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News 12 Staff

NJPP315B_2025-03-15-14-53-12

Welcome back to New Jersey Power and Politics. I'm Eric Lanz Croner utility rates set to soar again. New Jerseyans staring down the barrel of some steep increases just in time for summer. So what can be done about it? If anything, I'm joined by Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin. Uh, Speaker, it's good to see you again. It's been a while. Nice to be with you. Yeah, it's good to be back. Thanks for coming in the studio. Uh, listen, we're, we're, we're gonna cover a lot of different topics today. We'll get to utility rates in a moment, but I want to start with, with a pretty big story this week has to do with, uh, the USDA cutting a billion dollars, uh, to, to school kids. Can you explain how this impacts New Jersey children in particular? Sure, profoundly adversely. Um, the, the, the $26 million that we're going to lose in the state of New Jersey, uh, is something that will have a, a direct impact. We know that children perform better in school when they're well fed. We know that for some children, the, the breakfast and lunch that they get is, is maybe the only meal of the day. Uh, so this money is directly related to the, the, the money from this goes to food banks and it goes to local schools. It's a great program because it also helps farmers, uh, you know, farmers have a really tough business, right? They can't set their own rates. They, they have to worry about the weather to a degree that they even your meteorologist, uh, don't worry about. Uh, they have all kinds of challenges that go along with it. So we, and part of this is to bring a stable market for them. They produce it. They get it to the local schools. It's terrific program, terrific system. What the federal government did was, was it, I, I think like I have spent, uh, it has made been the cornerstone of my, uh, speakership to address food and insecurity, and I can tell you I think this isn't just bad policy it's just flat out wrong it's wrong for people it's, it's, it's sort of morally wrong, not sort of, it's morally wrong. Uh, helping people who need food is something that is, is something that we should never turn our back on, and this is shortsighted. It hurts farmers, it hurts students, it hurts their family, and it hurts us all because when people are, are hungry. We all suffer from that. Could you venture a guess as to how many school children in the state this could impact? I, I, I don't know exactly because I don't know how what percentage goes to the the schools and which goes to the food pantries, which probably ultimately make their way to many of those students as well. But it, it, it could be sizable. I mean $26 million is real money. Is there anything that any kind of recourse that the state can take now, uh, perhaps to make up for the funding. Yeah, well, we have, we put, uh, we, we put money in the budget every year to help out, uh, the food pantries, and we've had about $85 million in it the last several years. There's other money that goes into that, so we're gonna have to, we'll have to take a look at that. It's clearly a priority for me and so we'll, we'll try to figure out something, but, you know, this is one of the things that when we look to Washington is gonna has a profoundly ever say this could be the tip of the iceberg. Uh, let's move on. Talk about utility rates. Uh, you and Senate presidents, yeah, and, and the Senate president, uh, are going to be holding legislative hearings to address utility rates, the situation, uh, in, in, in New Jersey customers depending on their utility you're gonna see. Rates from 17 rate increases rather of 17 to 20% starting in June and, and listen, at a time when we're already dealing with inflation, even though it's latest report seems to have improved a little bit, uh. Consumers are still being squeezed every which way. So what is it that you hope can come of these hearings? Will the public be invited to to comment and to share their own stories about how they may have to make tough choices? Well, I, I've several things. First of all, you're right about prices, right, even though inflation is now seeming under control, the, the truth of the matter is the prices going up and they don't, they don't come down, right? So, uh, this is a real gut punch for, for the people of New Jersey for, for folks who have who are struggling to make their, you know, to pay their bills, um, and so I think we need to do a couple of things first of all, we have to find out why it is now I have the sense, uh, we have, we all know that what what's happening is there's an increasing, uh, energy demand, uh, AI. And and data centers are huge consumers of of power uh and and it's good that we need more power. That means the economy is growing because we're we're building new places having new jobs and all of those things and the rates are directly tied to the auction as well. Well, the auction from the PJM auction, yeah, was the highest in in forever. We need, I think we need to hear from them about what they were doing. It seems to me. That this has been pretty short sighted like we didn't see this coming, right? We, we the, the simple reality I understand is that we have more demand and less supply. OK, so how we go about settling that? Well, we're, that's what we're gonna try to deduce from these hearings. We're gonna bring people in, we're gonna bring stakeholders in. We're gonna bring leaders in. We're gonna talk to them and we're gonna demand answers. About why, how did we get to this place? Why are we having a 17 to 20% increase and what, what can we do about it two ways first, immediately, secondly, long term because it's a long term solution that we need ultimately, but we have to help people right now if we can, right? That's. Why we're not waiting on the hearings, Eric, we have 8 pieces of legislation already introduced that talk about all sorts of things, uh, from redoing what we did back in 1999 to more transparency to more training to all of those things and to making sure that we, I think we have to make a real effort, you know, there are programs, uh, it's called the Universal Service Lihe page all of those are services that are designed to help people with their utility bills. We have to make sure they're aware of that. The governors also sent a letter to PJM requesting them to freeze rates and, and so nothing is off the table for us as as we go into this. I, uh, I don't, you know, you could certainly San President speak for himself, but he and I are united in the notion that we need to do something that this isn't right and fair and so we need to do something. Governor has proposed cuts that, uh, freezes that would result in about $21 billion in savings over two years. So we don't have a ton of time left, but, uh, this has been a topic on, on the trail for governor as well. Bill Spady, a Republican who's running, has spoken about micro nuclear plants being built to, to start increasing our capacity. Uh, is that one of the things that could potentially be on the table? Well, that's, that's one of the potential long term solutions, right? You're not, you don't build micro nuclear plants anytime soon. That's if that's being offered as the current solution that's, that's not, that's, it's not real, uh, I think we need to, to look at everything as I said, all sorts of, of energy on the front now. I mean, look, the federal government, one hand is tying our, our, our hands because they've eliminated the wind program which would have produced. Substantial amount. Now there were challenges I thought to some of those the location to the shore itself, but overall would have produced real clean energy. Speaker Craig Coughlin, thank you so much for being here. I, I, I, I wish we had more time. Oh, very quickly, when are the hearings gonna take place? Uh, we haven't set the date yet. We're, we're, we're gathering up together. We wanna make sure we, we're inviting people who, all right, so stay tuned. Speaker, it's good to see you. Thanks for coming in this studio. Keep it right here on New Jersey Power and Politics. We'll be right back.

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NJPP315C_2025-03-15-14-58-47

Welcome back. This coming week, Nadine Menendez goes on trial a little more than a month and a half after her husband, ex-Senator Bob Menendez, was sentenced to 11 years for corruption and bribery. This trial has been delayed several times as Mrs. Menendez was treated for breast cancer. Joining me now with what to expect as this trial gets underway is John Wisniewski, attorney and former Democratic assemblyman. John, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. All right, listen, how difficult of a case is this for Nadine Menendez's lawyers given her husband's conviction, and they've actually argued media coverage of Bob Menendez's trial will actually taint the jury pool. What do you think? Well, that's certainly going to be the defense's strong argument is that there's a tainted jury pool, she can't get a fair trial. At the end of the day there'll be a trial, maybe not here, although I think it will strongly be exactly in the same place the Menendez trial was in the first place. But look, we know how this trial will lay out. We've seen the evidence that they put on. It's a lot of the same evidence that they'll put on for her. What do you expect to hear from her legal team as well as the DOJ? Well, it'd be interesting because this will be the flip side of the argument you heard from Senator Menendez's defense team, which was this was all Nadine. Nadine was the person doing this. I suspect what we will see from her defense team, this was all Bob. This was all Bob's doing. This was not me. How uncomfortable will that be, especially considering Judge Sidney Stein said Bob Menendez didn't have to begin his sentence until June, so he could be there side by side with his wife for the trial. Uh, how does his presence in the courtroom impact, help or hurt his wife? Well, I, I don't know that it does anything above that other than being there. Certainly as a spouse, you would expect them to be there, although as a convicted felon, that may not be a good optic for the defense. I'm not sure how they would make that call, but the real issue is going to be how do you explain away all of the Evidence that a jury has already used to convict her husband. It really seems to be a very difficult task. I don't know how they can successfully blame Bob Menendez when the jury didn't agree with that defense strategy that it was all the. We're pretty much out of time, but how long would you expect this trial to to last if you were a betting man? I think this will last a couple of weeks. All right, John Woinski, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate your time as always. Thank you. And that'll do it for this week's show. I'm Eric Lanzarner as always we thank you so much for watching New Jersey Power and Politics. We'll see you again next time.

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Brent Johnson, politics reporter at NJ.com, joins the show this week.

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