It's a marathon voting session at the Statehouse.

Lawmakers are approving scores of bills as they race to meet a midnight deadline for passing a balanced budget.

A record $58.8 billion spending plan that largely keeps Governor Murphy's blueprint intact.

It's the last of his time in office.

But added another roughly $720 million to the tab in what's known as Christmas tree spending items in a process Republican lawmakers today decried as rushed, opaque, and a freight train of spending.

They blasted Democrats for raising taxes and unveiling the full plan at eight o'clock on Friday night where lawmakers stayed late into the night in order to get an agreement in place for today's vote.

Majority leaders instead though pointed out that the state's largest ever budget includes a record amount of property tax relief and fully funds both the public worker pension system and the school funding formula.

The question now is will the spending pad state programs should federal cuts materialize or leave a deficit for the next governor to fix?

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the latest as part of our Under the Dome series.

(upbeat music) - After political speech making and special interest protesting, New Jersey Senate voted 26 to 13, mostly along party lines, to send Phil Murphy the final state budget of his career as Jersey's governor, a record-setting $58.8 billion spending plan that raises several taxes to make ends meet.

Democrats carried the day.

- I think it's an outstanding budget.

It certainly plans for a future that's not known 'cause Washington, D.C. is gonna be acting on their own big, beautiful bill.

- Democrats had already reached a budget agreement with the executive office late last week.

This spending plan makes full payments into both public employee pensions and the state school funding formula, and it invests millions in property tax relief programs, including Stay and J.

It also leaves the next governor a more than $6 billion surplus to backfill looming congressional funding cuts.

- It puts $6.7 billion into surplus, which is an unprecedented amount of money.

It also funds all of the priorities that the Democrats and the governor spelled out.

It also makes sure that there is no tax increases on any working-class families.

- I think it needs to be a much more transparent process.

It's very unfair.

None of the Republicans had a seat at the table, even those of us who serve on the budget committee.

- Republicans savaged the budget for raising taxes to help pay for an extra $700 million in spending, many items added at the last minute.

- There's over 700 million additional pork line items.

That's inappropriate.

We need to have much more transparency and accountability.

- The budget drew fire from some Democrats, two critics noted it boosts aid for NJ Transit in part by once again raiding more than $100 million from the Clean Energy Fund.

- Look, we made some difficult choices in this budget, but it's clear moving forward that we have to look very carefully at the Clean Energy Fund and ensure that it's going to protect our environment, clean air, and clean water for all of New Jerseyans.

- The budget also contains controversial language that ensures Medicaid funding flows to nursing homes, even those with the worst records.

Officials would no longer be able to block new patient admissions until care improves.

- The budget language that prevents the commissioner from allowing new admissions into a failing nursing home, that's everything.

It takes away her ability to protect senior citizens from going into a really poor, poorly run, unsafe nursing home.

- Removing the state's teeth to deal with deficient nursing homes is really problematic as it is the same kind of consequence for your environment that I think creates so many problems that we have in 2025.

But this is a bad concept and a bad bill.

- Lawmakers pointed out they did not give the governor every tax hike he wanted.

They zeroed out so-called fun taxes on recreational games like bowling and laser tag.

And while the budget did raise tax rates for online gambling and sports betting to 19.75%, that's less than the 25% Murphy originally requested, but Republican Ryan Bergen opposed it.

- Our kids are getting addicted to gambling right now.

They're gambling in schools.

Instead of the state of New Jersey doing what's right and restricting this and preventing the epidemic that's coming, everybody gets so elated with the fact that you can tax it.

- Lawmakers also modified Murphy's so-called million-dollar mansion tax increase so that the sellers, not the buyers, must now pay Jersey's realty transfer fee.

The fee will double to 2% as properties go up in value, then increase on a sliding scale up to 3.5% for homes and businesses worth 3.5 million or more.

Lawmakers also raised taxes on cigarettes and nicotine vapes.

The budget bill's expected to pass the assembly, again, along partisan lines.

This budget carries a lot of political baggage with the entire 80-member assembly up for re-election and a hotly contested governor's race in November.

At the Statehouse, I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.

- This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

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