State inspecting Trump-endorsed Freedom Fuel gas stations in New Jersey

Judge gives top Bridgeport ballot suspects four weeks to accept plea deal

Sherrill says NJ removing thousands of noncitizens from voter rolls after MVC registration error

90 mph trains? They’re coming to Metro-North – in almost a decade

Gov. Lamont: State trying to ID people arrested by ICE at Bradley International Airport

Sen. Schumer vows to block any bill to rename Penn Station after President Trump

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News 12 Staff

MTNJAGSABlock0729_2026-07-29-18-13-57

Welcome to Ask Governor Sherrill, a special edition of New Jersey Power and Politics. I'm Eric Lance Croner. As always, today is your chance to speak one on one with the governor. I'd like to welcome Governor Mikey Sherrill. Governor, thank you so much. I appreciate you having me, Governor. It's such a busy news cycle, busy time, of course, during the summer. We want to let everybody know before we get to questions. How they can ask them, you can call us 888-ews TwelveNJ. That's 888-639-7126, or you can post your questions on the News 12 New Jersey Facebook page or Instagram also X use the hashtag #askGov Cheryl. All right, Governor, we, we wanna get right to it because as I mentioned a moment ago. We have been absolutely inundated with questions this go around, and so many of them revolve around this voter registration story at the MVC. 6600 non-citizens, as you announced, improperly registered to vote via the MVC. Uh, let's start with Kathy on Facebook. Kathy wants to know, she says, will you investigate the entire state voter database since the inception of the automatic voter registration to see if there are more than the 6600 non-citizens registered? So Kathy, this was due to what what we're investigating now is a serious system error that came to light whereby people who had checked on the PIN pad that they were not citizens were registered to vote that took place during a year between 2023 and 2024, years before I took office, and it appears nothing was done about it. So this came to light on the very day I learned of it. We. Started an independent investigation um with a firm Chiesa um CSG Chiesa is the main partner. He was a Republican senator under Chris Christie and was Chris Christie's AG so we work very hard to have an independent investigation, a bipartisan investigation into just what took place. We're getting to the bottom of it. In the meantime, we are starting the process to remove people who should not be on the, uh, voter rolls off the voter rolls. As well as making sure that anyone who should be on the voter rolls that we're not disenfranchising anyone, so we're doing all of that work now. We'll have that done before ballots go out and then the independent investigation is ongoing and we'll get results from that when they're finished, but we've asked them to act as quickly as possible. So will that independent investigation go back to the beginning of when this automatic or when this voter registration started through the NBC instead of just this one particular year that we're talking about with the 6600. So that is what we're investigating that. The year it started 2023, uh, it will go back to where it needs to to understand who was aware of this, how it happened, because we want to make sure that first of all that we hold government accountable. This should not have happened this way and it should have been remedied. But second of all, we also want to make sure that we put in place and make sure we have all systems in place so nothing like this happens again. As asking you to speculate here, but, but why are we just finding out about it? You said that you informed the public as soon as you found out about it, but why, why, why just now? Eric, I have no idea. I, I'm, uh, frankly, it's unacceptable. I just, um, I can't imagine why we are just finding out about this now, um. And why nothing was done to remove these voters from the rolls. It's again, it's kind of mind boggling. So the French tech company Imia, which is responsible for the software, they have a very different version of events because I mean you just said this was a software glitch, an error allowing these non-citizens to vote. Imia has said not so fast. They've told Politico it's been widely reported now this wasn't an error with their software. It was a setting that New Jersey officials approved which allowed non-citizens to register to vote anyway, even after saying that they weren't citizens. They also went on to say that the onus is on New Jersey, on the state division of elections, to verify voter eligibility. So how, how do you respond to their statement? There's a lot of blame to go around here and I think anyone who's not taking accountability, um, you know, we're going to hold responsible so that we can fix the system. We're simply, uh, you know, this should not have gone on for a year where nobody realized that this was happening and then once it was someone found out, and I'm still not sure who, then it should have been addressed. Then we should, you know, the process that we're undertaking now should have been long done and finished. Immediate action should have been taken. So I think anyone involved in this bears responsibility, and we're going to get to the bottom of it and make sure we fix it. You mentioned that former New Jersey Attorney General Chris Jeff Keyes, excuse me, is spearheading, is leading this independent investigation here. Senator Kristen Corado, who we spoke to last week, said that she and her colleagues had been voicing concern about this for years since the bill was first voted on back in 2018 when it became law. Uh, they're now calling for a bipartisan select committee with subpoena power to investigate this as well in the legislature. Is that something that you would support? You know, you keep hearing, uh, Republicans looking for any angle to make this a partisan political issue and a political attack, uh, as I said, you know, we have put out an independent bipartisan investigation. The only people that seem to want to do this differently are people that are trying to make it a partisan issue and, and go on kind of a witch hunt. We've seen that in the state legislature and we've certainly seen it in the federal legislature. Is it, is it partisan to bring together a group of both Democrat and Republican legislators to convene a committee, or is that just showing the public that in addition to your independent investigation, that the legislature is doing their due diligence too to let people know that the elections are safe? I think what it is is trying to um just say they don't want people to be able to register to vote. What they've seemed to be saying at the Motor Vehicle commission, that's what I've heard some complaints about that was legislated on and decided by the legislature. If they want to bring it back up for a vote, they're welcome to do that. But here's the thing, I, I mean, I'm a mom of 4 kids. I, I don't need more red tape and bureaucracy in my life. I wanna go. I want. Uh, when I go to, um, come to New Jersey, say I move here, I wanna go register my vehicle. I wanna go get my driver's license, and I, um, would, you know, that's where I would want to register to vote. That makes sense as, as you're doing that, that you don't have extra steps you have to take if the legislature wants to change that they're certainly welcome to put that vote forward, but we can run these systems in an accountable way. The problem, I think, isn't that you're allowing people to register to vote as they're getting their driver's license. The problem here is that this system had a serious system error and that nobody took accountability and fixed it, and that's what we're doing now. I want to focus on the approximately 400 non-citizens that you said actually voted. Senator Wicker, we also had on our show last week, he downplayed the number a bit. He said it was wrong. He said it shouldn't have happened. But he called it statistically insignificant given that some local races though are decided by Maybe 100 votes or fewer than 100 votes. Here's a question that we got on Facebook. Sandy asked, When will we know if the 400 votes from non-citizens impacted any local elections? Is that something that the state and the investigation will divulge? That is something the investigation is working on. And as I said, this is an independent investigation. So while we are pushing them. To do this as quickly as possible, um, they will be you know investigating until the investigation is finished and they can get all of the data, but that is something they're looking into right now and um. Anybody on our voter rolls who should not legally be on our voter rolls is unacceptable and that is uh what I believe that is what I, uh, have told um my administration that they are in charge of seeing to and that is what we are working to so we can make sure that we remove voters who should not be on the rolls before the election and I just, I, I wanna say how different this is from what we're seeing at the federal level here in New Jersey. We are working incredibly hard to make sure our voter rolls have legal voters on them and that no one's disenfranchised who should have a right to vote because remember we also just passed in the wake of Trump's handpicked Supreme Court taking down the over half a century of voting rights, taking that Voting Rights Act down, we have implemented it here at this stage. Level so we are working on every level to both make sure nobody who should not have access to the ballot box, making sure they do not, and then making sure everyone who should have access has access at the federal level you see a president who is claiming that the 2020 election was unfair even though remember. It was his administration who ran that election, saying the results were unfair, and then sent an insurrection after Congress, which I am personally offended by because people were killed in that law enforcement officers as he sent the insurrection over as we're trying to certify the presidential election, and then he has defunded all of the organizations that protect our election system and now continues to put out misinformation and make claims. Without evidence or facts, that's very different from what we're doing here in New Jersey. I want to circle back and just focus on the voter rolls here again because it seems like there's another wrinkle in this this week. Senator Joe Pinaccio has called on the DOJ to expand the voter roll investigation, pointing to 75,000 non-citizens summoned for jury duty, and said that the judiciary compiles its list of prospective jurors and applicants primarily from sources like. MDC Division of Elections and the Division of Taxation. So if you're the public and you want to know what's going on, you're trying to connect the dots here, does it not stand to reason that we could have far more than 6600 non-citizens on the rolls? These are two separate systems, and the senator either knows that or really should know that as an elected official in the state, how these things work. And certainly if he needs any information on how this works from my office, I'm happy to provide that education to him. As the senator should know, the jury pool is a wide jury pool that they use the different databases to gather people and, uh, as I think most citizens of New Jersey understand, people, for example, with green cards pay taxes here in New Jersey. We want them to, um, and the judges then and and the. The courts take the people that they have on jury duty and then they make sure that only people who are appropriate to stand jury duty stand jury duty. This is a separate system from the system that we have registering people to vote. Governor, we have more questions on this topic, believe it or not, I'm sure you'll believe it, but we have to take a very quick break. Keep it right here on Ask Governor Sherrill. We'll be right back.

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MTNJAGSBlock0729_2026-07-29-18-24-54

Welcome back to Ask Governor Sherrill here on News 12. Uh, Governor, thanks again for being here. Uh, we want to get back. We got a couple more questions here. Eileen asked on social media, and, and you alluded to this in the last block, will voter registration be removed from the NBC? Do you think I doubt it will unless the, you know, anything's turned up that I don't, I haven't seen evidence of yet. OK, um, but you said that if that's something that the legislature, well, the legislature could, I guess, pass a law. OK, here's a question. This is from Vincent in Kilon. Let's listen. If she supports voter ID and why she would not support it. OK, so quick question there, obviously, ever since it was already an issue before you made the announcement last week, but this is something that's, I think, only kind of gained steam now whether or not you would support, uh, some kind of voter ID. Certainly if that was the um the law passed here I would support that. I don't have a problem with voter ID. I think it gets a little conflated sometimes with the Save Act, which is the federal piece of legislation that you often. Uh, hear about that is a voter suppression piece of legislation. Some of that wants people to go through, uh, the save database. You might have heard of that. That's where Texas saw all the irregularities and the, um, people that were not in the saved database, many of whom should have been, I think they identified over, you know, a couple 1000 people that they had concerns about and are looking into. So, um, I'm very opposed to the Save Act. I do believe that it's just a tool of voter suppression and an attempt to get all of the personal identifying information of New Jerseyans into the federal government systems which I'm opposed to. Governor, another topic, another story that we've been following lately has to do with this potential cancer cluster investigation in Keyport. We actually have Sal who is on the phone right now. Sal, thanks for calling in. What's your question for the governor? Thank you and hello, Governor. My name is Sal and I live next to a decommissioned landfill in Keyport. The owners of Bay Ridge Realty have been getting fines since 1987 for the improper closure, and those fines have grown to $1.2 million today. Not a cent of it has been paid. Carcinogens were found in 2010, and Hurricane Sandy happened, and no one came back to test. Now we have over 400 residents with cancer, including myself and my son who lost his battle a couple of years ago, and that number continues to rise despite only having, I guess, around 3000 households in the area. My question. Is can you guarantee that the State Department of Environmental Protection will do its job and protect us? It seems like the DEP, um, the people you appointed, um, want to make this go away rather than remediate, um, remediate it, so. That the state doesn't appear liable if they truly believe there is no pathway to public exposure, why aren't they testing the surrounding residential area to put sick residents' minds at ease, or Um, I think, I think we lost him there, Governor. So, I'm so sorry we lost you, and I'm, I'm really, that's horrible news about your son, and, and, um, and it's horrible that you've battled this, and, uh, I, I will tell you that DEP, the Department of Environmental Protection, is testing right now. They are in the field right now. Um, we know the private test came through, but, um, we wanna make sure that we have a test from the Department of Environmental Protection. And we also have um people that have been going throughout the community holding public hearings on what's going on. I've spoken to the mayor myself and we'll continue to monitor um these reports and once they come out. Out we'll work to see with our Department of Health what further steps we may need to take and certainly if there's somebody that you feel you need to talk to, I'm happy to have someone reach out to you um and and just I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear about your struggle. Governor, you and I were just talking a moment ago about how just this week the company that's going to be wants to redevelop the site released some of their findings, and their findings both from the landfill and the actual Aeromarine site itself. It's really kind of a witch's brew of chemicals on that site. Do you have a time frame from the DEP as to when some Concrete results will be in, you know, I'm happy to have them follow up. I know they're moving quickly and they've had community meetings, but I'm happy to follow up with you and get some timetables out. OK. All right, so here's a question on Instagram. This was Joe. Joe wants to know, will you follow Governor Hochel's one year moratorium on data centers, and would you consider a longer ban? So we put out what I think is the most comprehensive data center plan in the nation really with uh guard rails around how data centers can act and as I've read the reporting on Governor Hochel's one year moratorium what it looks as if. They want to do is use that time to get to our data center plan and they were talking about holding data centers accountable and community benefits agreements, etc. so what the plan that we have in place, which I think is what New York is working towards as I understand it, um, I haven't had direct conversations just from some of the reporting. But what we have done is we have put in place a plan to make sure that data centers are bringing their own energy. We've seen them utilize in too many cases too much energy and power, and that's been raising prices on everyone else. We are having them report on their energy and water usage. We have seen in data centers claims that there's new circular systems that don't use water in the same way, but if you're going to come here, we're going to monitor that and make. Sure that is the case and you're not harming communities and then allowing communities to negotiate community benefit agreements which we will help them negotiate as well as making sure are these some videos as well as making sure they're doing good union jobs. These are 4 of the communities that have been fighting back against or have had some pretty major controversies over data centers coming into their towns. We're talking about Kenilworth, Old Bridge, North Brunswick, and Andover here, and some of those meetings have gotten. Pretty heated. Well, and certainly part of what we're doing too is empowering communities. So if a community decides that they should not have a data center there, nobody's going to force them, you know, at the state to have a data center there. What we are doing is saying look. You know, if you look at this and it makes sense for your community, we're gonna make sure we're helping you at the table to hold them accountable so they don't take advantage of communities, create environmental harm, or raise costs for people. Uh, we've heard stories, for example, of communities, uh, from other states that have been able to get their property taxes to zero because of what the data center's done or, um, you know, have been able to build new, uh, playgrounds. new turf fields, new YMCAs, and if that makes sense, if that's a good fit for your community, if you have some land, if it's not gonna take up too much space, um, we can help with that. But if you're saying no, I, I, you know, this is not good for us and this is not what our town wants, then, uh, you have that capability of blocking that as well. I want to talk about the electricity and demand side of that when we come back here on Ask Governor Sherry. I'll be right back.

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MTNJAGSCBlock0729_2026-07-29-18-30-16

Welcome back to Ask Governor Sherrill. Governor, I want to talk about the wild weather that we've had, uh, primarily in July. It's been, I mean, between flooding, severe storms. We've seen a few tornadoes just in the past week or so. Uh, you took some heat at the beginning of the month with July 4th over not declaring a state of emergency. So I wanted to talk to you about what goes into your decision making there, uh, and with the benefit of hindsight at this point and the frequency of the storms. Were you proactive enough? Are you going to rethink going forward with the frequency of these storms? So you know it's a balancing act um you certainly you know when I think about a state of emergency I wanna make sure that when I declare that that people take notice that it's not simply routine. Um, it's, you know, there are those calls where we certainly know, um, when we got pummeled with the snowstorms, we declared a state of emergency because what it does, it's like a 1940s law, um, that gives me wide state latitude, you know, remember in the 1940s they're thinking of war and the bombs coming in and if they declare a state of emergency and the governor gets, you know, power over, um, all of the state, and that's what it does, it's a pretty broad, um. Uh, Brad tool, and the reason I called it during the snowstorms is I needed to get people off the streets because we needed to get those plows, circular plowing. It was a whiteout condition. It was very dangerous, and we needed to get those streets cleared so the next day they would be cleared, but anytime you're impeding people's motion and movement, um, that's an unusual circumstance, a state of emergency. Part of what we were seeing too is we rely on a lot of our OEMs, our emergency managers, um, and they did not need the state of emergency. We were checking in with them whether or not they needed those tools. Uh, in other words, do they need the state to take over operations or can the county handle it? And I think what we were seeing is a problem and what was noted here was, um, there, there needed to be more coordination. I think not just between the county and the state but between the county and the municipalities and I think what we realized is um many of our mayors, you know, our mayors can change very frequently we have um you know uh multiple, multiple municipalities in each county and the mayors change and, and the government changes so we are working now on putting out training. So that they understand what the resources are at the county level, but things we think about, uh, what it goes into it, I think there's a mistaken perception that there's money that comes with it right now there's not. There is, there is money that we need to use for federal FEMA grants that has nothing to do with whether or not we declare a state of emergency. That's um something that's not widely understood. In fact, even as a member of Congress, I thought. That was necessary for it, so there's this wide perception you need that to unlock federal funding that's not true, um, but there is not the state, uh, rainy day fund which I'm trying to develop now in other states you have rainy day funds to help people rebuild and, and after that, and that is something we're working on now as well. Governor, we have to take another quick break. We've got many more questions to get to. Keep it right here and ask Governor Sherry. I'll be right back.

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MTNJAGSDBlock0729_2026-07-29-18-43-48

Welcome back to Ask Governor Sherrill here on News 12 New Jersey. I'm Eric Land Kerner along with Governor Mikey Sherrill. Of course, remember you can get your questions into us for the rest of the show. You can give us a call at 888-ews12NJ 888-639-7126. You can post your questions on the News 12 New Jersey Facebook page, Instagram account, or X pages. Just use the hashtag ###askGov Sheryl. All right, uh, Governor, we do have questions now, uh, regarding electricity. We, we alluded to this before about. Demand and about what people are paying for electricity and I know that you said day one that you were going to tackle, you wanted to declare an emergency on electric rates and you took some actions here. Well, Ron sent this question to us. I believe this one was a soundbite. Yes, this social media question. Ron says New Jersey has the 12th highest electricity rates for residential customers in the country. What are you going to do to bring those down? He said freezing rates is not bringing it down and neither is a $25 credit, and I believe we have a second question here as well. During the campaign, she said it's gonna lower um energy costs and, um, create a an emergency for it and we have not seen any, uh, efforts in that area. So when do we expect to see a reduction in our energy costs. So people are focusing more on seeing those, they, they want to see those rates come down, not, not, and, and we've said this from the from the beginning, they don't want to just see the numbers stand pat. They want to see those numbers start to come back down. I hear you and and certainly going around the state that was a huge concern. The first thing we had to do was stabilize it because uh as we saw last year rates went up by double digits. They were set to go up by another double digits this year. Uh, we saw so many things being dumped on the backs of ratepayers and we put an end to that. So that was why freezing the. The rate hikes were so important, not just to provide some relief to ratepayers that they wouldn't see them go up even more as they were already kind of reaching the breaking point on affordability, but also so that people started taking a different look at the business model and how we were going to run our utilities in the state and not just constantly say oh we're just. To raise prices on ratepayers. Part of how we did that was enforce the price collar so that PJM, the grid operator, wasn't going to increase rates more as they had done continuously. But what we really need to do to drive rates down is expand power generation in the interim though, we've taken away a fee. That the utilities were charging or were given to join the grid, it was a fee that was going to incentivize them to do that. They've all done that. This was years old. There was no need for it anymore. We took that off your bill so that you, you would see, uh, you know, a couple, a little bit more money back in your pocket. We also then for our most disadvantaged rate payers because of this really hot summer, uh, have put in for the next 3 months, uh, they will be receiving a $50. Credit to help them with those costs and then because of all of the steps we've taken things like approving, I've already approved 18 battery storage and solar projects to drive rates down we're working on our nuclear plant so in the future we'll have more power generation there and moving as quickly as possible there, although that is years away admittedly um and then we also have uh work that we are doing on. Virtual power plants which feed power back into the grid for people with electric vehicles and stuff like that and um we are holding data centers accountable because they have taken a huge amount of power. We are now saying you need to bring your own power and you also need to do grid upgrades that are very, very costly. So with all of the things that we have done already in just 6 months, an independent analysis said that we have already saved. New Jersey taxpayers a billion dollars of fees and rates that they would have seen had we not intervened here and we're continuing to work to broaden that power. The final thing I'll say, and this is, this is something that people can see right away, um, I will shortly be signing a piece of legislation. I was very excited about that the legislature passed balcony solar. You might have heard it called plug-in solar. These are solar panels that you can go online and buy from Walmart. And you can actually plug in in your home and that will immediately start to decrease your rates as well, you know, I want to talk about the Lacy Forked River area because I know a bunch of people who live down there, obviously right in the shadow of the old Oyster Creek nuclear plant. And speaking of trying to grow New Jersey's nuclear footprint and bring new nuclear generation into into the state, is it even possible? Is it feasible? Have there been conversations about refitting? Uh, Oyster Creek as the facility itself is there already. Sure, so we've, you know, we're looking at every way of generating more power in, uh, a way that protects our environment and protects communities, and one of the big efforts is, is certainly, um, building a large scale nuclear generator down south, um, you know, we already have artificial island down there. That's where a lot of the focus is because there is a federal effort to help states build these APU 1000s. Um, and, and we think New Jersey is sort of front of line there for various reasons. We've already gone through a permitting process, and normally this should take about 10 years. We think we have, because of some of the permitting we have, we could get that down, um, but we're working right now to push the federal government to take on the financing, take on about 80% of the financing, and so we'll continue those negotiations. That's, that's kind of the, the, the technology that we know works and that we've seen implemented in Georgia, and we think now that. They've kind of made a lot of mistakes. We can do it better and, and learn from that example and, and less expensive as far as Oyster Creek, uh, there's quite a few people that are talking about small modular nukes there. Uh, that is something I'm very interested in, but that is not a technology that has been implemented yet. They're working on it in Canada and Michigan and having seen all the cost overruns, uh, when Georgia was the first to, to try this, uh, you know, full scale nuke, um. I think we are going to be better once we see that technology working and we can make sure as we implement it we're doing it in a really cost effective way. Governor, as you know, before every show we put out the call for questions, and you never know who's going to answer that call apparently because case in point, US Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen responded and he reposted us asking this question Why does New Jersey refuse to cooperate with ICE? Well, uh, we posted a question to Secretary Mullen. Why is ICE refusing to cooperate with New Jersey laws? Um, right now we're in court fighting them because they have people across our state, uh, wearing masks, which is illegal here in New Jersey. Uh, they don't have, uh, any identification on their cars. They've taken their license plates away. We know even Homeland Security itself is investigating the actions of some of its officers. And are finding they were not properly vetted, we of course could have told them that we know how to run a very professional law enforcement agency. We have demanded that ICE, if they are operating in New Jersey, operate to the level of our law enforcement here in New Jersey. It's very high. I understand that we are the best in the nation, but we think they should be able to meet that, and unfortunately they have not. We're receiving calls of ICE agents going 75 MPH through. 25 mile per hour zones where children are, they are a very bad actor here, and we are holding them accountable. New Jersey Republicans have said that some of the policies you just mentioned put agents in danger, demoralize law enforcement, while referred to the parade of visits which we saw and really which led to some of the chaos at Delaney Hall as nothing more than a political stunt. So their acting Assistant secretary put out a statement. A while back, and forgive me for bringing this up now, but we haven't seen it in a bit, the sanctuary politicians should be thanking IC law enforcement for removing murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug traffickers from their communities. We need these sanctuary politicians to stop peddling this garbage and cooperate with us to get these criminals out of their state. These types of smears are contributing to our officers facing a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them. Talk about peddling garbage. Um, we know who is in Delaney Hall, and they're not violent offenders in many cases they are people that are going through the immigration process and were picked up in court. This is something as a federal prosecutor if somebody is showing up to their court dates, there's no reason for the expense. Of, uh, imprisoning them, I don't believe in private detention facilities. We have grave concerns they won't let, uh, the health department in for a full review of the, uh, Delaney Hall facility, which is very concerning to me. What are they hiding? I also would suggest that, um, again. If they need training and they want to pay us to do it, we'll train their officers because we seem to be able to police incredibly well here in New Jersey following the law. They need to adhere to the rule of law here in New Jersey. We are not asking them to do anything that our law enforcement officers don't do. If things flare up at Delaney Hall outside again, would you approach it differently than you did the last time in terms of sending in the state police sooner, having a different type of police presence out there sooner? We were operating very quickly with word that we were going to have ICE flooding the streets. In fact, if you recall, Secretary of Homeland Security Mullen was saying he was going to pull everyone out of the international terminal, put them on the streets. We were seeing units that were tactical units coming in. I think Mayor Baraka said there were 30 tactical units. That had shown up that he had been told that by Homeland. It was an incredibly dangerous situation and we acted to make sure that it didn't flare up anymore. Hopefully we won't see that again, but my number one concern is protecting the people of New Jersey. All right, Governor, thanks a lot. We're going to take another quick break. We'll be right back with more Ask Governor.

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MTNJAGSEBlock0729_2026-07-29-18-53-59

Governor, right before the break we were talking about Delaney Hall a little bit. Let's shift gears and talk about Roxbury. Uh, it, it seems as though the, the plans for the on again, off again detention center there might be on again, and, and, and this is a community where both Republicans and Democrats are on the same page. They, they don't want it in the community. That's exactly right. Um, there's bipartisan, uh, resistance to building this because, as you know, I, I think we've laid out for the court very clearly, this is a warehouse with 2 bathrooms and they want to house 2000 people. There's not the sewering system. They don't have the roads. The town, that's why the town's joined our lawsuit and the court has stated they can't build there right now. So, um, what are you, what are you hearing about the, the reversal that they might want to go forward with it again? I. Look, the DOJ represented in court that they weren't moving forward with it, um, and I think that's probably largely because they can't, but then, you know, they say no, that's not true. You know, the Fed, I guess the Trump administration and Mark Wayne Mullen say no, that's not true, we are gonna build and. Honestly, they need to get themselves together, um, and figure out, you know, if they're running a court case or if they're not. I think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars because I don't think the court's gonna move on this. This is a wholly inappropriate place to build. We've backed them away from it and, um, you know, they can, they can choose to fight or not, but the DOJ is representing one thing. The Department of Homeland Security is representing another thing. Um, I'm proud to say we have the state's first chief operating officer, so we don't operate like that. We actually operate on mission and on our values. Uh, it'd be nice if the federal government could get it together. Here's a social media question. Uh, this is, I'm trying to figure out who this is from. This is posted on X, uh, and this is from Bumper Cop. To handle. OK. When will New Jersey pass a bill to reinstate COA for police and fire? Governor Shapiro just reinstated in Pennsylvania. Why not New Jersey? We've been waiting since 2011, and this is something that has come up almost every show for the past 8 or so years. Sure, and it's a really important question. When I was in Congress, one of the The big hits against our firefighters was the the WAP, the windfall elimination program, and I worked hard to get that overturned and was successful so that we could make sure that that that helped support our firefighters, but we still have the cost of living adjustments and we're looking. Uh, at ways and I'd like to see us move forward, especially for those firefighters that retired, um, um, the, the ones that have retired, uh, furthest out because they are the ones that just haven't seen a cost of living and justice for many, many years and certainly with the rising costs it's been a huge problem. With our budgetary issues, the first thing I wanted to do is make sure we fully funded the pension system, and we were able to do that here, um, and again, uh, we are making sure that, you know, we're spending wisely, that it's not raising past the rate of inflation. In fact, our budget only went up 1%, inflation went up 4%, uh, so we're being very, very thoughtful with taxpayer dollars, but this is, this is something that we are working to address. We've been working with, uh, different. Groups as they chart out things like the state health benefits plan and the pension and the ways in which we could have a cost of living adjustment over time. That's why we're working so hard to get the cost down on things like the state health benefits plan so we have money to put into that program. It was a pretty bruising budget battle toward toward the end there this cycle, but one and one of the things that kept coming up was school funding. Uh, Joss on social media posted on X, are you planning to fix the school funding formula this year that has resulted in massive increases in property taxes for many New Jersey school districts? Um, really talking about the price is $30,000 per student. One district receives $55,000 per student. That is not fair or equitable. The school funding formula is not working um right now, uh, for many, many schools and that's also something that we've been hearing year after year, year after year after year. I mean we tried, you know, the formula wasn't being run that wasn't working we thought, I think people thought over time this was before my time that when the school funding formula was run for a couple of years, people would be happy that has not been the case. We, I, I said. I was running because schools were complaining to me and and communities were complaining to me about these year over year shifts that that would come in August suddenly to have a massive cut or a massive increase and you hadn't appropriately budgeted for that so we said we're gonna have a floor and a cap. People were not pleased with that, um, and so we are working with schools and communities across the state, our new department, uh, our new commissioner. Of education is working to address how we are funding schools, how we're making sure that we're, we're getting results because in some cases, um, you know, money is not, uh, going to the appropriate places. It's not making us get better results in some of the highly funded schools. We're still seeing differences across the state by zip code, which is unfair, not providing opportunity to all our students. Um, we've implemented. More high intensity tutoring, we've put money into that so that we can get people up from learning loss and keep students engaged. We have to do more with mental health. So all of this is, uh, making sure that we are funding the correct things and we're putting our money where it needs to be. And then there are programs that we just need to run that have nothing to do with money. They just are different ways of educating like 3rd grade reading. All of that's to say is we're working very hard on that. Um, and that is coming and that will be probably a multi-year process. We'll probably see, we'll see movement for the next budget and we'll see more movement after that. The thing that's most near term and that is driving up costs tremendously in both schools and for towns and for property taxes is the state health benefits plan. Uh, we have been meeting with all of the stakeholders in that for months now. That is very complicated, but we are determined to solve it. That's the, the big, um. The big issue that we are at the table with on right now as we speak, we have time for a few more questions. We have to take a very quick break right here on Ask Governor show. We'll be right back.

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MTNJAGSFBlock0729_2026-07-29-19-02-18

Welcome back to Ask Governor Sherrill here on News 12. Governor, I want to talk about NJ Transit. Obviously you, you, you put them on notice a while back, wanted them to shape up. Then we had this big test with the World Cup. Can you give us a status update on how you think operations have been running at NJT and how you, how you think things went for the World Cup? I have got to give a huge shout out and thank you to so many of our public servants involved in the World Cup and certainly NJ Transit workers and the Department of Transportation Workers had a huge heavy lift and they performed so admirably. I don't, uh, you know, I would have been happy with let's just get through this, make sure everybody's safe and gets in and out of there quickly. Uh, what we saw was. New Jersey Transit really being a jewel of the World Cup. People complimenting me on how easy it was to get in and out. People who'd been to stadiums across the country saying this was the best they had, uh, you know, it, it was really wonderful to hear, and I will tell you under the hood of that was our Department of Transportation also working on all of our partners who were putting, uh, we had had all of the parking lot taken away basically and so we had to move. People quickly there, but then there were ingress and egress routes in and out of the stadium. They got better every time. By, by the, you know, as we got into it, we were clearing that stadium faster than a Giants or Jets game with a huge amount of people. Um, it was truly, truly, I think, a, a great effort. It was a little frightening for the final when it looked like Frogger with some of the, uh, the Argentina fans trying to cross the roadway over there, uh. Listen, very quickly. Prior to the World Cup, we had had warnings that events like this were really a breeding ground for things like human trafficking, and it turns out that there were dozens of arrests. 97 suspected victims were rescued, leading to 71 arrests, dozens accused of paying for sex or wanting to. Just very quickly, can you talk about the work law enforcement did not only with this endeavor, but in securing the entire event? Yes. I, I'm so impressed with the work they did. I asked them to take this on. This is something that a lot of people want to sweep under the rug. Oh, it's just a good news story. Nobody wants to talk about, uh, the human trafficking that these events bring, and we were determined to take it on, and they built some really impressive cases, and they, you know, they heard that and they got to work and protected people, and it, it truly is a tribute to our law enforcement, as I said, they're the best in the nation, maybe the best in the world. Governor, final thoughts. Um, well, I just want to say thank you again. Things like ask the gov to talk to people directly, to hear from people directly are so important as we continue to spend so much focus on delivering for the people of New Jersey and to think that. I have pages of other topics that we didn't even get to this week. Governor Sherrill, thanks so much for coming in the studio. We look forward to having you again the next time. Thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for joining us here on Ask Governor Sherrill. I'm Eric Landskerner. You're watching News 12 New Jersey. We'll see you again next time.

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Gov. Mikie Sherrill answered viewers' questions on News 12 New Jersey's “Ask Gov. Sherrill” program.

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