How did Trenton lawmakers carve up pork spending for 2024?

More than two months after New Jersey's budget was signed into law, the Legislature released details on special request items — pork spending — made by state lawmakers.

Legislators sponsored and funded nearly 500 line items that vary significantly, from the New Jersey State Police to all manner of community projects.

State Senate President Nick Scutari ensured that his district saw plenty of funding for improvements. He sponsored a resolution giving $25 million to Union County Vocational-Technical Schools, $11 million for upgrades at Warinanco Park in Union County and another $13.75 million to the county for development, capital and operating expenses.

Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin was in on the action, too. Coughlin sponsored a resolution to appropriate $2 million for a Metropark platform capital project.

State Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz secured $30 million for Newark to expand access to health care through a program administered by Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, in partnership with University Hospital.

How the NJ budget funds pork projects

All of these appropriations are the norm in New Jersey.

As part of the annual effort to craft a new state budget, legislators like to add items that benefit their specific communities as well as larger projects that tend to grab attention as the process heats up in June — this year the oft-discussed StayNJ rebate program, for example.

There’s typically little in the way of public input or even discussion, though it falls to taxpayers to foot the bill for these projects.

Because Democrats control both the Assembly and the state Senate, it’s no surprise that the majority of the 494 resolutions added were sponsored by Democrats. A few Republican-backed items did manage to make the final cut, though, including $250,000 for environmental infrastructure upgrades in Pemberton and $200,000 for Hammonton Lake Park improvements in Hammonton, both sponsored by Assemblyman Michael Torrissi Jr. and Assemblyman Brandon Umba, as well as $250,000 for transportation improvements in Egg Harbor Township and $250,000 for the Atlantic County Economic Alliance, both of which were sponsored by state Sen. Vincent Polistina.

State lawmakers typically ignore their own rules, which require resolutions that add new spending for these pet projects to be published 14 days before the state Senate begins deliberating its final spending bill. The 2023 list of special request items was also released in August, six weeks after the summer recess started, when attention was no longer on Trenton.

Scutari said in a statement that lawmakers are “making use of state and federal resources to support specific programs and services that will improve the quality of life for New Jerseyans without added expense for local government."

“We are managing state finances responsibly with a surplus of more than $8 billion, another full pension payment and a debt reduction program that will produce long term savings for the taxpayers,” Scutari said. “We will continue to be fiscally responsible at the same time we work to make life more affordable for our residents and make strategic investments to expand economic growth.”

The Senate president did not comment on why it took two months for the resolutions to be released.

Special request items: As a final NJ budget looms, where is the pork?

Does the NJ public have any opportunity for input?

Scutari and Coughlin said on the night Gov. Phil Murphy signed the budget into law that the resolutions would be “released in the same time frame that we’ve always released them.” Scutari also said in the days leading up to the budget vote that the resolutions were “under active consideration” and he hoped they would be available by July.

Peter Chen of New Jersey Policy Perspective said that as with every other bill, the public has a right to know who sponsored each resolution and what it's for before the Legislature votes on it.

“There should be bills, things we should have, like where’s the [Office of Legislative Services] estimate? It's nowhere. There's no fiscal note,” Chen said. “You have to do your own homework. You look at the budget resolution, and then you look at the budget language provisions, and then you line it up to where it was different from the governor's budget or from some earlier version, and then you can figure out this resolution correlates with this language change. But oftentimes, that's what you have to do on your own. It's not as though the text is included in some of them, or any explanation for what the money is going toward.”

Chen went on to say that his concern isn’t with the specific projects or whether they are good but the opportunity for the public to “provide any kind of scrutiny for the budgeting process,” because the lack of transparency and information “erodes the faith in government overall and contributes to a view of government is wasteful.”

But the lack of public input isn’t the only transparency issue during the process, Republicans say.

Republican Budget Officer Sen. Declan O’Scanlon and Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco allege that the explanatory information on the resolutions sponsored by their members, as well as the sponsoring members themselves, have been modified.

“They’re not the budget resolutions that our members actually submitted; rather they are versions of our members' resolutions that were prepared by someone else,” Bucco said. “Who we don't know, because we weren't consulted on it. So the resolutions are now being crafted by somebody that don't necessarily reflect a complete resolution.”

Bucco noted that some Republicans who “advocated for items and appeared as sponsors of resolutions now no longer appear as the sponsors of these resolutions” and that the explanations were removed so it “appears as if this was a whitewash and sanitation process to cover up what's been a horrible process to begin with.”

O’Scanlon echoed that and said the information was “unquestionably, purposefully withheld by Democrats” and that it “doesn't adhere to the spirit of transparency in government.”

“The arrogance is astounding and the public should give a damn, because it's their money, much of which is being squandered or manipulated and handed to people with no accountability,” he said.

The rules of the Legislature, adopted by both chambers at the beginning of each two-year session, note that the “sponsor or sponsors of a budget resolution shall set forth in detail therein each revenue, line-item or language provision proposed to be added, deleted or changed and append thereto a statement explaining the proposed changes and the reasons therefor.”

The Senate Majority Office did not respond to requests for comment on possible changes to the resolutions.

What statewide programs benefit?

These resolutions don’t just cover the district-specific desires of legislators, though. There are statewide programs that benefit as well. Money was set aside to address housing issues and lead remediation efforts as well as for health care and school services.

But the majority of the 494 late additions that helped balloon Murphy’s $53.1 billion proposed budget to its $54.3 billion final form were new items from all over the state.

Three community centers made the cut: $5 million for the Monte Irvin Park Community Center in Essex County, $3 million for a community center in Pennsauken and $330,000 for capital improvements at the community center in Highland Park.

There is $250,000 headed to Nimbus Dance Works in Jersey City and $100,000 going to Cheer Dynamics in Hoboken.

Another $1.5 million is going to Livingston for field improvements at the Oakner Complex, and $2.5 million is headed to Monroe Township for capital improvements at police headquarters.

Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ pork spending: How did lawmakers pick pet project for 2024?