committee today, said that he personally had access to the full budget bill.

“I’ve seen what I need to see,” Scutari said. “I’ve seen the document. I don’t know why anyone else doesn’t have it.”

The situation in the Assembly was similar, with assemblymembers of both parties voting with the budget overview in front of them rather than the full document.

Both committees also declined to take any testimony from the public. Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D-Newark), who presided over the Senate committee, briefly read over testimony slips that had been submitted, but with the clock ticking didn’t allow anyone to actually testify; no testimony slips were even announced in the Assembly committee.

The party-line votes today, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed, are likely to be largely repeated when the legislature convenes on Friday, though a few Republicans have signaled they might support the budget. Once the legislature passes the bill, Murphy will undoubtedly sign it, and the process will come to an official end.

But the enduring takeaway from the week’s proceedings may be a push to reform OLS. Asked about the reason for the budget vote delay, Scutari strongly implied that the fault lay with OLS, but hedged on whether he thinks there need to be changes.

“I’m not going to jump to conclusions,” he said.