NJBIA Chief Government Affairs Officer Christopher Emigholz provided the following testimony tonight to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee regarding FY25 State Budget bill S-2025/A-4700.
“On behalf of our thousands of members around the state, we have to oppose this budget on their behalf.
“We at NJBIA try very hard to find the balance in things. We try to find the good in things. Budgets are very complicated documents. There’s always a lot of good and a lot of bad in every single budget. And I think from working with you all, I try to look for the positive. And with this budget, it’s very hard to do.
“We have to oppose it in its entirety, which is hard to do for a budget. This is a bad budget. It’s bad for our taxpayers. It’s bad for our job creators. It’s bad for our fiscal responsibility.
“The business community hears that we need cash as a state, yet we see a budget that’s spending $800,000,000 more in discretionary spending. That’s outside of the pension and school aid investments that are the right thing to do. That’s outside of the formulaic things that we do as a state that are protecting our vulnerable and doing the right thing. Why?
“We say that we have a structural deficit. I’m glad to hear us talk about that. That’s a good thing because we do have one. Yet we raid the debt defeasance fund that theoretically is supposed to help that. But we drain the surplus that we were proud that we built up.
“We hurt economic growth by the transit tax that we just passed, and that’s how we get out of a structural deficit is to grow our revenues organically. We’re not doing that in this budget.
“We talk about transparency, and with this budget, unfortunately, we haven’t seen a copy. Usually, there are score sheets given out to the public. We didn’t even get that this year.
“This budget doesn’t have (transparency). So, I please respectfully ask you to vote no on this budget for the sake of our tax payers, for the sake of our job creators, for the sake of the good of New Jersey. Thank you.”
