Mikie Sherrill’s First Budget Delivers Priorities But Continues Traditions She Criticized 

TRENTON, New Jersey — Gov. Mikie Sherrill is set to sign her first state budget on Tuesday, a $60.7 billion spending plan that fulfills some of her campaign promises but also preserves Trenton budget traditions that she has criticized.

Sherrill hammered out details of the budget behind closed doors with the state’s legislative leaders, Senate President Nick Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin. The governor, who campaigned heavily on a message of affordability, walks away from the budget able to say she kept some of the promises she made on the campaign trail: New Jersey’s public employee pension system, which has suffered from years of underfunding, will receive a full annual payment of $6.1 billion. And there will be a temporary 25 percent increase to the child tax credit, coming in at a $50 million price tag.

Democrats were also eager to highlight a record amount of K-12 education funding — $12.4 billion — and just over $3 billion in direct property tax relief funding for residents.

But despite the first-term Democrat’s earlier promises to hold the line on legislative earmarks and having a more transparent budget process, the mad-dash to meet the state Constitution’s midnight deadline mirrored the rushed — and opaque — budget cycles of years past.

Sherrill touted that the price tag of the state Legislature’s spending plan came nearly identical to what she proposed in March. But that figure comes with a nine-figure caveat: She is expected to sign a separate bill that includes $358.8 million in additional spending, but is technically accounted for in the current fiscal year — increasing total spending agreed upon with lawmakers.

Even without that budgetary maneuvering, Sherrill’s spending plan is still the largest in state history.

Several tax increases on businesses also moved alongside the state budget, which Sherrill is expected to sign.

At a press conference discussing the budget, Sherrill said the spending plan delivered on her affordability promises — and contrasted them with the Trump administration, a common foil for the Democratic governor. Sherrill did not sign the budget at the press conference, where she was joined by Democratic lawmakers, but is expected to later Tuesday evening.

“All of our problems, including all of those created by Washington, are solvable,” Sherrill said. “And your New Jersey government is working hard to solve them.”

Sherrill entered the budget negotiations seeking cuts to legislative earmarks and wanted to drastically cut the property tax relief program for senior citizens known as StayNJ, which cuts property taxes in half for seniors up to a $6,500 benefit. Ultimately the budget she signed scales back StayNJ — excluding higher income seniors from participating in it and reducing benefits — while also restoring millions of dollars for earmarks in Democratic legislative districts. Sherrill had been critical of that during her budget speech in March, calling it a “bad habit of tacking on last-minute giveaways.”

“We can’t afford that process anymore,” she said at the time. “It’s not accountable; it’s not efficient; it’s not what the people of New Jersey deserve.”

While the legislative earmarks represent a small amount of overall spending relative to the state budget, they collectively account for hundreds of millions of dollars in spending on projects that personally matter most to state lawmakers. The budget deal also includes $120 million in state loans and grants for Jersey City, the state’s second-largest city, where local officials have warned of a municipal fiscal crisis.

Sherrill has since softened her stance on legislative additions.

“I was a member of a legislature — I know there were key projects in my district,” Sherrill said during Tuesday evening’s press conference. “And so these legislators behind me put in some really good ideas and projects.”

Republicans pejoratively refer to the legislative earmarks, which traditionally go almost exclusively to districts run by Democrats, as “pork.”

“This budget does not lower the cost of living for residents,” GOP state Sen. Michael Testa said on the Senate floor. “It simply spends more taxpayer money than ever before while asking families to settle for the same broken promises.”

He added: “The orgy of pork continues — and Caligula blushes.”

Democratic lawmakers pushed back against characterizations that the spending was “pork.”

“As a proud Muslim American, I’ll be the first to tell you, I will not support any pork in any budget whatsoever,” said Democratic Assemblymember Al Abdelaziz. “I don’t see it as pork, I see it as bringing and doing our job that we’re supposed to do, bring resources to our district.”

Sherrill campaigned on bringing transparency to state government — and previously called for more transparency in the state budget process.

While the governor traditionally releases a budget proposal in March, it is ultimately up to the state Legislature to introduce the final spending plan. This year, the state budget was voted out of the Legislature's respective committees just minutes before midnight on Sunday — before the Legislature made the final budget document publicly available.

Republicans, who have long been out of power in the Statehouse, have said the process can be difficult for lawmakers to follow, much less regular members of the public.

“The governor promised a more transparent process — this budget was adopted [in committees] at 11:30pm on a Sunday night,” said Assemblymember Michael Inganamort. “The process is broken. It has been broken, and it sure wasn't fixed this year.”

Sherrill herself acknowledged the process could be a better one.

“I know the process needs work — it takes too long, it could be much more transparent, but we took steps in the right direction this year,” she said at the press conference.

Ahead of her March budget address, Sherrill warned of a state in a dire financial situation. Sherrill’s spending plan continues to reduce the state’s surplus from $7.6 billion in the 2026 fiscal year to around $6 billion for the upcoming fiscal year that starts Wednesday.

One key area of savings was scaling back the StayNJ program, which is being cut to the tune of $400 million. The eligibility income threshold for the program was initially $500,000, which Sherrill is lowering to $200,000. The maximum benefit to seniors is also being scaled back for seniors making over $100,000.

Tax increases on businesses are also expected to be approved by Sherrill, including a per-employee fee that employers must pay for workers on Medicaid, temporarily capping deductions from prior years that businesses can claim and new fees on data brokers or companies that sell personal data to them.

At least one GOP lawmaker said the governor’s first budget — her first major test of how she would work with Trenton — put Democratic lawmakers out on top.

“The losers of this budget process are the residents and taxpayers of this state,” GOP Assemblymember Greg McGuckin said on the Assembly floor. “But the scoreboard in my mind reads as follows: Democratic Legislature one, Governor Sherrill, zero.”

Joey Fox contributed to this report.