Credit: (Giorgio Trovato via Unsplash)

How is the state paying for a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign to promote the “Anchor” property-tax relief program? That’s one of several items up for discussion by a special legislative budget panel.

The bipartisan and bicameral Joint Budget Oversight Committee is scheduled to hold a teleconference Friday, the last public event on the Legislature’s calendar for 2022.

The budget panel, commonly referred to as JBOC, is also scheduled to review several spending items supported by federal COVID-19 aid that were included in the state budget approved by Gov. Phil Murphy and lawmakers in late June. The process that’s been used to allocate the federal aid has been panned by Republican members, and more disagreement with majority Democrats on the panel could come during Friday’s meeting.

Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), who serves on the committee, called the process that’s been used so far to spend down the federal money “a secretive joke.”

’It blows huge chunks of money on frivolous things, and perhaps even worse … leaves billions of dollars languishing in idle state accounts to be ravished by inflation so more than a half billion dollars of buying power just disappears.’ — Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth)

The panel will also consider, among other items, ways to use a portion of remaining funding from a 2017 bond issue that raised $125 million to pay for upgrades at county and municipal libraries.

Take the money from here … or there?

New Jersey received more than $6 billion last year through the federal American Rescue Plan Act, and more than $1 billion remains unallocated, according to a memo this week from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services that was obtained by NJ Spotlight News.

Murphy, a second-term Democrat, has booked those funds to pay for a $2 million marketing campaign for the Anchor program, which was established earlier this year by the governor and the Legislature.

The promotion of the new relief program comes just weeks before a Jan. 31 application deadline. Among other features, the Anchor program expanded eligibility for state-funded property-tax relief benefits compared to prior relief efforts. It also increased the size of individual benefits, to as much as $1,500.

• More information about the Anchor program is available from the state Division of Taxation or by calling 1-888-238-1233.  

Up for consideration Friday is whether the marketing campaign’s cost should come out of a $300 million share of the federal aid dollars that the governor has sole discretion to spend down, or if it should instead be covered by the broader pot of aid dollars that remains unspent and that the governor can appropriate with the approval of JBOC members.

Two Murphy administration officials are planning to be on hand for the meeting, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday. The meeting itself will give committee members an opportunity to “explore the rationale of the advertising and outreach campaign and to evaluate the need therefor,” according to the memo.

“The Committee could inquire about the number of applications received and whether the demand for the program is meeting initial expectations,” according to the memo.

Republican frustrations

Also on the agenda for Friday’s meeting is a request from the administration to revisit nine appropriations of federal pandemic aid that were approved by Murphy and lawmakers as part of the state’s 2023 fiscal year budget.

The appropriations are funding a series of capital improvements and other investments at state universities and other locations that add up to nearly $440 million. Specifically, the administration is requesting that the committee approve changing which state agency is tasked with administering the individual appropriations to improve “administrative efficiency,” according to the OLS memo.

There have been calls for more transparency as the state allocates its remaining federal dollars ahead of a Dec. 31, 2024 deadline set in federal law.

While technical in nature, the vote on this request could become contentious. Republicans on the committee were among those who raised concerns in late June after Murphy and fellow Democrats inserted into the annual appropriations bill — just days before it was due to be enacted in Trenton — dozens of new spending items that were backed by the federal pandemic relief dollars. These included the nine individual appropriations that are being put before the committee on Friday.

The total amount of federal funding appropriated in late June was a little over $2 billion, and Republicans have questioned whether their Democratic counterparts opened the door to political favoritism since there’s been no evidence of a formal scoring system or other deliberative process being used by Murphy or Democratic legislative leaders to determine which projects received top priority for the federal funding over others.

O’Scanlon said of the process, “It blows huge chunks of money on frivolous things, and perhaps even worse … leaves billions of dollars languishing in idle state accounts to be ravished by inflation so more than a half billion dollars of buying power just disappears.”

Others have also been calling for more transparency as the state allocates its remaining federal dollars ahead of a Dec. 31, 2024 deadline set in federal law.

The OLS memo prepared ahead of Friday’s meeting noted “the Committee may use the meeting to elicit additional information on the appropriations.”

Audio of Friday’s 10 a.m. meeting will be streamed online at https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/, according to an agenda for the meeting that was posted on the Legislature’s website earlier this week.