Sen. Sweeney Talks About the Impact of COVID-19 on NJ

Steve Adubato sits down with Senate President Sen. Steve Sweeney (D) - NJ to talk about the impact of the COVID-19 public health crisis on New Jersey and the leadership that is needed to address it. Sweeney also discusses the future of conducting legislative business; healthcare; education; public employee pensions and NJ Transit.

3/28/2020 #401

Excerpt:

"Welcome to a very special edition of State of Affairs I’m Steve Adubato yes we're doing this remotely out of east main media studios in little falls new jersey like most folks in the media we're attempting to do what we do and look at the issues and and follow what's going on if you want to follow day-to-day look at NJTV news metro focus other places but we're trying to take a bigger picture view of this coronavirus situation we're taping on the 20th of march these issues will remain with us there will be other issues that will be complicated and exacerbated by this in an effort to try to make sense of things we we reached out for our gentlemen who's been with us many times he's the president of the state senate he's Steve Sweeney senator how are you? Steve I’m doing great how about you? Good I see that you have your wipes right there I have mine right here and we're doing what we need to do senator let me ask--Part of life. It is, yeah it is part of it can we talk about that you as we do this program on the 20th again it'll be seen after that you met in the legislature yesterday a lot of important business we'll talk about was meeting together in the statehouse different because of the coronavirus and if so how? I Steve well we didn't allow the public in the senate for the first time I really believe in history on it's own voted in the assembly chamber by voice vote because we wanted to spread out you know the senate chamber is much smaller than the assembly chamber because-- that's right obviously they have 80 members we have 40 so to keep the social distance distancing that everyone talks about we went at the speaker was gracious gracious enough to let us use this chamber and we conducted business there and you know Steve you you know we always just press a button well we couldn't press buttons so they were roll call votes so yeah it was a very strange feeling but it's like the new norm we have to do everything we can do to protect my members but we had to be there to do the business of the people while we have this crisis going on and one of the bills we passed was what we'll be able to do voting sessions in the future you know if we're sheltered at home-- remotely and you need to take action you'll be able to do them remotely senator? Yes only now because of the emergency Governor Murphy signed the..."