okay let's dive into more details in this budget proposal business correspondent Rhonda schaffler senior digital projects editor Colleen O'’Dea, and budget and finance writer John reitmeyer shared their Insight on the big ticket items Rhonda let me come to you first affordability affordability affordability talk to me about that all right let's kind of go through what was outlined in this speech one the anchor property tax relief program continuing over for more funding the next fiscal year homeowners some dump them can get up to fifteen hundred dollars in relief doubling the child tax credit this is legislation's already been introduced on this and this is a nod to the progressives this is something that Progressive groups have been fighting for and then of course it's the expansion of the senior freeze more people are eligible you don't have to be in the state as long so these are kind of the cornerstones of affordability we did hear more than that we heard without a lot of details but paying down your personal medical debt we heard that there would be an allocation for state health benefits we know premiums went up a lot this year this would be for the following year so we did hear other points I want to bring up the corporate business tax surcharge because because he did say it would Sunset he kind of put businesses on notice and said all right let me see you hire just in terms of what that cost New Jersey and this is something progressives are concerned about in fiscal year 2024 will cost 322.5 million in Revenue in fiscal year 2025 a billion in Revenue being forfeited Colleen education of course often eats up a big chunk of the budget it certainly is this time as well right so there's uh 832 million dollar more for K-12 Public School pre-k formula Aid now that is what really helps a lot of districts to not raise taxes or raise them a small amount we've already heard reaction from Republicans who are saying yeah sure but they're going to be a lot of districts that also wind up getting cut because this formula is such that it it takes into account whether you your enrollment is increasing or not so not everybody's going to benefit from that there's also 109 million dollars more for preschool enrollment there's going to be some of that money used for expanding preschools into more locations so you know if you're if you're lucky enough to live in one of these communities you might not have to pay to spend your to send your child to a preschool or to a daycare program and then there's another 134 million dollars to improve access to higher education that stuff like tag grants which go to the the most needy students as well as raising the income cap for the free County College and that then the four-year transition the transition for the following two years into the a four-year College which is something you know a hundred thousand dollars it's that seems like it's a it's a pretty good amount it will cover a lot of people okay well with the CBT John stay with me for just a minute here will the loss of that Revenue offset some of these spending priorities you heard Ronda mention some preliminary numbers for what the state stands to lose a little over 300 million in the first year a big leap in the next I would think that some of these programs would take a hit it's a general fund source of Revenue so the money that comes in from the income tax is restricted to certain purposes constitutionally like funding education and direct property tax relief so anytime you're cutting into that general fund Revenue stream which I should note is also dedicated to funding some of the state's environmental projects and you mentioned that climate change seems to comes a footnote in some in some part in this speech and that and that's really something profound that New Jersey is starting to comes with to terms with the impact of climate change on our watersheds on our Superfund sites the way that forest fires are becoming a new budget drain so I mean this is all something to keep in mind as we do see that CBT Surf Bars wind down and that's going to be one of these tension points going forward [Music]