At midnight tomorrow a 43-page-long list of statewide transportation projects will shut down. It comes after political gridlock in Trenton over ways to renew the state’s Transportation Trust Fund. It seemed like everyone was on board for a negotiation — a bipartisan plan to raise the gas tax with a phase out of the estate tax. Then a midnight deal was struck between the governor and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto that also included cutting the state sales tax by a penny. But the Senate president said his caucus was against the plan and didn’t even post it for a vote. The whole deal went up in smoke. So what happened? Senate President Steve Sweeney spoke with NJTV News Correspondent Briana Vannozzi.
Vannozzi: Reportedly Gov. Christie right now is on his way back now from a vacation in Italy. Have you been in discussions with him or with his administration about where to go from here?
Sweeney: No, we haven’t. We’ve actually been, as a Senate, looking at solutions to present to the governor when he gets back. We’re not going to do what the Assembly did. We don’t feel we can. We feel it actually bankrupts the future of the state. But we recognize that we’re going to need the governor’s support so we’re going to offer some ideas and see whether he accepts or doesn’t. He can continue to do what he’s doing in shutting the project down — and he’s within his rights — and eventually you’d run out of money anyway. But we’re not going to do something that’s going to double the amount of tax cuts that we were doing. We were stretching it when we were doing the Sarlo/Oroho bill to start with. It was roughly $870 million in tax cuts and we were phasing it in over four years. We can’t absorb $1.6 to $1.8 billion. We just can’t.
Vannozzi: What are those solutions? What are you willing to offer concessions on?
Sweeney: Well, I can’t put them out there for one reason: we have to offer them to the governor first and hopefully we will have some movement, or at least some suggestions from him other than this is what I want, what the Assembly passed, because if that’s the case we’re really nowhere.
Vannozzi: What’s off the table for you?
Sweeney: The Assembly bill.
Vannozzi: The entire Assembly bill although it did include a few pieces of that bipartisan plan?
Sweeney: You’re correct. But again we would like to, look the retirement income piece which I was grateful that was left in the plan is something I’ve been looking and trying to pursue for several years here. But at the end of the day we can’t absorb a 1 percent sales tax cut. It’s that simple. It creates an enormous, enormous problem with our budgets next year, I mean not this year but the following year. And on top of that, the Assembly passed the constitutional mandate for the pension at the same time as they did this. It’s an impossible task going forward.
Vannozzi: Are we still looking at a gas tax and around the same amount?
Sweeney: We’re looking at a gas tax and we’re looking at how it goes in, but right now it’s 23 cents. That’s what we’re looking at. What options we do come up with we’ll present to the governor before we present them to anybody and to see if there’s a pathway to get something done.
Vannozzi: We’ve got seven days for this work stoppage where transportation officials are prioritizing where the funds need to go immediately. Is it going to be possible to cut a deal within this time frame that we’re given?
Sweeney: It’s just a matter of how much the governor wants to cut a deal. You know, we’re coming to the table hoping that we can put something on the table, offer something that has his interest. You know, he’s made it very clear to me that the Assembly passed a bill and that’s a bill he intends to support. But I’ve made it clear, too, back that we can’t pass that in the Senate. There’s no support. Sen. Kean made it crystal clear there wasn’t Republican support for the bill, besides one or two votes. So, we need to come back with something that we can live with. This needs to get done. This wasn’t the governor’s making. This has been decades in the making. We need to fix [this crisis] and we need to fix it quick.
Vannozzi: But it’s getting the Assembly on board, also, yes? Is there a disconnect there? Yesterday in the press we saw sort of a familiar squabble between you and the speaker through media statements. You had said that he would do what the governor says in his bill and you said that that was a false accusation, that he was not simply going to go along with what the governor says. Can you guys get on the same page?
Sweeney: I thought we were until we weren’t with where we were on Monday. And to be honest with you, I just read his press statement. He said that the Assembly is willing to compromise as long as the governor is willing to agree. So what does that mean?
Vannozzi: I want to talk about school funding with you. You have a plan that will fund every district up to 100 percent. How?
Sweeney: Basically it’s going back to the formula that we actually passed in 2008, but the Legislature made changes to it. Because we didn’t want any districts losing money so we did a thing called hold harmless, we did enrollment caps. And it was only supposed to be temporary for two years and then everything would be initiated, but temporary never came. So, the changes that were made stayed in place and every year the funding formula got further and further apart. Right now we have $600 million in districts that are over funded.
Vannozzi: We’ve got less than a minute. You’ll be able to do this within those five years you’ve put forward?
Sweeney: Absolutely, because we’ve already found $600 million of the billion we need and we’ve put roughly $100 million a year into school funding every year.
Vannozzi: So you need just another, roughly, half a million to give it that boost that you’re looking for.
Sweeney: But we can do that over five years.
Vannozzi: Senate president, the governor also has a plan for flat funding. Do you think that that could get traction?
Sweeney: I would certainly hope not. You know, when something’s too good to be true it normally is. Saying that every child gets the same amount of money and not recognizing the circumstances surrounding and the struggles they have, that doesn’t work. My plan, the Senate plan with Sen. Ruiz, suburban and urban both win and both lose but at the end of the day how do you argue with everyone being at 100 percent?