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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

Way more importantly, we are honored to be joined by the 57th Governor of the great state of New Jersey.

Governor Mikie Sherrill.

Governor, great to have you with us.

- Great to be here.

Happy St.

Patrick's Day.

- Yeah, see, we are taping.

We always disclose the date we're taping, it'll be on the screen.

It will not say St.

Patrick's Day.

It will say March 17th, but this will be seen later.

Governor, let me ask you this, as we tape on St.

Patrick's Day, this program is called "New Jersey: The Road Ahead."

What do you see, I know it's a big-picture, broad question, the road ahead, particularly given the austere budget you just presented to the legislature and to the state of New Jersey.

Please, Governor.

- Sure, so I put forth an affordability budget.

The most fiscally responsible budget the state has seen in years.

It has the structural deficit.

It also doesn't raise taxes on individuals, and it has the most property tax relief that any budget's ever had.

And what we're doing here in these times when the COVID money has stopped, when the federal government has put over a billion-dollar hole into our budget, and when, you know, some of those structural problems in our state we're papered over by the COVID money, but a lot of that's coming to a head, like our state health benefits program.

This budget sets the table so that we can make good decisions going forward on strong investments into our future, for opportunity, for our kids, for our healthcare.

And this is where it all starts.

And so that's the road ahead for this administration.

- Governor, we just actually interviewed Kris Kolluri, the head of New Jersey Transit and the Turnpike.

And I was asking him about the relationship with the federal government, and also I've been asking other people about your relationship as our new governor with our president and the federal government.

Governor, where do you see the balance, and everyone keeps talking about balance.

Where do you see the balance between being critical of the administration where you believe it's appropriate, taking them to court when you believe it's appropriate, but also having a friendly, I don't know what kind of cooperative relationship people say is needed, between the state when you need the feds for Gateway and other projects?

How do you balance that, Governor.

- We work with the federal government where we can to get resources to the state.

Unfortunately, this president is acting most of the time in an illegal manner, which is really hurting our state.

And so when it comes to working with some of the cabinet-level officials or the deputies, that are just implementing some of the day-to-day actions in the state, whether it's with the National Science Foundation or some of the regional transit associations, the FRA, that kind of stuff, we work with people from the federal government when we're all just trying to get programs to run and deliver for people.

When it comes to the president though, that is different.

He looks at everything as leverage and often in a very punitive manner.

The art of the deal for the president is usually he figures out how to leverage you and then extract as much as he can, and you never get anything back.

So that's why when the president held up the Gateway Tunnel funding, I was encouraged by some people, "Oh, just try to work with him.

Why don't you just name Penn Station after him or Dulles Airport?

Why don't you just do what he wants?"

I think that's bull**** .

A, that is not the president's leverage to have.

He is acting illegally.

Congress has appropriated this funding.

The president should not have any say in that.

He's acting illegally by withholding it, A. And B, even if we did all of those things, there's no guarantee that he wouldn't come back and leverage the funding again and again and again as we've seen him do across the country.

There's no winning in that game.

That's called appeasement.

And I would suggest for those who care about history, Neville Chamberlain proved that that was not the way to go with this kind of actor.

- Yeah, Neville Chamberlain.

Appeasement from behalf of Great Britain and with Hitler.

Appeasement, speaks for itself.

Governor, real quick, I'm gonna get off the Trump thing in a second, President Trump thing.

You don't trust him, do you?

- He's never given me any reason to trust him, certainly.

- All right.

We do trust that a whole bunch of people in the state are looking for property tax... I don't know, I'm not even gonna say reform, Governor.

They want their property taxes stabilized.

One of the programs that you talk specifically about, the Stay NJ program, put forth by Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, who we're also interviewing today.

I'll ask him about this.

So basically, without getting too deep into the numbers, can we argue, Governor, that when you're dealing with budgets, numbers can get confusing at a certain point, right?

But here are the numbers.

Right now, if you earn $500,000 or less, you qualify for the Stay NJ program and you can get up to, is it 8 million?

It's $6,500, I apologize.

You're proposing that the threshold now be moved from half a million to $250,000 and you cap it at $4,000 in a property tax rebate or benefit, saving $500 million.

Do I have my numbers right?

- That's right.

- Okay.

Why doing that, why are you doing that?

A, and B, to what degree do you think the legislature will go along, particularly the Speaker of the House?

- The Speaker and the legislature really want a budget that delivers for middle-class families and to protect vulnerable people.

So we are seeing hits to middle-class families and vulnerable people across our state, whether it is because of the constantly rising healthcare costs, both because of things like our state health benefits plan, which impact property taxes, so the constantly rising property taxes, or whether it's because the president has really taken away funding for some of the Medicare programs, the Medicaid programs, as well as for the Affordable Care Act.

So we're seeing premiums go up, up to three times for people.

So at every level we're seeing horrible hits to middle-class families, some of the SNAP programs, so children aren't getting enough to eat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So what I've put forward is a fiscally responsible budget stabilizing people across the state.

And so when I focused on property tax relief, we really wanted to make sure that we were keeping seniors in their homes, that seniors on a fixed income that needed support received it.

So this re-targets it to really the middle-class seniors.

In the original program, we saw people, you know, with half a billion dollars coming in, getting some of this relief.

So we've removed it down to $250,000 so we can really target it at those middle-class families.

That's what I've heard from many legislators, that they really wanna focus on middle-class family support, and then taking care of vulnerable people, and then at the same time driving down costs for New Jerseyans across our state.

- Driving down costs is one thing, but also having priorities.

It's been said by much smarter people than me that budgets often reflect priorities.

Let's talk about your priorities as it relates to childcare.

I've asked you many times as a member of Congress that you know that we're involved in an initiative called Start Strong NJ, public awareness around childcare, affordable, accessible childcare, childcare and its impact when it isn't in place on our economic future.

That being said.

Your budget proposal adds $18 million to fully reopen New Jersey's childcare assistance program for thousands more families.

Describe your childcare agenda as Governor.

I asked you that when you were in Congress.

Different, federal government.

As the leader in the state, what is your childcare agenda, Governor?

- As you know, I'm a working mom of four kids, and I remember those days of desperately trying to find childcare, safe, affordable, quality childcare for my children.

And it makes such a difference.

I remember the difference between some of the programs.

At different times I had my children, and then whether or not they were ready, fully ready to start kindergarten.

And we've seen the outcomes in communities that don't have access to quality pre-K and affordable childcare programs and communities that do, and how long it takes for children to sometimes catch up if they don't have access to that, which is why it's so important.

On the other side, it's just really important to working families, working parents.

You know, childcare in this country and in this state can cost more than in-state college tuition.

I'm not sure people outside of working families with young children realize what a huge impact it is.

And that's why it's so important to me that we drive (indistinct) in affordable childcare, because otherwise we just don't have the workforce that we need as we're trying to build out our economy.

And we saw these huge hits especially during COVID.

So that's why I've added to the program.

Over time, what I wanna do is make sure these programs are working that we're investing in.

So we have been really examining a lot of programs across the budget, across our state, to find where we're getting the best bang for our buck and where we're not.

And so we're pushing money into these childcare programs.

We are gonna keep monitoring them, because the other part of my agenda here is to have an accountable state government.

In too many cases, we put money at really good things that we were trying to attack really tough problems, but then we didn't monitor those programs to make sure they were delivering in the way they should be.

That's why this budget we've not only put forward fixes to some of the programs and additions to some of the programs that seem to be working, but we're also increasing some money into the innovation authority so that we can have a better ability to monitor programs and make sure New Jerseyans are getting the bang for their buck that they deserve from state government.

- We're involved in an initiative around vaccine awareness, Vaccines: What You Need to Know.

The website will go up right now.

Go onto the State of New Jersey Department of Health website, which will be up as well, slash, you'll see Vaccines.

Why are we doing that?

Governor knows better than anyone, also as a former member of Congress, there's a lotta confusion between state policy around vaccines, federal policy, what the CDC is saying, what a court just said as we're doing this program, as it relates to RFK who's the head of HHS, Health and Human Services, on the federal side.

Who's in charge?

Who sets vaccine policy?

Governor, set the record straight for people in New Jersey.

What is the vaccine policy for the 9 million people of New Jersey, particularly as it relates to their children?

And who's in charge of that, the feds or the state?

- The FDA has set certain parameters on vaccines and the federal government.

And traditionally, we worked as a state with them for some of the best information.

Now we see it being politicized.

That's why the courts have really pushed back on RFK Junior and his vaccine program and stopped some of that in its tracks.

And we're seeing really bad outcomes across the country, children dying from diseases that had all but been eradicated, like the measles.

I mean, we're hearing these sort of diseases that sound like they're from the 1800s that we have vaccines that we have the cure for.

So that's why we're working with the Department of Health here in New Jersey, that we're putting information up on the website, and we're working to put out credible information and address people's concerns.

Because I think, you know, I even found this when I was a young mother when I had newborns and babies, and I asked questions.

Sometimes the answers I got from my pediatrician were very unsatisfying.

They didn't fully answer my question.

They sort of scoffed at my concerns.

And so I think it's fair as a parent to demand information on what is safe, what is not safe, and why.

And so what parents want is information.

They wanna make really good choices.

As a state government, we're also making really good choices for the community.

We are the most densely populated state in the nation.

We've seen outbreaks of measles killing people in West Texas.

It's bad enough there.

And I served when I was in the military in East Texas and flew across West Texas.

I can tell you, having flown across the state in training multiple times, It’s a very... it's not a very populated place.

You come up to New Jersey, with our populated state, and you have an outbreak of measles, and it would be devastating.

And that's not anything that parents should be afraid of as they send their kids to school.

So it is our job as a state, my job as the governor, to both make sure people have access to all of the available information, not in a political way, not in a like, this is, you know, I can't believe X, Y or Z, but in just, this is the latest, here are some concerns, here is what the studies find, and here is what's still ongoing.

And then make a decision for our population to keep the maximum amount of people safe.

And that's exactly what we're doing as we discuss vaccine policy.

But I'll tell you, there's a lot of misinformation out there.

- There's confusion.

Sorry for interupting, Governor.

- Yeah, a lotta confusion.

- There's tremendous confusion.

- A lot of confusion.

- PS: with the support of some caring corporations and foundations, we'll continue to produce programming around our trust in public health programming and our vaccine awareness programming.

- Thank you.

- Governor, we have to do that because, well, I'm not gonna get into the role.

I was gonna get into the role of public broadcasting in the state of New Jersey.

We're involved, and so are you.

You and your team will be making some decisions as to who will be operating, the state of New Jersey... I was not gonna go down this rabbit hole.

The state of New Jersey owns the public television airways in the state of New Jersey.

WNET, our partners for many years, had that contract for 15 years.

That's what NJPBS has been.

That will change this summer moving into the fall, and the Governor's administration through, I believe the treasury office and the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority, will make a decision as to who runs that station.

More information than you want to know.

And our programming will be involved.

And which is the role of public broadcasting.

That's another story.

Governor, how about this?

We put out on social media, Facebook, other places.

Sometimes good stuff happens actually there instead of people just arguing and saying rotten things about each other.

Most questions we got, other than around affordability, energy cost.

Your first two executive orders, remind people exactly what they were and why they matter, Governor.

- So you're exactly right.

It was my first two, and I had told people across the state again and again I was declaring a state of emergency on utility costs and freezing rate hikes.

And I'll tell you one of the hardest things for me to hear was from people saying stuff like, "Mikie, everybody makes promises when they're running for office.

How do I know you're actually gonna do what you say you're gonna do?"

And luckily, I had some history in elected office that I could point to, fulfilling my commitments and my promises during the election, which I think spoke to people.

But also, I'm bound and determined, to run this credible government so people rely on it.

You were just talking about credibility in vaccines, for example, I wanna make sure that people know that we're spending their dollars wisely so they can have faith in government and will continue to trust us to do more for the state and create more opportunity.

And one of those key areas, as I ran, was utility costs.

The reason I said was gonna declare the state of emergency was because I wanted people to be able to test me and then to be able to see immediately, right away, I was doing what I said I would do.

So I hadn't even finished my inaugural address.

I stopped it and in the middle of it signed these executive orders, both declaring a state of emergency and freezing utility costs, and at the same time heading through some of the red tape and permitting so we can expand our utility production so we can in the long-term drive down costs.

So we, of course, have had some rate cases that happened before I got into office.

So we've also been moving swiftly so that rate payers do not see their bills go up.

They would've been set to go up by 20% this year, which we are not allowing to happen.

We've been negotiating with utility companies.

I've also joined other governors in holding PJM, that is the grid operator, accountable.

They have not been moving quickly enough to add power to the grid.

And so we have moved to cap the amount of money they could bring the rates up.

But I haven't stopped there at those first two executive orders, which already have been enacted and working on.

We've hired out some really thoughtful people in the utility space.

Some people have come from Granholm, who was the Secretary of Energy federally, have come here to New Jersey.

'Cause this is a federal and state issue, there's a lot of different pieces involved.

So that we can even look at the business model of our utility companies to see if it really makes sense, because they're really incentivized to spend money to sort of have these bigger rate cases.

We need to make sure they're spending, again, dollars wisely, and then not dropping the cost of everything back onto the rate payer.

- And to be clear, it is the Board of Public Utilities.

And let's put up their website, folks, so people can find out more.

The Board of Public Utilities that sets the rates, meaning an energy provider can go before the Board of Public Utilities.

And, Governor, unless I'm mistaken, that is where the vote is taken as to whether approve or not approve a rate increase request.

Is that correct?

- That's correct.

So the BPU has been working with our utility companies so that we can not have these arguments for some of the rate pieces as we are making sure that costs don't go up.

The cost of utilities has just gone up exponentially for people.

And I even in my budget address, I was talking about Herbert Bermekich who are on a fixed income and have seen their rates go up, and they're paying about $400 a month to heat their small home, and they're in their 90s.

They can't afford to see these huge cost increases.

- And by the way, we'll have the governor back on a regular basis to discuss important public policy issues.

But one I wanna get a minute or so on, immigration, mass deportation, ICE.

It's confusing to a lotta people.

ICE comes in, Governor, who the heck is in charge of deporting people?

A, is it ICE?

Because that's what the feds have jurisdiction over.

But should local law enforcement officials have to help them?

Can they stop them if they see something going on?

There's confusion there too, Governor.

Or am I overstating it?

- There has been a lot of confusion, because we have had an out-of-control, lawless ICE built up from people who, it appeared as if Trump has been building a private militia really loyal to him and not to the Constitution.

And we've even heard reports of secret trainings going on to ignore the Constitution.

We've also seen these ICE agents on the streets, many of whom have had almost no training, who are masked, who don't wear insignia, and who change their license plates so they can't be tracked throughout the states.

Even seeing American citizens, like a mom who had just dropped her daughter off, her 6-year-old, at school, driving home in her Honda Pilot, being killed by ICE.

Or a VA nurse, and both these cases happened in Minneapolis.

A VA nurse who was seemingly, from the video, protecting some women who had been pepper sprayed by ICE, shot and killed as he was being held down on the ground.

So the question becomes, like you said, can local law enforcement intervene?

The answer is yes.

Luckily, we have the best-trained police in the country.

I really do believe that.

That's not just because I'm governor of New Jersey.

You know, even when I was working federally, our law enforcement officers went and trained other law enforcement across the country.

Many of the chiefs of police, our state superintendents come from New Jersey because we have the best training and the most professional force.

And so they know what is required of them and what is required of their training, and they know how to intervene to keep people safe.

But it's also very unclear.

We have not been hearing from ICE what their agendas are.

Often when they act in a way that creates a huge amount of danger for our citizens, they aren't forthcoming on what their rules are or how we can enact, you know, how we can stop that behavior.

That's why I've also set up a portal, and we've had hundreds of people download things into our portal so we can better understand what ICE is doing in our state and make moves to keep people safe and protect them across our state.

I've also demanded that ICE not operate off of our state properties, so they can't launch much of their actions off state properties.

And no, the state police's job and local municipal police jobs aren't civil immigration enforcement.

That's a federal job.

So the local police don't enforce civilly.

Now, if there is a crime, if there is a dangerous crime committed, then our police act to make sure that they're not allowing dangerous criminals on the streets.

But if it's simply civil immigration enforcement, that's a federal job, and our local police and our state police don't get involved.

- Governor, before I let you go, it's only been a few months that you've been in office.

For your husband Jason, your family of four children, biggest change has been?

- You know, the biggest change has been just going to Trenton, which may sound, since I'm living up north in Montclair, as you know, that might sound like a big commute to some people, but actually, compared to going down to Washington regularly, it's really been great to be in this state.

The biggest change is been moving from an elected official serving the northern part of the state.

And, of course, this started to take place over the last year as I went all over the state and really getting to know every single part of the state.

I was just down with the chamber in South Jersey, recently, in different events all over.

I was in Lawrenceville with some of our military, our National Guard, talking about deployments to Iran.

So all of the issues across the state, which I'm so honored to be really focusing on as we try to keep people here safe, and then create great opportunity for them and their kids in a very unstable world.

We are working to make New Jersey an island of stability here, so people have a great sense of their future and a great sense of New Jersey.

- Governor, we cannot thank you enough for taking the time with your ridiculously busy schedule to join us and talk public policy and talk about the impact of your administration on those 9 million people in the state and what you believe our priorities should be.

We'll have multiple conversations with you.

So on behalf of all of us in public broadcasting, we wish you and your team all the best on behalf of those 9 million people in the state.

Thank you, Governor.

- Thank you, and thanks so much for everything.

I appreciate it.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, that's the governor.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Kean University.

NJM Insurance Group.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

The Burke Foundation Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

IBEW Local 102.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by Insider NJ.

- (Soft music) - (Softly)Is that?

- Wow.

(Children laughing) - (Softly) It’s gonna be okay.