Title: Ask Governor Murphy: July 2025 Recap

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. WNYC's Nancy Solomon is back with us as she usually comes on after her monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in. It was Wednesday night this week. Some of the topics, the new mansion tax in New Jersey on homes worth $2 million and up, has apparently caused disagreements between housing advocates and the governor. There's also hikes on electricity bills, as you no doubt noticed, if you live in Jersey, adding financial pressures to New Jersey residents and questions about what, if anything, the state should do about it. Also, more on ICE raids and what happened in the budget, state budget just got passed for the new fiscal year, relating to opioid settlement funds. A whole lot came up on one little hour of Ask Governor Murphy on Wednesday night. We'll tick through some of that and take some of your calls on some of those topics. Hi, Nancy.

Nancy Solomon: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with the mansion tax? This is being debated in New York, too. What got passed in New Jersey, and who likes it and who doesn't?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. It's a fee. It already existed for houses sold for more than a million, and now it graduates up after $2 million. There's an extra fee or an extra percentage is taken. I think this is going to add $300 million to the budget. I don't have that in front of me, but if I'm remembering right, that's what it's going to add. You alluded to some folks are not happy about this. It's not what you would expect. It's not that people are opposed to the higher tax. It's housing advocates who are upset that the money isn't being dedicated to the affordable housing trust fund to build more affordable housing.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of the governor with you on that.

Governor Murphy: I think there are two legitimate schools of thought here. One that says pure production of affordable housing units is the only thing that matters. I mentioned a minute ago, we've got a huge supply-demand imbalance. You can't argue with that for sure. The advocates will suggest that it's plus or minus 200,000 units short and that that's their view, that every dime that has anything to do with affordable housing should go via the trust fund into production of affordable housing units. I think it's a very legitimate view. There's another set of folks, and I have sympathy with this group, and our budget acknowledges that sympathy, that affordable housing relief can take different forms. Certainly, production of units is one of them, and we still do a lot of that. I'll give you an example of a program that we think is a game changer, which is down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, which I think is a very worthy and proven successful program.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, am I hearing there a difference of opinion, maybe among advocates, regarding the best way to help New Jerseyans with the cost of housing at this time? Assistance for first-time buyers as opposed to production of more housing?

Nancy Solomon: No. I think the housing advocates are pretty much on the same page and quite clear that they want to see more affordable housing built. I think it's the towns and the elected leadership from towns that don't want to have to build affordable housing that are putting pressure on the legislature and the governor to tamp down this move to build more affordable housing in their towns. People don't want more dense towns. They don't want people who might have a lower income than them. There are all kinds of issues that are behind this that he didn't address.

I wish I'd asked him a follow-up. Sometimes I listen to this stuff after the show, and it's like, oh, because I really take issue with this idea. First, that grants to first-time home buyers to help them buy a home. All good and well, it's a wonderful thing. Right? It's not a game changer. It's not going to put any kind of downward pressure, or I don't think it's going to put downward pressure on the price of housing in New Jersey. You've got to go with the supply. That's the game changer. It's building more affordable housing, but I think towns really love the idea of let's just help people be able to afford the high prices, as opposed to driving down the high prices.

Brian Lehrer: Another affordability issue that came up with you and the governor on Wednesday night, the cost of electricity. There's been a 20% increase. I'm seeing that number in electric bills over what period of time? Give us the background here, and we'll play a clip.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I believe this year they've spiked up 20%. I'm not 100% sure that that's the timeframe, but I believe so. The root of this is that New Jersey is part of a regional grid supplier called PJM, Pennsylvania, Jersey, Maryland. What's happened is that PJM has not gotten more energy production online, especially clean energy production. They've been slow to that. What we have now is that demand is outstripping supply, just like in the housing market. It's driving up the price. All the state governors are mad at PJM for this and blaming them.

There are other problems going on that the governors and the state should be dealing with, namely, how much the data centers and AI, for one, are driving up prices. Yes, I had a bit of a back-and-forth with the governor on this. He's all about blaming PJM and talking about providing relief, but he wouldn't go there with me on that, maybe the state needs to look at doing something about the data centers.

Brian Lehrer: AI data centers. Yes, that's a growing issue, and I guess people in different communities around the country are just starting to grapple with it. I was just reading an article this morning, I don't remember what news organization it was in, about a big AI data center in Georgia that wound up using a lot of the local water supply because, for some reason, it takes a lot of water to run that center, and people's taps ran dry. This is a growing issue regarding the resource demands of those things. I guess we heard with you what Governor Murphy would or would not say about that in the context of New Jersey. Here's a 30-second clip of him. Listeners, this came right at the end of the show, so you can hear their closing music coming in.

Governor Murphy: Nancy, you and I talked about why would you shut off the offshore wind program that this federal administration has done when that program could have powered a million and a half homes in New Jersey?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, and what's going to happen with AI coming in? As our affordability reporter in New Jersey, Mike Hayes, said to me, "Is grandma subsidizing Google?" are ratepayers subsidizing these big AI plants?

Governor Murphy: No, we won't. We can't let that happen. I'd never heard that phrase before, but I have to start using it.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, is this an issue in the governor's race at all? Murphy is only going to be in there for a few more months, and then either Jack Ciattarelli or Mikie Sherrill.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I haven't seen that come up yet. It's early days for the general election campaigns. I don't know if there's a big difference. Murphy is all in on seeing the economic power of AI and wanting it to happen here in New Jersey. Whether the Republicans, or whether the candidate Mikie Sherrill is going to say, "Maybe we need to slow down on this because it really is going to drain what electricity or water that we have available," I don't know whether they're taking a closer look at that.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Next topic, ICE. It came up from at least one caller, Josephine from Highland Park. What's the latest ICE issue in New Jersey? Obviously, it's ongoing, but how did it express in Ask Governor Murphy?

Nancy Solomon: Right. We've had several ICE raids in various towns across the state. People are really upset about this. We get calls since January, and now the governor, he has a text line where he takes questions from residents and citizens of New Jersey. His staff is now sharing those questions with us as well. It's like, it's a lot. It's a lot of questions each month, and they're good. I noted in them there are a lot of people asking, "What are you going to do about the ICE raids?" Or, "What are you going to do about protecting immigrants?" Or, "What are you going to do about protecting our democracy?"

I ask him about this just about every month because it comes up and because we've had the whole fight at Delaney Hall in Newark, where it's a massive federal immigration prison that has news reports have come out about bad conditions there. Of course, we've had fights with Congress members going to inspect, and that caused a whole fight with the Trump administration and trumped up, no pun intended, legal charges against a member of Congress and the mayor of Newark. This has been an ongoing issue since Trump came into office for his second term.

My sense is that listeners are not hearing what they want to hear from Governor Murphy, that he has a pretty pat response that he gives me every single month about it. It has not changed. Basically, he talks about the Immigrant Trust Directive, which is a attorney general policy that directs local police not to work with federal ICE agents unless a crime has been committed. He talks about that, and then he always adds that if someone commits a crime, you're going to have to leave the country. We're not going to protect you. I just find it unsatisfying. People want action. They want their governor and their state legislators to do something. They're unhappy with what the Trump administration is doing. It's just been unsatisfying.

Brian Lehrer: Julie in Chatham, you're on WNYC. Hi, Julie.

Julie: Hey, Brian. Hey, Nancy. Love your show, love Nancy's reporting, all of it. My question is, when they talk about built housing, does that include conversions? If you want to create mixed-use development, like growing more than just the housing stock, the integrating in people's lives in that way, do they include conversions? We could get a lot of housing done that way.

Nancy Solomon: The governor did-- That came up the other night, and he has said a few times that he likes the idea. This is referred to as ADUs, auxiliary dwelling units or accessory dwelling units. The idea being that you take your garage, or your attic, or tiny house that you build in your backyard and rent that out and that that creates more housing. There's a bill, it hasn't gotten to his desk yet. He says he'll sign it. He's big on this idea. I think it's a popular idea. I think it also can help people defray the cost of their taxes and stay in their home longer.

I think there's a lot of positive about the state. The towns are doing it town by town. They're allowing people to build these, but it's very patchwork, and I don't think there are that many of them yet. If the state comes in and says this can be done and sets some rules around it, I think that's considered a positive. I don't think it's considered to be a real solution to the affordable housing crisis. I think the only way out of that is to build-- As the governor said, we're 200,000 units of housing short from what is needed.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Nick in New Hyde Park, who has a governor's race question. We'll see if you can take this on even if the governor didn't get asked this question on Wednesday night. Nick, you're on with Nancy Solomon. Hi.

Nick: Yes, hi, Brian. I know that a few weeks ago, Christie Whitman endorsed Mikie Sherrill. I'd like Nancy to speculate, what are the odds that Chris Christie will endorse Mikie Sherrill, and does she know if Chris Christie has a history with Jack Ciattarelli, either positive or negative?

Nancy Solomon: Oh boy, you're making me go back in my brain several years. I'm trying to remember what Christie's relationship with Ciattarelli was or is. That's an interesting question. I would merely be speculating to answer it, whether I think Christie would endorse Mikie Sherrill. I doubt it. He might just not say anything and not make an endorsement. I guess if I was a betting person, I would say he probably has enough history with Jack Ciattarelli and with the Republican Party in New Jersey that, as much as he doesn't nowadays like MAGA or Trump, I think he would stick with them. He would stick with the New Jersey Republicans.

I'd be surprised to see him make the same move. Christie Whitman, she's of a very different generation and wing of the Republican Party in New Jersey. She is of the old moderate wing of the Republican Party that has been completely wiped out, basically. Chris Christie was part of that change of the Republican Party becoming much more conservative over the time that he was governor. I think that's why you might see a big difference between the way they approach this.

Brian Lehrer: We have one more clip to play from your Ask Governor Murphy call-in Wednesday night. It's about the state budget, which just got approved for the new fiscal year. It also relates somehow to how money from the big opioid settlement is being used. Do you want to set this up for us?

Nancy Solomon: Sure. I don't know exactly which clip you have, but I can tell you that the budget, it gets passed late in the process. There's not a whole lot of time for people to see what's in it and fight anything that they're unhappy about. That's a problem with the process of the state budget. One of the things that got snuck in there at the last hour was a $45 million transfer of the money from the national opioid settlement from the pharmaceutical companies and the retailers who basically perpetrated the epidemic on us. That money which every state gets has been going to small nonprofit organizations, or maybe not small, but nonprofit organizations that do evidence-based work fighting opioid addiction, so harm reduction, meaning helping people. Instead of judging them about their drug addiction, helping them live safe lives, and other evidence-based addiction treatment and services. Now that money is going to four politically connected hospitals instead, and a lot of people are unhappy about this.

Brian Lehrer: Here's part of the governor's response to your question about the reallocation of these funds from nonprofits to big hospitals.

Governor Murphy: This was not where I would have landed, honestly. A budget is a compromise, and you're trying to compromise with two important legislative chambers. I bring to the table my priorities. They bring their priorities to the table. This is one which was not a priority for me, but, again, any budget is a compromise.

Brian Lehrer: I guess there's a question about how something like that gets into the state budget without the governor's approval. I guess that happens all the time, right? There are so many lines in a budget, and unless there's a line-item veto, which I don't think they have in the state house in New Jersey, then as you say, these are compromises. As he says.

Nancy Solomon: I didn't take what he said to mean that he wasn't aware of it or that he didn't approve that it was made without his agreement.

Brian Lehrer: No.

Nancy Solomon: I think he's basically saying, "Look, I fought for the things I wanted, and they fought for the things they wanted, and this is how it shook down. I don't necessarily agree with the decision, but it wasn't a priority for me." I was a little surprised that he actually admitted that much, that he disagreed with the leadership in the legislature, but he agreed to it because he was trying to get a deal done. Fair enough. I was pleased that he actually acknowledged that because, usually, he won't say anything critical about democratic leaders in the legislature, even though they often deserve it, but he wouldn't.

I then followed up with a question about the political connections of the hospitals that got the money, namely Cooper Hospital in Camden, which is run by George Norcross, the powerful political boss, and RWJBarnabas, which employs his former chief of staff, George Helmy. George Helmy was appointed by Murphy to be the temporary US Senator, which is like a nice little padding of one's resume. Then he got a nice big job at the top, not at the very top, but of RWJBarnabas, one of the biggest hospital or health systems in the state. A lot of people see this as a giveaway to political interests, and he was not going to go there. He basically defended the hospitals and said that, "Look, they're nonprofit, too, and they do good work. The opioid epidemic has fallen at their doorstep, too." That was as far as he'd go.

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, let me take one more call. This is Dave in Highbridge, who's going to go back to the issue that you talked about earlier regarding the hike in electricity prices this year and the possible relationship to the demand on electricity by AI data centers in the state. Dave, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon. Hi.

Dave: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Just, I would urge people to really start paying attention to this issue. If you go look at what is happening in and around DC, like Northern Virginia, Maryland, that area where that is the location of the most intense building of data centers, which, of course, because of demand from government. The local governments there are coming up against the state and the feds on this issue because, as was mentioned, they use huge amounts of electricity, lots of water for cooling the computers.

The state in Virginia, for example, wants to do this development, and they're giving tax breaks to the companies to build the data centers. The local, the county level, they only have so much water. They only have so much electricity, and the electric rates are going up. Water is getting sucked out of the ground. I think that this is going to become a local issue here in New Jersey. Look at South Jersey. There's already problems with water, the aquifers getting used up. What happens when you start building a lot of data centers around Philadelphia? All that water is going to get sucked up. Same thing up here in the north where I live. I really think this is going to happen, and people need to pay attention to it.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I couldn't agree with you more. I would recommend to all the listeners to listen to this week's On the Media, which I believe is a rebroadcast of a show they did in January. It's a whole discussion about AI and problems with it. Not all problems, but fascinating, fascinating interview with a critique of all the different aspects of AI. Not what you would expect. Not about, oh, robots are taking over the world, but more like they're boiling lakes and using up all of a scarce resource, energy. That was really interesting. Yes, I think it's a big problem. I haven't heard anything from Governor Murphy to suggest that he wants to put the brakes on these kinds of developments. I think he sees this as the economic future of the state. I think it's raising some real questions.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, before you go, a listener is calling in to say I got it wrong when I said the governor does not have line-item veto power over the budget in New Jersey. Caller says the governor does. Do you happen to know one way or the other? Because I am happy to stand corrected if I was wrong.

Nancy Solomon: It's true the governor has line-item veto power. It's one of the things that makes the governorship of New Jersey, by the constitution, one of the most powerful in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Huh. Maybe this is how I got it wrong, blame myself for not paying close enough attention, perhaps, but do we hear a lot of battles over specific things once these big annual budgets are passed, things the governor vetoes, and then they go back to the legislature for an override debate?

Nancy Solomon: Oh, we could open a whole can of worms, Brian. Really, this comes down to one party rule. The Democrats, Murphy isn't going to pick that kind of a fight with his own party that controls the legislature. It's three guys in a room, and they make the decisions. That's how they pass budgets. When Chris Christie was in office, he line-itemed the heck out of the budget and fought with the Democrats tooth and nail. Many times, we didn't have a signed budget by the deadline. That's how you got the famous photo of Christie on the empty beach, sitting in his beach chair, because the state parks were closed down. He has access to it. When you have a Democratic governor and a Democratic controlled legislature with a big majority, there isn't going to be a whole lot of public fight. It's all going to happen behind closed doors.

Brian Lehrer: Good context and clarification. I stand corrected on that. Nancy, always great to have you on after your Ask Governor Murphy call-ins. Talk to you next month if not before.

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