O’Scanlon Calls on Democrats to Release Their Budget Resolutions & Improve Transparency

Senate Republicans Published Comprehensive Budget Plan Last Week

A week after Senate Republicans publicly distributed a budget resolution detailing a comprehensive plan to update Governor Phil Murphy’s proposed FY 2023 State Budget, Senator Declan O’Scanlon called on legislative Democrats to be transparent and share their budget resolutions publicly.

“We’re calling on legislative Democrats to be transparent and publicly disclose the changes they’ve proposed to the state budget as Republicans have already done,” said O’Scanlon (R-13), the Senate Republican Budget Officer. “There should be open discussions in our budget committees on all of the proposed changes so the public has an opportunity to weigh in when it matters.”

On May 26, Senate Republicans introduced and publicly distributed a comprehensive budget plan that would provide $8 billion of new tax relief to New Jerseyans, increase the state surplus to $5 billion, more than double proposed debt repayments, and increase legislative oversight of Murphy administration spending.

Legislative Democrats have not publicly released their budget resolutions, even as the June 30 deadline for adopting the state budget nears.

The Joint Rules of the Legislature (see Page 38) require all resolutions to be submitted at least 14 days prior to the passage of the annual budget bill and made available to the public.

Last year, as in many recent years, the Senate and Assembly budget committees quickly adopted a budget that contained hundreds of millions of dollars of “pork” additions by Democrats just minutes after the final text of the budget was provided to them and without the release or review of all budget resolutions, including those that were incorporated into the final budget.

“Year after year, the public is shut out of the budget process by Democrats who cut backroom deals in private, and we often don’t learn what changes were proposed or accepted until long after the budget has been adopted,” added O’Scanlon. “It’s an undeniable fact that our budget process has been anything but inclusive or transparent in recent memory. I challenge my Democrat colleagues and Governor Murphy to do better this year. They can start by following the rules that require their budget resolutions to be shared publicly.”