[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato, everything you need to know about public policy, citizenship, and politics.

With our good friend Dr.

Ben Dworkin, Director of the Rowan University Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

Rowan University, one of our higher ed partners.

Good to see you, my friend.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me back on.

- You got it.

We're doing this on St.

Patrick's Day.

It'll be seen later March 17th.

Rate Governor Sherrill.

Even though she's only given her state of the state and her budget address, and now the fun begins with the legislature working out the details of this budget.

How's she doing so far?

- Oh, I think she's doing quite well.

So I'd give her eight and a half, nine.

I mean, I'm sure there are always hiccups at the beginning, but she's done, I think, the key things that she needed to do in these first few months.

She avoided major tax hikes despite the $3-billion budget shortfall.

She has focused, public... Her messaging has been focused on energy prices and affordability overall.

So, you know, it's very early, obviously, but I think this is... She's off to a good start.

- By the way, go on our website, steveadubato.org.

We're doing a half hour with Governor Sherrill on a whole range of important issues impacting the nine million citizens of the great state of New Jersey.

Ben, here's the thing I keep thinking about.

The governor comes in and there's a new sheriff in town.

That expression is real in this case.

She wants to change the way the state spends money.

She also wants to change the way state legislators, you know where I'm going, add on to the budget.

A lot of money last year, many, many hundreds of millions of dollars for pet projects.

Full disclosure, as a former state legislator back in the '80's, yes, I got pet projects into the budget.

Yeah, like a bus for senior citizens in one of the towns I represented.

School aid for a community in my hometown of Montclair that was desegregating their schools and they needed transportation.

What is a pet project or pork to one is important to constituents, citizenship, which you are into at the institute, for another.

Is it all bad, Ben?

- Absolutely not.

And I think you gave a good example.

What these legislators will try and say: "Listen, I have this nonprofit "that needs a little extra cash "because they need a new route, "but they do really good work."

Or, "I need a bus," like you talked about, "to help with senior citizens."

These kinds of projects are small.

But they add up.

- They add up.

- And what happens is that the good side is, A, they are almost exclusively for good things.

If you lived in that community, you'd see it as a positive thing.

Also, importantly, they relate to politics.

Because as you know as well as anybody, Steve, when you are putting together the numbers, the coalition to pass legislation, you need 41 votes in the Assembly, 21 in the Senate.

And sometimes in order to get those votes, you need to give a little here.

Like, "Okay, we need you to take this tough vote "because it's what's important to the state.

"We need to push this agenda."

And that legislator says, "Well, yeah, "so help me out in my district "with this extra piece of spending "that's going to a good cause."

And so if we eliminated all of that, I think, you know, we'd have a much tougher time legislating.

What is of concern to the governor here is clearly the under-the-radar nature that these spending bills have been done, the manner in which they're done.

The: "We are not gonna tell anybody until months later."

That kind of legislating is something that I think she's gonna be focused on, but the spending itself is not necessarily a bad thing at all.

- One more thing on this, and we'll get off it.

Just remember: when I was in the legislature, the Democrats were in control of both houses, I happened to be a Democratic legislator.

All those Christmas tree items, all those special spending items?

They went to Democrats.

That hasn't changed in many years.

Point being: the party in power in the legislature gets most of those projects.

It's not as if Republican legislators in their districts don't need projects.

They just don't get them 'cause they're not in control.

All right, Ben, I'm gonna move on.

Let's try this.

I keep thinking about Hurricane Sandy and a Republican governor, Chris Christie at the time, supporting Mitt Romney running for president against Barack Obama, but then welcoming Barack Obama to the Jersey Shore.

Whether it was a hug or not, I don't really care, but they treated him with respect, the whole bit.

He needed help from the feds to help New Jersey in a crisis.

Talk about Governor Sherrill's relationship with President Trump and why that matters so much.

- It's a balancing act, and it was a balancing act for former governor Phil Murphy, who had to deal with the Trump administration, certainly in the beginning part of his term, and it's gonna be a balancing act for Mikie Sherrill.

You have, at the same time, the state of New Jersey, like every state, relies on the federal government, relies on the federal government bureaucracy.

Tremendous, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions even in funding that comes to New Jersey.

And to have a very sour relationship that leads to vindictiveness from the federal side, because they're the ones providing the money, that says we're gonna block it, as we've seen with the critical Gateway Tunnel Project?

That's a huge problem.

So you have to, I think what Phil Murphy did, what Mikie Sherrill, what we expect her to do, is you fight where you need to fight.

And beyond that, you don't go out necessarily picking fights.

You don't go out necessarily trying to stick, you know, your finger in the eye of the federal administration, the Trump administration.

Because you obviously need to work with these folks, and that won't necessarily make that process easier.

But when you have to take them to court, you take 'em to court.

- Yeah, and here's what's interesting.

This is gonna wind up in the courts if it ever moves forward, and Ben knows this.

The governor talks about affordability.

Huge issue across the state.

One of the things she's talking about now is the potential of merging, consolidating school districts.

Because there are too many school districts, and some of them have administrators with a very small number of students.

Some of 'em have way too many people on the staff, if you will.

Way too many schools.

Point being: should the governor force consolidation and merging of smaller districts?

Or should she, once again, as most governors have done, say, "It would be a good thing if you did it, "and you might get some extra state aid."

Because, Ben, in the end, most people want their own school district, but they also want to keep property taxes down.

And that doesn't add up.

- Yeah, this is, look, Bill Clinton famously said: "If it were easy, it would've been done by now."

- That’s right.

- It's not an easy question.

Which is why every governor up through this point has been unable to really.... Floats the idea of forced regionalization and then retracts.

So you have a situation now where I think Mikie Sherrill is looking for cost savings by regionalizing curriculum, having the standard curriculum among all the different districts that send to a regional school system.

That might save some dollars.

You're talking about state senator Vin Gopal, Democrat, head of the Education Committee, putting in any number of bills where we have tiny, tiny districts, you're talking about 400 kids in the entire district, merging with others because both of them are paying for, you know, directors of curriculum, an extra principal, et cetera.

So you have these things.

I think it's finally coming to a head.

We'll see how much savings actually cover this.

The smallest districts spend the least amount of money, but there's still potential savings there.

And I think this is part of a larger discussion that's gonna be had, in which they're really, they, the Sherrill administration, are seriously thinking about forced regionalization to just move the ball forward.

- We'll continue that conversation with Professor Benjamin Dworkin, Director of the Rowan University Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

It's an important public policy question.

It impacts everyone in the state.

Thank you, my friend, we'll talk soon, Ben.

- Thank you so much, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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