The governor’s office in the Statehouse in Trenton. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
The men who want to be New Jersey’s next governor want a range of changes to the state’s budget approval process following another breakneck budgeting cycle that saw lawmakers approve the annual spending bill just days ahead of a deadline that would have forced a state government shutdown.
They say New Jersey should forecast its revenue and expenses further into the future, denude the governor’s sole authority to certify the state’s revenue, and adopt mandatory waiting periods for the budget that would guarantee residents have a chance to review it in advance of a vote.
Jersey City Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Steve Fulop. (Nikita Biryukov | New Jersey Monitor)
“Trenton politicians introduce a state budget packed with billions of dollars of last-minute spending barely 48 hours before passing it,” Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a Democrat, said in an interview.
New Jersey’s next gubernatorial race is not until November 2025, with the primaries that June, but already nine candidates have said they intend to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who is barred from seeking a third conservative term.
Numerous would-be governors — including Fulop and Union County Republican state Sen. Jon Bramnick — have backed proposals that would require legislators to take a cool-off period after introducing the spending bill to allow residents time to review how their tax dollars are to be used.
“They must be available in total for 10 days before a vote,” Bramnick told the New Jersey Monitor.
In a policy paper released last month, Fulop said there should be 14 days between the budget’s introduction and a final vote on it, with a public hearing during that time. Lawmakers should be required to introduce a budget by June 1 and face penalties if they fail to do so, he added.
In New Jersey, budgets are rarely introduced well in advance of a vote or the July 1 budget deadline, and it’s typical for budget committees in both chambers to approve the annual spending bill in party-line votes minutes after its receipt.
This year, budget committee members and the press had a few hours to review budget details and language changes before the committees approved them. The budget was not available to the public at the time of those votes.
Fulop told reporters recently that the state should follow the lead of local governments.
“Local government has a budget introduced, and then there is a timeline and a process with public review and ultimately implementation,” he said. “That process takes several months. At the bare minimum, you can have a month timeline (with) the state budget.”
Former Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Gloucester County Democrat seeking a return to Trenton, said New Jersey should adopt consensus and multi-year forecasting, two budget best practices meant to give the state a clearer picture of its economic outlook.
Multi-year budgeting is simple: The state predicts what its revenue and expenses will be over multiple years instead of a single 12-month cycle. Multi-year forecasting more clearly shows outlying expenses and can reveal forecasted dips in revenue before they become pressing.
Former Senate President Steve Sweeney (Edwin J. Torres/ Governor’s Office)
“You don’t want to create a cliff the following year, and that’s what happens a lot,” Sweeney told the New Jersey Monitor. “It’s ‘we’ll worry about it next year.’ That’s always the attitude: ‘We’ll deal with it next year.’ Well, no, if we do it right this year, next year’s budget’s not going to have the crisis it always has.”
But while multi-year forecasting could provide insight into a state’s future finances, it can cause politics to constrain lawmakers. Information showing the state cannot afford a given tax cut or spending program could make the policy less palatable to the public, for example.
Multi-year budgeting has support of most of the gubernatorial candidates who’ve announced so far, but some view it as a less pressing reform.
“Multi-year budgeting is a worthwhile policy change to pursue, but transparency is a far more pressing concern,” Fulop said.
Fulop added that multi-year budgeting would do little to improve public confidence in the state’s government if not coupled with changes like waiting periods.
Sweeney said the state should also move toward consensus forecasting, which sees the Legislature and governor — and sometimes others — come together with a single forecast for the state’s revenue.
The Treasury and the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services each draft revenue forecasts and share those with the Legislature. In recent years, those budget projections have largely resembled one another, but that hasn’t always been the case.
In 2013, forecasts from then-Gov. Chris Christie’s Treasury and the Office of Legislative Services diverged sharply, with members of the nonpartisan office warning the governor’s forecasts were too rosy and would lead to shortfalls of more than $900 million.
The budget gap materialized, and Christie cut $2.4 billion in planned pension payments to bridge it, among other things. Murphy in 2019 froze $239 million in funding for budget line items over a mismatch between Treasury and Office of Legislative Services estimates, which were rosier than his administration’s own at the time.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (OIT/NJ Governor’s Office)
Another gubernatorial hopeful, Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, backed both consensus forecasting and multi-year budgeting, adding his administration would hold budget hearings, currently the job of just the Legislature.
“My administration would start the budget far earlier. We would require a collaborative 3-year forecast with the administration, the Legislature, and a neutral third party, and we would hold our own series of public hearings to ensure we gave voice to the voiceless throughout the process,” he said.
Sweeney’s proposal on consensus forecasting is unusual for a would-be governor. New Jersey’s constitution affords the governor the sole authority to certify the state’s revenue, and sharing that power with the Legislature would be a limit of gubernatorial power in a state whose constitution arguably affords its executive more power than any other.
“This is something I tried to do as Senate president, but you know, governors don’t often want to give up any kind of authority, not even an inch of it,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney said he would impose both multi-year budgeting and consensus forecasting first by using executive order and later by codifying the latter with a constitutional amendment.
Sen. Jon Bramnick (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Bramnick, who supports multi-year budgeting, proposed other changes that are less likely to win legislative approval.
He said spending that legislators can add to the budget through requests called budget resolutions should require a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers, and tax increases should have to pass the same bar.
Legislators’ spending requests — sometimes called budget “pork” or “Christmas-tree items” — typically steer funds to the districts held by members of the majority. The budget usually grants only a handful of requests filed by members of the minority party.
Bramnick added bipartisan meetings should be held before any decisions are made.
Baraka last month floated a proposal that would impose a cumulative impact test on state budgeting, mirroring an environmental regulatory structure that requires projects in areas historically harmed by pollution work to defray their own impact or simply not be built.
“If a proposal helps 150 people but hurts 3 million, that proposal must include within it mitigating statutes that account for the people most affected. We do it for the environment, we can do it for human beings who are so often forgotten because they don’t have the money it takes to have a seat at the table,” he said in a statement.
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