- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone, I'm Steve Adubato.

We kick off this program today with State Senator Joseph Lagana, a democrat who is the Vice Chair of the Senate Labor Committee.

Good to see you, Senator.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- Tell everyone where you represent?

- I represent District 38, which is all in Bergen County.

Basically, the middle part of the county.

I live in Paramus, so Paramus out east, out west and down south.

- Great, and some of your top priorities you have three children, three daughters, in fact?

- Three girls, yep.

Three girls.

- Is that the reason why school safety has been such, well not the only reason, obviously, but that's a big part of the reason why school safety is a top priority for you, right?

- Yeah, it is.

It's a huge priority of mine for a multitude of reasons.

First of all, what's happened in this country over the past 20 years with school shootings, we should all be worried.

I said this at one of our committee hearings.

It's not a matter of if this happens again, it's a matter of when this happens again.

And I think that we would be fooled to think that this just is something that's gonna go away magically.

We need to secure our schools, we need to secure them properly, and we need to make sure that our students, because of...

I mean listen, there's a lot of things going on with schools right now.

I mean, school security, mental health is a big deal which I know is another one of my priorities.

- Talk about that, Senator.

- So, you know, outside of making sure schools are safe, we need to make sure that students are given the appropriate tools and as well as educators to ensure that they recognize children who are suffering from anxiety and depression as it's happening.

It's happening largely in our high schools, middle schools, even grammar schools.

So I have three kids, right?

My oldest daughter's almost 14, my middle one's 11, my little one's five.

So I'm getting an eighth grader, a sixth grader and a preschooler.

So I see it every which way, and I will tell you that they're various levels of anxiety and depression but I'm seeing it and it's real and I'm hearing from teachers and they just don't have the support that they need currently.

And I think we need, as a state, we need to make sure we do more that's why I've introduced several pieces of legislation to help address this.

- To be really clear, what is the most significant thing that state government should be doing in this regard in your view?

- Well, I think funding is key.

So I think that the state, when we talk about funding that goes directly to schools that we should incorporate into that funding money for social workers.

So that if a parent for instance is recognizing that their child is maybe having some difficulties and the teacher recognizes it too, okay, we how do we get this kid evaluated?

Right?

Is it anxiety?

Is it depression?

Is it something else?

It's extremely difficult right now for a parent even to find anybody, if you wanna find a psych psychiatrist for your child, you have to wait months.

And if you're dealing with a child who's having panic attacks, is incoherent, really having a difficult time in many cases is that severe, to wait three months is just not is not acceptable.

So I think funding to the schools, I think working, having a private, public-private partnership is very appropriate that happens in Bergen County.

There's a public private-partnership with a place called Care Plus that does an amazing job.

Care Plus, yep.

They have a social worker embedded in many of the schools which has worked incredibly and maybe we talk about a pilot program to start introducing some other counties that has a similar type model.

But it gives a parent and educators really a place to go to get this child evaluated and to help them get through whatever problem they're getting through.

Suicide rates right now among teenagers is astronomical.

And we're seeing children as young as 10 years old commit suicide.

We need to do something and do it now.

- Senator, if you could on this, we've been doing a lot of programming around affordability in New Jersey, property taxes being a major part of that, the Anchor Property tax program that the Governor Murphy advocated that many of you, you and your colleagues, you and your colleagues, many of whom voted for this, the most significant aspect of the Anchor Property tax program that makes a real difference for property tax owners and renters is please.

- Well, it's the direct to give back to property taxpayers.

I mean, you know, the $1,500 off the top, the direct to check that we went to a major amount of households I think had a really, a real and impactful, was a real and impactful event for many people who are paying property taxes.

Now, is it a long-term fix?

No, of course it's not a long-term fix.

I think when we look long term, which we need to do more we need to look at the root of why property tax are so high and we need to look at the programs that we're funding to ensure that the money's going to the right place, right?

When we talk about the Senior Freeze, the Senior Freeze is an incredible program has been around for a long time.

I try to speak at senior centers multiple times a year and let seniors know about the program.

And I could tell you nine times outta 10, there's half the room doesn't even know the program exists.

- The Senior Freeze program is run by which department in state government?

- I believe that is treasury runs Senior Freeze.

- And what is it?

A freeze on what?

- So basically you make an application, if you meet the income requirements, which most people above 65 as many seniors meet the income requirement which we raised, I believe it's either, it's over a hundred thousand dollars a year per individual.

- And what's frozen is your property, what's frozen?

- Your property taxes.

So when you are accepted into the program let's say your property taxes, let's say they're $7,000 if your town school board county increases property taxes, yours stay flat and the town is reimbursed by the state essentially.

So that's a big deal, that program and a lot of people just don't know about it.

- Senator Joseph Lagana, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

Joe was the Senator Lagana is actually the vice chair of the Senate Labor Committee as other responsibilities as well.

Senator, all the best to you and your family.

Thanks for joining us - Steve, thank you very much.

- You got it.

Stay with us.

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.

Recently, my colleague Jacqui Tricarico joined me down in Atlantic City for the New Jersey Education Association.

Jackie did a whole range of important interviews, bit this one you're not gonna wanna miss.

It's with Pulitzer prize winning journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

She discusses the 1619 Project.

You don't know what 1619 means?

You don't know why the 1619 Project is so important?

This conversation with Jacqui and Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Check it out.

- Hi, I'm Jacqui Tricarico.

On location at the New Jersey Education Association's Annual Convention here in Atlantic City.

And I am so pleased to be joined by Pulitzer prize winning journalist, and creator of the 1619 project, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Nikole, thanks for so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

- Thank you for talking to me.

- Well, first, can you help us understand the significance of the year 1619 here in America?

- Sure.

So 1619 is the year that the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in the colony of Virginia.

So we really marked 1619 as the advent of American slavery.

- And the 1619 project, the project itself, this beautiful book that you've created with the help of a lot of other people, a lot of other journalists and poets.

Talk about the project, and how it's being incorporated into school curriculums across the United States.

- Sure.

So the 1619 project is a series of essays as well as, as you mentioned, pieces of poetry, and pros that really makes the argument that slavery is foundational to both American history, and the legacy of slavery has shaped so much of our modern society.

So, all of the essays are around something in modern America with its roots in slavery.

And so the way that educators have used it, it's just been in a myriad of ways.

It's been used in social studies to bring a kind of deeper understanding about the legacy of slavery, but also to help students understand why their communities look like they do right now.

It's been taught in English classes, and literature classes where students are learning argumentation, and using it to create their own poetry or fiction.

It's been used in art classes, and we also have an entire education network.

It's called the 1619education.org.

And there you have cohorts of teachers across the country who are engaging in their own big projects in the classroom.

- That's amazing, and of course with so much that is being praised, there is opposition, and it's one of the most banned books I heard throughout the United States.

Banned books, that's a phrase we're hearing a lot of as of recent.

Talk about just the danger of banning books.

- Absolutely.

So if we believe that we are a free society, then we know that free societies don't allow government to prohibit speech, ideas or texts simply because people in government don't like them.

But that's actually a very dangerous thing.

And you're absolutely right.

PEN America, which is a free speech group that tracks these things says we're seeing more challenges to books, more prohibitions on texts than they've seen in at least 50 years.

And so it's a sign of a very, I think, dangerous sentiment in our society.

As of course everyone knows we are very polarized right now, and I think that certain politicians have seen the banning of books as a way to, to ignite opposition, to score points politically, and to really divide Americans from each other.

So I just think we know that if we saw book bans in Cuba, or Saudi Arabia or China, we would understand that that is actually not a sign of a healthy free society.

So we need to be pushing back on those bands here in the United States as well.

- And politically, yes, but we're also seeing a lot of influence coming from parents and caregivers, right.

We're seeing these school board meetings that are becoming viral, a lot of debate about what can and can't be on the bookshelves, and their children's schools.

And you talk about in the beginning of your book being a young girl and not seeing yourself so much represented on,- - That's right.

- On those shelves in the library.

How important or how influential should parents and caregivers really be in terms of what's in schools?

Shouldn't we leave that up to the educators?

- Absolutely.

So, so one, to be clear polling shows that the majority of Americans including the majority of, of parents, oppose book bans.

And I think it is perfectly fine for an individual parent to say "I don't want my child exposed to this text."

I don't think it's okay for parents to say what every other parent child should be exposed to.

And that's where the problem is.

So, we send our children to schools to be educated by professionals for a reason because there are professionals who create curricula, there are professionals who understand what texts are proper and appropriate for students.

And I really do think we should leave that to the professional educators that we charge with educating our children.

But also, as you said, so many of these bans, and books that are being challenged, our books that speak to the experiences of marginalized children, of children of color, of trans-children, of children who might be struggling with identity, and they deserve to see themselves in the texts that are being taught.

But also all of us become more tolerant when we're learning texts about people whose identities are different than ours, and whose histories and stories are different than ours.

- Yeah.

Understanding other people helps us become better people and better human beings.

- A better society.- - Yeah, absolutely right?

- We have to stop taking such a stingy view of our fellow Americans, and actually believe that it is a good thing for our children to learn, and be challenged in their views.

- And I wanna talk about something in the book too that I saw that I know you've talked about the photo of your father from 1960, he served in the US Army.

Talk about him and just how much of an influence he's had on you and your career.

- Absolutely.

So my father was born on cotton plantation, in Greenwood, Mississippi during a time when Black Americans did not have rights of citizenship.

And I think that's important because we tend to think about this as a very distant history, and it's not a distant history.

And so I, I really began the entire book with this story of my dad flying this American flag in our front yard, and me being very conflicted as a black child about why a man who wasn't treated equally by the society would want to show that type of patriotism.

And so the book really grapples with that.

And, and it's a tribute to my dad who said, you know, black people have played a really unparalleled role in shaping our society, and fighting for liberty in our society.

And no one should be able to take that legacy from us.

- And on our programming, we often talk about democracy at our crossroads, and democracy in peril.

In your view, are we in peril?

Because I know during your talk today at the convention and what you, one of your messages to educators is that 1619 isn't just the past, it's the present.

Describe that.- - Absolutely.

Yes.

I think we are in peril.

We have a significant proportion of Americans who are willing to give up on democratic practices, who don't believe in fair elections anymore, who think that if they lose that those elections aren't fair that they don't have to concede.

I think that that's very frightening, and that all of us no matter what our political views, we don't want to be a country where every election result is challenged, where our democratic institutions are being attacked.

Because I do believe that democracy is what guarantees our freedom.

And certainly a journalist- - And you're right.

And you're referencing January 6th, right?

- That's right.

- And, and we're still feeling the repercussions from that.

Are we not as a society?- - Of course.

Right, like what, we have to question a society that leads to January 6th, and then the efforts really by one political party to downplay that we had an insurrection on our capital, and an effort to overturn a fair election in the United States.

This is something that we tend to think of as happening in other countries, but scholars of democracy say that this is a sign that our democracy is in decline.

I will say I was heartened by the results of this election we just had because it seems like, at least the majority of Americans, are saying we actually do believe in democracy.

And so democracy is living to fight another day, but how much democracy we have is ultimately determined by us.

- Right as we're taping in the beginning of November right after the midterm elections, and the results speak for themselves, I think.

And lastly, being the keynote speaker today here at the convention, what was your overall just main message to educators here in New Jersey?

- My overall, I think I had two messages.

One, it's been extremely tough to be a public school educator in the last few years.

Dealing with the pandemic, and then the anti critical race theory, a propaganda campaign, you know, threats against teachers, teachers losing their jobs, teachers being afraid that if they teach the wrong thing, they'll get in trouble.

So I just wanted to really show my appreciation as a public school graduate whose life was deeply influenced by public school educators, that, that we are on their side, and that we're so grateful for the work that they do.

And the second message was really that we have to teach these challenging histories to our students that we are actually robbing our children of necessary information that they need to understand their world, and to create the world that they want if we don't grapple honestly with our history.

And New Jersey is a state that is really through the public schools with the Amistad curriculum and other curricula trying to do that.

So I just wanted to encourage, and say how important that was both to me when I was a student, and to all of the children in the state.

- Education is power.

And if you want to learn more about the significant date year in our history, 1619 pickup Nikole Hannah-Jones book, best seller book, the 1619 project.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, Nicole, such a pleasure.

- Thank you.

(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 Shawn LaTourette, who is the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Mr. Commissioner, good to have you with us.

- It is a pleasure, sir, thanks for having me.

- You've got, tell us, Commissioner, what infrastructure equity is and why it matters.

- Whew.

Well, New Jersey has a deep need for investment in environmental infrastructure.

That includes our water infrastructure, flood resistance infrastructure, beach replenishment, and we wanna make sure that in deploying these investments from the Department of Environmental Protection that we're reaching all communities in need, especially those that are in underserved areas that may not have seen historically the type of investment necessary to get things like lead out of our water.

Or those communities that face significant environmental challenges but may be too strapped for capacity to really take advantage of some of the programs that the DEP offers.

So we wanna make sure that these funding opportunities reach everyone.

To me that's what equity is.

- Commissioner, let me follow up on this.

So the water issue you raised, it seems to me not just as a journalist, but as someone who just observes what's going on, that it's a crisis when it's a crisis.

But there's a crisis.

Does that make any sense to you?

- It makes all the sense in the world to me.

I think about it this way.

I think about the number seven, right?

The number of times I turn on the tap just this morning before 8:00 AM, right?

To wash up, feed the dogs, brew the coffee, press my shirt, brush my teeth, take a drink, right?

Water is life.

It's critical to everything we do.

The health of our families, the success and productivity of our businesses, everything depends upon it.

But to your point, we often don't pay the type of attention that is necessary to our water infrastructure investment needs until it's so painfully visible.

Because the water treatment plants and pipes that bring that water to us, they're often hidden from view.

And so we can easily take advantage or take, rather, for granted the fact that the clean water's gonna arrive and the dirty water will just disappear.

And so we tend to focus on more urgent or just more obvious things until, you know, that catastrophic event forces open our eyes.

- Along those lines, I don't wanna be overly philosophical with you, but this is a big question about democracy as well, and I'll explain what I mean.

So we have a series called Democracy at a Crossroads, and a big part of that is the role of the media.

To what degree do you believe, Commissioner, that we in the media have done a strong enough job in helping citizens understand the importance of water infrastructure, infrastructure overall?

Until and unless we got a picture.

And you know exactly what I'm talking about, a crisis, a horrific situation.

Look at this disgusting, brown, dirty water.

Meaning we have a responsibility here.

How effective have we done and what do we need to do more?

- So, I can't tell you that laying the issue of the inattention to environmental infrastructure at the feet of the media is helpful in any way, shape, or form.

I think that in our modern society it is easy to take certain things for granted, right?

We live in a country and in a state that I believe takes good care of its residents.

And we can, by virtue of that, become inattentive to the things that have always been there for us.

But New Jersey, one of the more historic states in terms of our development patterns, we have really old infrastructure.

It's nobody's fault.

It's the age of America's bones.

And they are failing, right?

And so we've gotta be more attentive to them than we once were because we are at a point that that infrastructure investment is absolutely critical.

Just look to the last few months, Steve, right?

Major drinking water main breaks wreaking havoc upon several northern New Jersey communities, limiting water availability.

- I'm in Montclair.

So think about Nutley and Bloomfield and Belleville and, - Absolutely - They were out.

They were in trouble, and the northern, North Newark where my mom is, I mean, then it was a crisis.

But that crisis, I'm sorry for interrupting Commissioner.

We should not be shocked about that.

- No, we shouldn't be shocked.

But from a layperson's point of view, it seems easy, right?

Water is simple.

Except that it's not.

Water is a work of chemistry that requires so many people, deeply experienced people who really know how to balance that chemistry in order to bring us clean water.

And then the infrastructure that carries it to us.

It needs attention, but we don't see it.

And it's just so easy to not think about it.

- And if you're wondering why I'm obsessing about this, it's because there are so many people that suffer at the back end when there is a crisis but we need to have these discussions right now before that.

Commissioner, what is the New Jersey Water Bank?

- So the New Jersey Water Bank is a partnership between the Department of Environmental Protection and the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank.

It is the primary and cheapest method for local governments which run the majority of our water systems to receive funding for the upgrades that are necessary.

And so we work through the DEP and the IBank to put together funding packages like the-- - The IBank meaning the Infrastructure Bank.

- Meaning the Infrastructure Bank.

- Okay, go ahead.

- We partner together.

DEP can bring to the table significant state and federal grant and grant-like funds.

And then we take those funds and we leverage them with private market funds that the IBank has access to so that we can generate a very large amount of investment for a very low, low interest rate.

Because if the government is offering you low interest or no interest, and you then package that together with market rate funds at a very, very well rated bond rate that the IBank has, we can take a large multimillion dollar project and drive that interest rate to the floor so that the debt service for a local community is very low.

- So, but hold on.

But Shawn, your local communities need to apply for those loans, correct?

- No question.

And we don't see enough of them apply.

- And where do they go?

Where do they go?

Again, people and the local leaders should know this, but is it the DEP website or is it the IBank website?

Where is it?

- You go to dep.nj.gov/wiip, W-I-I-P, for the Water Infrastructure Investment Plan.

- Last question.

For those who actually still debate and argue about climate change, it's real because?

30 seconds, go.

- We don't get to choose to believe in science.

It just is.

And the fact is that New Jersey is ground zero for some of the worst impacts of climate change.

We're seeing them right now and they only get worse in the years ahead.

But we can be ready.

- Science.

Listen, Commissioner has got an interesting point there.

Commissioner Shawn LaTourette of the Department of Environmental Protection.

Commissioner, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- It's a pleasure, thank you, sir.

- You got it.

Thanks for watching, I'm Steve Adubato.

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 The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

The New Jersey Education Association.

New Jersey'’s Clean Energy program.

PSE&G, New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Johnson & Johnson.

And by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Promotional support provided by AM970 The Answer.

and by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

- (Narrator) New Jersey is home to the best public schools in the nation, and that didn't happen by accident.

It's the result of parents, educators and communities working together year after year to give our students a world class education.

No matter the challenge, because parents and educators know that with a shared commitment to our public schools, our children can learn, grow and thrive.

And together, we can keep New Jersey's public schools the best in the nation.