With the back nine of his governorship coming into focus, Gov. Phil Murphy may be in the mood to welcome ideas for leveraging his extraordinary executive authority to reform the nuts and bolts of New Jersey state government. Just in case, here’s four below-the-radar suggestions:

A regular midyear budget-revision process

New Jersey has a once-and-done annual budget process with no formal mechanism for routine midyear review and revision. One consequence is that the governor’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes dozens of proposed adjustments to the expiring year’s budget.

These recognize and approve the reallocation of appropriated but unspent balances (lapses) and additional spending needs that arose during the year (supplemental appropriations). In a normal year, most adjustments are routine and benign, but some inevitably carry significant policy implications and the overall amounts warrant attention. For example, Gov. Murphy’s proposed budget for fiscal 2024 includes $1.6 billion in lapsed and transferred balances.

Although there are mechanisms in place to allow for the Legislature’s fiscal staff to approve relatively minor transfers, cramming billions in adjustments into an end-of-year budget document deprives lawmakers and the public of a realistic opportunity to review potentially important changes in real time. The problem is more acute in years in which revenues or spending are unusually volatile.

Other major jurisdictions such as New York City provide for regular quarterly updates and revisions. Gov. Murphy should direct his Office of Management and Budget to prepare and publish a list of proposed adjustments to the annual appropriations act as of the end of November, the midpoint of the state fiscal year. The Legislature could then follow up with public hearings and legislative action as appropriate.

A real capital budget for New Jersey

If you’re looking for one accessible document that provides both a consolidated macro view and details of New Jersey’s capital spending on everything from roads to schools to environmental facilities, you’re out of luck. No such document exists.

True, a 1975 law established a New Jersey Commission on Capital Budgeting and Planning to oversee a formal capital planning process. In reality, however, the current process delivers little to no strategic planning and features very limited public oversight. The real action takes place at the individual agency level, a fragmented approach that appears to suit the needs of insider stakeholders but leaves most everyone else in the dark.

As part of the annual proposed budget, Gov. Murphy should direct OMB to prepare a consolidated capital budget document which could serve as the focus of one or more separate budget hearings. If he’s feeling even more ambitious, the governor might require the creation of an annual capital report, modeled after the current debt report, that would provide an inventory and status of the state’s capital assets.

An annual legislative program

By long-standing but puzzling tradition, New Jersey governors do not advance a legislative agenda as such, and there is no formal or even informal process for agencies to advance policy ideas that require legislation let alone technical amendments that may be necessary or desirable to facilitate government functions.

When it doesn’t result in frustrating or inexplicable stasis, the current ad hoc process leads to the use of messy and sometimes inappropriate workarounds such as regulatory amendments that stretch authorizing statutes to the breaking point or significant policy changes that are embedded into the annual appropriations act.

This is no way to run a railroad. As a matter of basic good governance, Gov. Murphy should consider emulating the existing process in New York state in which agencies submit proposals for legislation to the governor’s chief counsel on an annual basis. The chief counsel, who already represents the executive branch before the state Legislature, could either reject a proposal as inconsistent with the administration’s priorities, permit the agency to advance it as an agency program bill, or adopt it as a governor’s program bill. The governor’s program should also include draft legislation necessary to advance each major policy initiative in his or her State of the State message.

Get rid of Executive Order 6

Back in 1990, the late Gov. Florio signed Executive Order 6 consolidating and transferring all executive branch attorneys providing legal advice and representation to state agencies into the Attorney General’s Office. As a result, New Jersey’s state agencies do not have standard legal divisions that in other jurisdictions handle routine legal matters such as drafting and interpreting regulations, developing procurements, negotiating contracts or labor law compliance.

Moreover, although the Attorney General’s Office is staffed with talented lawyers who strive to be responsive, as a practical matter its resources are stretched and as a result senior agency executives simply do not have ready access to line-of-scrimmage legal advice when making sensitive and important decisions. This odd situation has never made sense. And, in an era that has elevated legal compliance and risk management to center stage, it is arguably dangerous. Although his attorney general will no doubt protest the perceived loss of power, Gov. Murphy should amend, or better yet, rescind Executive Order 6.

Yes, this is all inside baseball stuff that won’t win votes or generate a flood of campaign cash. And, yes, each suggestion challenges a status quo that serves someone’s current interests, whether it’s an ambitious agency head, a risk-averse bureaucrat, a parochial legislator or a comfortable union leader, lobbyist or industry association.

But isn’t reform just what a second term is good for?