The frenzied state budget deadline is officially over.
But this week, lawmakers and advocates are criticizing how that spending plan came to be.
Citing last minute changes, miscalculations and notably, no time for lawmakers to review the budget before voting on it.
Democrats argue the ends justify the means.
But as senior political correspondent David Cruz reports, it's become a pattern in Trenton that's eroding public trust.
Good evening, everybody.
Sorry to be a few minutes late.
Given all the free money yet to be allocated and the slowed but still robust tax collection, not to mention control of the legislature and the governor's office.
A cynic might have expected that the budget season would end up as the clumsy, bumbling and utterly frustrating race to the finish line that it ultimately became.
Because it wouldn't be.
It wouldn't be June in Trenton.
If there wasn't a little drama.
Assembly Budget Committee Chair Eliana Pintor-Marin can joke about it now, but the final two weeks of June can serve as a sobering reminder of just how much a budget committee chair doesn't control, especially when it comes to the clock, especially when it comes to a magic number that lawmakers can settle on.
It moves very quickly by the time you're done with committees.
And obviously the speaker had a plan that he really was pushing for.
Right.
That took a lot of negotiation wrapping up to figure out what policy wanted to see it reflected in the budget.
And also, you know, if he's really take a look at what legislators would have liked to see, would like to see for their home districts.
Right.
And some of the things that are important to them.
It does get complicated is the fact that we all voted in committee on a budget that didn't exist at the time.
Not withstanding some of the pronouncements from the other side.
The score sheets we were given were $1,000,000,000 off.
I know for a fact that line items changed for added between the night we voted in committee and we voted on Friday.
The minority party blasting the pork spending and the opacity of the process.
Progressives lamenting what they see as tax giveaways for the wealthy and not enough for the environment or transit or the working class and poor.
Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz expressed some displeasure with critics on the left who use their inside voices to praise lawmakers and then shout their criticism in press releases and media appearances What we did today, even though there may have been hiccups and some stumbling and that it's easy to when you're not responsible for something to sit back and poke in the spaces where you see vacancy.
But it's much harder to stand up and support things.
But for the rest of New Jersey, a budget process, as messy as this one, can leave a lasting impression.
It's impossible not to see that the legislature really doesn't want the public involved in this process.
Still, out of all this comes some agreement.
Leadership should have corralled their members, the Democrat members, and said everybody got to have everything in a month before, you know, by by June, one.
What would you like to see different?
Anything?
Yes, I would like to see that magical number agreed on earlier I would say, like, I always like to shoot for a June 22nd or so.
Even that, say critics, would be an improvement over a process that leaves most everyone asking what just happened long after it already happened.
I'm David Cruz, NJ Spotlight News