Phil Murphy on Why He's Running for Governor of NJ

Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Ambassador Phil Murphy, now Governor of New Jersey, explains why he believes the state of New Jersey needs to fully fund the pensions for NJ workers and end the crisis. Murphy also shares his thoughts on the funding formula for NJ’s public schools and concerns about President Trump’s leadership and communication style.

6/17/17 #111

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to the premiere edition of State of Affairs. I'm Steve Adubato coming to you from the Agnes Varis NJTV Studio in Newark, New Jersey. It is our honor to welcome Ambassador Phil Murphy, Democratic candidate for governor of the great state of New Jersey. Welcome to State of Affairs. I'm honored to be here Steve. Thanks for having me. It is great to have you. Let me ask you Ambassador, why would you choose to run for governor of the state of New Jersey when we have just a few challenges that we are dealing with? We sure do. I could give you a couple of answers. One is I grew up in a culture of service in my family. My dad didn't get out of high school, but boy we were into politics and he made sure we were. But more immediately in the here and now, I think New Jersey is one of the most undermanaged entities I've ever seen in any walk of my life. There's so much we could be doing. Do we have crises? Do we have challenges? Absolutely. But with the right leadership and the right priorities, I think we can get back on our feet faster than any of us may think. Let's do this. By the way, we're going to be interviewing virtually every major candidate on the Democratic and the Republican side and once the candidates are chosen in June on the Democratic and Republican side, we'll focus on those two candidates. And by the way, finally, I want to thank our partners here at NJTV where we're coming to you from for making all of this possible. Ambassador, let me ask you this. The pension issue. We're doing this program right after the governor has delivered his state of the budget address. He has talked about one of the largest pension contributions... I believe 2.5 billion dollars in the FY18 Budget? Yeah. That is one of the largest pension contributions a governor has contributed in terms of this crisis. In terms of the New Jersey public employees retiring? Yup. That's a good thing, correct? It's a step in the right direction, but it's way late and it's not enough. This is a crisis that's been building since the 1990's and time and time again, we've had folks on one side of the table, the public sector unions, doing what they've been asked to do and the state has consistently reneged. Not only under Governor Christie, but before as well. Democrats as well. Both sides of the aisle. No one has kicked the can as far or as hard..."