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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, I'm Steve Adubato, I wanna kick off this program, welcoming state Senator Anthony Bucco, Republican, who is from what district again, Senator?

- District 25.

- The communities you represent, not all communities but is it primarily Morris County?

- Primarily Morris County and one town in Somerset, Bernardsville.

- And the Senator is the Republican Whip, which is a prominent leadership position in the Republican party in the Senate.

Senator, we recently talked to your colleague, Senator Bramnick, we talked a lot about the governor, Governor Murphy's tax rebate plan.

We'll talk about that in a minute but the first thing I wanna talk about is this, Governor Murphy's energy master plan to reduce our carbon footprint, to deal directly with climate change issues, to actually change the way we consume and generate and deal with energy issues.

We're involved in a public awareness, not a campaign but creating greater public awareness around clean energy, you have said, fine, I'm for a public, I'm for clean energy but what is the cost of this plan?

What exactly is the concern you have about the cost of the governor's energy master plan A and B, you've called for halting it, if I'm not mistaken?

- Well, look, first, let me say, everybody wants to have clean energy, everybody wants to have a clean environment.

But what I'm concerned about is that there was supposed to be a cost estimate with this energy master plan that was supposed to be delivered to the legislature.

And as of today, it still hasn't been delivered.

So we don't know what the cost is gonna be, and that's troubling.

You don't jump into the pool till you know how deep the water is.

And one of the issues that has come up recently is in front of the BPU in front of a committee, discussing the energy master plan.

- Board of Public Utilities and check out our interview with the president, Joe Fiordaliso, to get a different perspective, go ahead, Senator.

- Well, listen, in front of that committee, the DEP said to them they estimated the change of boilers, just the change of boilers to electric in government and commercial and retail buildings to be about four or 5% more than the current cost.

The DEP had to come back and correct their math and say, no wait, wait a minute, we made a mistake.

It's not four or 5% more, it's four or five times more.

That's a big difference and that's a big cost.

People I don't think of-- - What would it mean to consumer, Senator?

- Would mean as much as $20,000 to a single household.

When you start talking about replacing a furnace, when you start talking about replacing a hot water heater, when you start talking about replacing a gas stove, you can no longer have a gas generated generator.

So, all of these things will have a direct impact on our residents and they need to know how much the cost is gonna be.

We also need to understand whether or not we can live on a purely renewable energy system.

Can the grid handle it?

Can the demand handle it?

In the wintertime, can our homes sustain a heat level and very cold weather simply on electric heat?

All of those things need to be analyzed, and we need to know what the cost is gonna be before we decide to move forward.

And I'm concerned that the administration is not being transparent, they are not telling us what the cost could be because I think they know that people would be angry when they find out how much it's actually gonna cost them to reach this goal.

And let's.

- Respectful, Senator, let me play devil's advocate for a second.

- Sure.

- People may be angry at the cost and it's unclear what it is and there are different people who have different estimates on what that cost is, but people are also concerned about climate change.

People are also concerned about the future of our way of life for our children, for our grandchildren, and beyond.

Don't we have to balance those two competing sometimes interest?

And PS, when we had the President of BPU, Joe Fiordaliso on, he talked about savings for people over time, Senator.

You're talking about it costing more, much more.

- Well, look, we know one thing, natural gas can be burnt cleanly.

We know that we can do this in a manner in which we don't break the bank, and at the same time protect our environment.

And all I'm saying is let's know how much the cost is gonna be.

Let's figure out if natural gas needs to play a part in this process, because it can be burnt without harming the environment, and we know that.

We're gonna need generating facilities to generate the electricity.

What are they gonna be run on?

So-- - Senator.

- All of these things need to be determined before the governor takes the next step, and all we're asking for is the cost estimate.

- I got it, Senator, let me just ask this before I leave this topic, you do acknowledge that the climate change problem is not only real but very serious.

- Yes I do, I do, I do think we need to address that issue, but again, why can't we know how much the cost is gonna be?

What is the cost gonna be?

Why can't the governor supply these numbers to the legislature so that we can make an informed decision going forward?

- I will get off this, but isn't there also a potential, I'm not talking about potentially tax breaks for people to help them pay for these costs, Senator?

- Whenever you start giving tax breaks for renewable energy, what happens is you get away from the economic impact, right?

And you start subsidizing these industries, and then when you take the subsidy away, the price has to go way up because they've never operated without a subsidy.

And that's a problem.

Gotta let the economics, you gotta let the economics play into the system.

- Real quick, I'm gonna ask you about taxes in just a second but real quick on childcare we're doing a series called "Reimagine Childcare," which is about creating more affordability for quality childcare, greater public awareness around that.

Childcare as an issue, how high a priority for you and your colleagues in the legislature?

- Big priority, it's a really big priority.

This pandemic really had a huge impact on childcare, and most of that unfortunately landed on mother's shoulders, right?

Moms were home, the kids were home, they were learning virtually, and moms couldn't go back to work.

They had to make a choice and it's important choice.

- Dads as well.

- Dads as well, too.

But the majority of it, I think falls on the mother, and they had to make a terrible choice, whether they go back to work or whether they stay home and make sure that their kids are learning and stay in a grade level, that's a horrible choice.

I know there was 100 million dollars in last year's budget to address childcare affordability in the governor's budget, and that as far as I know, still hasn't been spent.

And that's something that the governor needs to start thinking about.

It needs to start working on.

- We'll be monitoring that, real quick before I let you go, Senator, do you believe that the governor's initiative to provide direct rebates to renters and homeowners, to help deal with the ridiculous property taxes in the state is the right way to go?

Does it make sense?

- Look, any break is better than no break, but I think the proposal that the Republicans put forth, and that is, give it all back today, this budget is now way ahead of what was projected in terms of revenues.

We've got 4.6 billion dollars in excess revenue that we know about that the governor's office is admitting to, plus all of the stimulus money that still is sitting in a coffers.

- The governor says, "Wait till the new budget cycle," which is July 1st, and you say, "Do it now."

- It's like that old Popeye adage: "I'll kindly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

People are paying their property taxes every day.

So, to say to them, wait till the next budget cycle is crazy, when we have the ability to give them the tax break now.

Do it now, don't wait.

- State Senator, Anthony Bucco is Republican, I'm sorry, you finish your last comment, I apologize, Senator.

- People are struggling and they need to have this break as soon as they can get it and to wait is a mistake.

- Thank you, Senator, this is Senator Anthony Bucco, Republican Whip from Morris County, I wanna thank you so much for joining us, Senator, we appreciate it.

- Thank you, Steve, it's always great to be with you.

- Absolutely, we'll be right back after this.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Nancy Rudgers, who is Director of Development for an organization called nourish.NJ based in Morristown, New Jersey.

Nancy, so good to see you.

- Thank you, Steve.

It's nice to see you as well.

- You know, nourish.NJ, as we put the website up, people will, they think they know what it is about because of the name, but first, what is it, and then tell us how you go beyond what one might think it's about.

- Sure, that's my pleasure, actually.

That's what I love to talk about.

nourish.NJ, which is Nourish New Jersey, it's a 501 3C non-profit organization.

We actually started back in 1984 as a soup kitchen and we've evolved over the last 36 years into a multifaceted provider of wraparound services.

We provide healthy food, we provide medical, social and educational services, work readiness programs, 365 days a year, free of charge, to anyone who comes in need of service, with the whole premise of what we do is to address the underlying causes of food insecurity, poverty and homelessness.

- You know what, Nancy, it's interesting.

When you were talking to our producer, Georgette, you made it clear that nourish.NJ offers, quote, "No questions asked" help.

What exactly does it mean, no questions asked?

- So that is what differentiates us from many of the other agencies, is that anyone can come to us for food.

If you're at our door and you want food, you can have as much food as you want for free.

And our food is very healthy, by the way.

We actually go out and buy fresh lean meats, vegetables, fruits and salads and things like that to prepare healthy meals.

And it doesn't matter; anyone can come, and I know people will decide that that could be questionable, but how many people will really come to an organization looking for a handout if they didn't really need it?

Once you come to us- - Hold on one second, I wanna be clear.

I'm sorry for interrupting.

- That's okay.

- Nancy, so you don't receive government funding.

Does that allow you to have a, quote, "No questions asked policy."

So it doesn't matter whether someone's a citizen, a registered citizen.

It doesn't matter.

If you need help, you get help.

- That is the bottom line.

If you need help, we're there to help you.

Exactly.

And that is the reason why we choose not to accept government funding at this time, because we would have to fill out questionnaires, we'd have to ask people too many questions, and that would prohibit them from even coming and getting the help that they need, desperately, for them and their children and their family members.

- Well said, by the way, nourish.NJ receives no government funding.

The Caucus Educational Corporation, our organization, are not for profit.

We receive no government funding.

I just wanna clarify that.

(laughs) That being said, much more importantly, the pandemic has exacerbated issues, a whole range of issues, particularly for people who are struggling, and more people are struggling than ever before.

How has that affected the issue of food insecurity?

- Well, it's gone up over 30% initially, back in 2020, and it continues to rise for us.

We're seeing many new families that we have never seen before.

People that have lost their jobs, obviously, for various reasons, or many of our working poor families have multiple jobs and their hours were cut.

So right then and there, our numbers are going way up, because they can't make ends meet.

There was a rent moratorium in place that obviously helped the working poor families which has now been removed, and that is now a new issue that's facing a lot of people that we are addressing, helping them try to prevent evictions.

Obviously it's a lot easier for us to keep people housed than to find them new housing, so we're doing what we can financially to help them stay housed or put them in connection with other services, financially, that can help them without losing their homes.

- Let me ask you this.

It's one thing to talk about no government funding, it's another thing to talk about leading a non-profit or being a director of development for a non-profit, and that's being a leader in the not-for-profit community.

You have to raise money on a regular basis from a corporate and foundation community.

How responsive are folks today, versus say two or three years ago, in the corporate and foundation community?

- We do corporate- - While they have their own struggles.

- They do have their own struggles but I give them a lot of credit in 2020, because they all stepped up in 2020 during the initial part of the pandemic.

They were very generous to our organization so that helped us tremendously.

2021 wasn't too bad.

We did it.

The problem we faced of course was that our fundraising efforts, in terms of external activities, had to be canceled for obvious reasons.

So while we were receiving enough money from our corporate funders, we were still behind the eight ball, if you will, because of other events that usually brought us in money that we didn't normally get.

But we do rely on the individual community and they also stepped up.

I will say that, when push comes to shove, our community is there to help, and we're very grateful for that because it is because of them that we can do what we do.

- Well, we're very grateful for the work that nourish.NJ is doing, and part of our job as a not-for-profit, independent production company, affiliated with our friends in public broadcasting, is to feature not-for-profit organizations making a difference, and yours is.

Thank you, Nancy.

- I appreciate this opportunity because it's all about educating everyone and making sure they're aware of what's out there.

- Well said.

Stay with us, folks, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by State Senator Joseph Vitale, who is the Chair of the Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee.

Senator, good to see you.

- Good to see you.

- Listen, I wanna get this out of the way.

You and I were talking right before we got on the air about kids.

You have two daughters, and what are their ages?

- Four and 18 months, 19 months, give or take.

- So I've asked you about childcare before.

You deal with it, I deal with it in a very real way.

Our series, Reimagine Childcare looks at affordability, accessible, quality childcare, more important now than ever before, Senator?

Particularly two years plus into the pandemic.

- Yes, now we pulled our daughter out at the time she was two, almost in the very beginning of the pandemic.

We weren't comfortable with the kids, as you know, in daycare whether it's ear infections or pink eye or whatever else they bring home.

They share things, right?

They share cups, they share the air, they share goo.

So it's just a big mess sometimes.

And they can't prevent that.

But we were obviously concerned about her safety.

And she has not been back since for a variety of reasons.

One is that children her age are not yet eligible for, there is no vaccine that currently exists for her or my younger daughter who's 18 months old.

So until there is that solution for us at least, from our perspective, they won't be going back to daycare.

We're fortunate to be able to do something at home with a pod and some other parents.

But the vast majority New Jerseyans who are working class folks can't afford to do that and they also need to go to work.

They also need to be able to have their kids in a place that's safe.

I'm concerned that the masks are off for kids who are between the ages of two and five where a vaccine does not yet exist, but that's the way the rules are now and that's the way it is.

So it doesn't mean that I'm gonna follow those rules or subject them to the possible effects of COVID, of bringing it home.

I have a friend who works for a company, her three and a half year old son brought COVID home from daycare.

Now she has it.

And so there's still that opportunity and that risk in any event.

We need to be able to make sure that our daycare centers and childcare centers are safe, that we have the right staff.

And it's, again, a safe place for families to bring their children.

- Senator, let's go to the other end of the spectrum biggest lessons that... Or biggest lesson singular that you take away from the nursing home situation in our state and our nation, particularly as it relates to COVID and what the tragedy that happened in those nursing homes as it relates to people who died, 8,000 plus people, patients in nursing homes who died.

Biggest lesson you take away from the nursing home situation in our state as it relates to COVID.

- I think preparedness.

Well, there are more than just one thing.

- Well then go ahead.

That's unfair to you, Joe.

Just any lessons.

- Well, I think one is preparedness.

One is trained staff.

We've introduced since the very beginning of the pandemic, we right away rushed out and we produced legislation, new laws that began to take, have some effect on this.

One has to do with infection control.

The other has to do with staffing and paying staff the right amount of money so that you'll able to attract and retain good staff who work in nursing homes.

It's a tough job.

But more than that, it's the congregate settings that nursing home residents live in.

And when you have an outbreak, whether it's COVID or pneumonia or anything that's airborne, there's always that risk that seniors who are already immunocompromised because of their age will be impacted by whatever that happens to be.

In this case it's COVID.

So it was the right kind of leadership in those facilities, the right kind of having enough nurses, not just CNA certified nurse aides, but nurses.

People who understand infection control.

These are really important elements.

You don't put 300, 400 senior citizens in a congregate setting and hope that nothing bad happens because you think you know what you're doing.

When we lost 100 of 300 veterans at the Menlo Park Nursing Home, most of that was a result of poor leadership, poor management, and sometimes in some ways it was reckless and careless and just awful.

The Department of Justice is still investigating some of these facilities, whether it's nursing homes or veteran's homes to find out exactly what went wrong.

We know what went wrong, but it's always obviously important to have a DOJ in there.

Because no one fools around with the Department of Justice.

They ask questions, you have to answer those questions.

- Senator, let me ask you this.

It's interesting, two years plus into the pandemic, we're taping in the middle of March, it'll be seen a little bit later and it repeats unless something dramatically changes.

So we are where we are, or we think we know where we are with COVID.

In a better place than we were, but we don't know what's gonna happen.

That being said, our public health infrastructure.

I'll put that in quotes, where is it lacking and where does it need to get stronger?

In case whatever happens in the future that people say, "Oh, that'll never happen."

- I think - That's just not a strategy.

- Right, no, exactly.

Well, we never thought 9/11 would happen.

Never sort of in our... You sit down in a room and imagine the worst of the worst, that would never come to our brain, right?

Like that planes would fly into the Twin Towers.

But there have been plenty of smart men and women, public health experts, and others who have said we're gonna get a serious pandemic.

And we fooled around with bird flu, H1N1, we got lucky with SARS.

We got lucky with MERS.

But with COVID, we didn't.

And they were saying all along there's gonna be a pandemic.

Whenever that happens, let's be prepared for that.

So that means that going forward we have to have a strategy.

What happens when either another variant happens of COVID, or next year, the year after, another airborne virus like this hits our country, hits the world again.

We have to have enough space to treat people.

We have to have enough PPE, which we didn't have in the beginning.

And it's no fault of ours because it just, we didn't have enough.

But we produced it.

You have to have the right professionals and really the right plan in place.

So that when it happens, you flick a switch, you shut down nursing homes, you make sure that people have the appropriate PPE.

The experts come out and they tell us exactly what we need to do to protect ourselves.

We were flying blind there for the first six months, a year.

Of course, if we knew then what we know now, the world would be a different place.

- But, Senator, I'm sorry.

- But now we know.

Now we know what we should be prepared for.

Or how to prepare for that.

- Sorry for interrupting.

Let me play devil's advocate and push back a little bit.

In spite of knowing what we know now, there are millions and millions of people, many people in New Jersey who quote don't buy it.

Meaning they don't buy that COVID is as serious, was and is as serious as it is.

They didn't buy the mask thing, they didn't buy the vaccine thing.

It's government, you can't trust that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Listen, how do you counteract that?

- It's a million dollar question.

I think that you can't be partisan.

I don't think that President Trump at the time was helpful at all.

When he didn't talk about it for several months, kept it on the down low, didn't wanna upset us.

Well that didn't help because the virus spread like wildfire.

- In a couple months, in a couple months, Senator, it'll all be gone.

- Yeah exactly.

- Zero cases.

- Wave of the hand, it's not a problem.

So we didn't even let our guard down.

We didn't even have a guard.

We said, "Well, it'll be fine."

But because this is such a communicable disease, so highly contagious, that it just spread like wildfire.

So I think that people have to be honest with themselves.

This is the public health and the resources that we put into public health, whether it's New Jersey historically or other states, public health initiatives and awareness have always been sort of the redhead stepchild.

I can say that because my wife has red hair.

But they've always been so low on the totem pole because they weren't perceived as being an important element of our budget.

Well, now we know better.

And so I think educating individuals and trying to reach out, not making this political, this shouldn't be a partisan issue.

Although I've heard from my Republican colleagues, unfortunately, that masking is awful, it's harmful, social distancing is a joke, the vaccines don't work, nothing is effective.

- These are elected officials.

These are not just people- - Yeah, elected officials.

- ... on the street.

- So they're playing to some constituency that they perceive or may be real in their district that exists.

But if we're gonna lead, we can't watch the parade go by, that's not leading.

And feeding in, or-- Their comments that feed into that narrative that the vaccines are ineffective or masking is awful, it's a violation of our rights and all that crazy talk.

Well in my view at least, no one has the right to infect me or my children because they decided to be non-compliant.

- Yeah.

I'm not gonna open the Pandora's box, but I'll tell you what, we have to wrap up, Senator, but you don't have a right to walk in a restaurant and spit in someone else's food.

You don't have a right to blow smoke in someone else's face.

It's someone else's health, not just your decision.

It's not my job to editorialize, sorry I did.

Senator Joseph Vitale is the chair of the Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee.

Senator, thank you so much for joining us.

- My pleasure, Steve, good to see you again.

- We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato Is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by New Jersey Sharing Network.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

Investors Bank.

Englewood Health.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Seton Hall University.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

NJM Insurance Group.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

And by Employers Association of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

And by Insider NJ.

- New Jersey's early educators and childcare providers are more than twice as likely to live below the poverty line versus the general workforce.

Reimagine Childcare formed by a coalition in New Jersey is dedicated to improving accessibility, affordability and quality of childcare and re-imagining the way we support these essential providers.

Learn more by visiting ReimagineChildCare.org.