In our Spotlight on Business report.

Budget reform is taking a front seat in the early stages of the 2025 governor's race.

Democrats vying for the job are pledging to overhaul the budget process if they get elected, since the annual spending plan is often criticized for being rushed, leaving little time for meaningful input from the public.

But why are the proposals coming from Democrats now when the party's been in power for years?

Budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer Meyer joins me on set to explain.

Hey, John, good to see you, I think.

Let's start with that last question, because Democrats have held power in both houses for quite some time, but there's not necessarily a political incentive to change this process, is there?

Well, probably not from within the statehouse, but certainly from voices that we hear who are not the main players in the budget process.

They want to see a lot of change.

And Republicans have been talking about this.

You know, also give them their due.

But it's interesting that we are seeing members of the Democratic Party who are jockeying to get the party nomination to run for governor.

starting to come out with one of the early missions would be to reform this budget process and maybe that's because they are hearing complaints from the grassroots groups that have been raising concerns for the last several years, or maybe they genuinely don't like the process, seeing it from the outside and think that it can be improved upon.

The big left will be getting that through legislative leaders who happen to be of their own party, grassroots groups, of course, who typically would back and are backers of democratic proposals.

So their influence was big there.

So let me ask you then, what are some of the reforms being put forward?

And are these ideas we've heard before?

Yeah, I think there would be two buckets here.

So some of them are just the process itself.

So when the budget comes out, when it's approved the timeline, or is there a public hearing in between when the budget comes out and when it's approved?

Right now there's not.

And then some of them are more mechanical to budgeting itself.

So ideas like consensus revenue forecasting, where we don't just let the executive branch do the revenue forecasting, we bring in maybe a legislative voices or even an outside voice and multi multiyear budgeting, which is, you know, new Jersey.

The tradition is to just do a year to year, two year to year, instead of to look at the big picture.

And a lot of the best practices that other states follow involve year and something like stress testing the budget where we run it through a model to say, hey, if the economy were to tumble by a certain degree or percentage, how would our budget fare?

What kind of cuts would we have to make?

Those are those are things that other states do and have success.

And I actually reported earlier this year in something we called the Change Project at NJ Spotlight News, where we took a look at some of the big issues new Jersey is confronting.

And one of the issues I, delved into was the budget process itself.

So some of these ideas I explored earlier in the year in that reporting project, and now we see them talked about really broadly by these Democratic candidates for governor.

Yeah, they can thank you for the research.

But I mean, when we're talking about a 56, $57 billion spending plan, the implications are real here.

And so what is the likelihood that even if they get into office, they'll get the Democrats in power to back this?

Because as you recently reported, there's hundreds of millions of dollars of last minute add ons, sometimes pet projects that lawmakers can squeak through that finish line by doing it in this process.

Yeah.

And I think that's the big question.

Right.

So we have candidates on record right now saying they want to do some of these things, which is an important first step.

Another big step will be can you get legislative leaders who like to hold a tight grip over that final stage process, to loosen that grip a little bit for the greater good?

And I think that will be the debate that will come up for probably more next year as we get closer to the to the governor's race, and we'll hear from Republican candidates as well, probably on this topic.

John Reitmeyer for us, John, thanks as always.

You're welcome.