By David Cruz
Correspondent
“I went to bed last night and woke up this morning and found the Assembly passed a bill,” said Senate President Steve Sweeney, the guy who looked a little like he left the party before all the fun started.
After last week’s heavy lifting of a Sweeney-backed Transportation Trust Fund proposal, it looked like enough lawmakers were going to hold their noses and vote for the thing yesterday, but then Gov. Chris Christie joined the talks and before the night was over, gone were cuts to the estate tax, charitable giving deductions and the jet fuel tax, all replaced by a 1 percent cut in the state sales tax and tax deductions on retirement plans. This morning Sweeney was the one on the outside and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto was the one who got the deal he liked.
“We were all communicating yesterday and this was a direction my caucus liked to go and I stayed there until the late hours to fine tune and to get whatever amendments we had to do and get it accomplished,” said Prieto today.
“I’m hopeful that when the Senate gets the opportunity to consider the fact that we have the first broad-based tax cut for all New Jerseyans in over 20 years that they’ll see the power of that and answering the call that people have for a dedicated source of revenue to continue to improve our roads and our bridges and mass transit,” a tired-looking Christie said early this morning.
“I don’t like what I’m hearing,” countered Sen. Joe Kyrillos, a Republican, “and I’m recommending that we run the original bill through that I embraced a few weeks ago.”
There are mere days left in the fiscal year and we appear to be no closer to a TTF deal than we were at this time last year, or are we?
“We will talk to the Assembly and we’ll talk to our caucus and get the temperature of our caucus and we’ll have an idea of where we’re going by Thursday,” Sweeney said.
But Assemblyman John Wisniewski was critical of the deal today. “I just don’t know how anyone in good conscience can vote to give away $1.6 billion without even having an idea on where that money will come from. How we will replace it and what programs we will cut in order to meet that funding?” he asked.
But Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick said the deal is solid. “On first blush it may look like there’s a billion dollar hole,” he said. “There’s not, but clearly, this is not a final package. It’s going over to the Senate, and you can make your argument to the Senate.”
Economists could debate that, but it’s the governor who says whether the math works, and it’s now up to the Senate president to come to the realization that he agrees.