For those of you who watched our live coverage of the budget address earlier today, you know that Brianna Banerjee was on the floor of the assembly chamber alongside our budget and finance writer Jon right, Maya bringing us live updates, analysis and interviews with the folks on the ground there.

Brianna and John join us now to offer some insight on the key budget items announced today.

Brianna?

John, obviously we've heard, you know, some of this stuff before in some of the governor speeches.

His focus is on education, on transportation.

John, I'm going to start with you.

We heard top line priority from the governor today, property tax relief.

Talk about what some of the programs will look like in particular anchor again and stay NJ.

What will it look like and can the state afford this right now?

Yeah, good question.

Another more than $2 billion for the anchor program.

And so that's been around for the last few years and it provides benefits to homeowners and renters who meet certain income standards.

The good news is that this program's fully funded again.

On the other side is that the benefits are staying flat.

So that means if you've seen a property tax bill increase or your rent go up, the benefits that you will get from the state through these programs aren't going up.

Along with those increased taxes and rents.

And so every year that goes by with flat funding of these types of benefits, then we basically see an erosion of how much of your property taxes and rent they offset.

But good.

I'm sure if you received benefits from anchor that at least are going to continue to get benefits in the new fiscal year.

And today, N.J. Jon, what will that look like?

So that's another really good question.

There's $600 million to get this program, which is supposed to benefit 430,000 senior homeowners in New Jersey to help them afford their record high property tax bill.

There's enough money now to get this program off the ground and running.

But the big question mark is what happens going forward?

Because the price tag is supposed to double in future fiscal years and there's no money set aside for those future fiscal years yet.

Brianna, we.

NJ Transit is another huge budget line item here that the governor has talked about.

Last week I spoke with the new head of NJ Transit, Chris Kaleri, who said that it'll cost the state $750 million to modernize our fleet of busses and rail cars.

That is just about the total that the state is looking to receive from the corporate transit fee.

Talk through what that funding source will look like for New Jersey.

That was the big question mark heading into today, Joanna, whether or not the state would appropriate the full amount of the corporate transit tax to New Jersey Transit.

Last year, of course, they took that billion dollars and put it into the general fund, which they could do because New Jersey Transit still had some federal money that it could rely on some Colvard dollars.

So you could make the argument that that was a smart, smart fiscal choice at the time.

This year, we are going to see about $850 million from the corporate transit tax go directly to New Jersey Transit.

Of course, rail advocates, progressive advocates, Republican lawmakers, folks have really been hitting the governor's office hard on this because we know that not only does New Jersey Transit have a fiscal cliff, but those federal dollars are going to dry up.

They did raise fares, but they are facing what will be some austere times.

That 815 million is about what's expected in the years going forward, give or take.

There's some money that does have to be constitutionally dedicated from that because of a whole litany of things that happened in 2014 when they made this all possible.

But they can expect that amount of money this year, which will help them to upgrade those fleets like you mentioned.

Yeah.

And John, let's switch to the other probably biggest line item here, and I'm going to roll two of them into one education and the pension payment.

Both have been fully funded by this administration year over year.

We see additional increases in education funding for schools to the tune of close to $400 million.

That brings us to a total of 12 billion just to fund our schools.

Add into that the pension.

What are we looking at for our pension payment this year?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Joanna And when you think about it, the pension payment, which is rising to $7.2 billion, and that funds obligations both for current workers who will be retiring and also for retired workers to make up for years and years of the state not making full pension payments.

When you take that direct money to the classrooms, that $12 billion figure, and then you add another seven and change for the pension contribution, you're talking about a full third of the total budget just in those two line items.

And again, you know, it's direct aid to classrooms K through 12 public schools.

When you're talking about the line item for what we call formula aid here in the state house, and then another 7 billion with the largest portion of the pension contribution really going to pay off what's effectively a credit card bill that prior administrations and a little bit of this one had run up in years when we weren't making the full pension contribution.

Anyone who has a credit card knows that that just pushes the bill forward.

Can I add to really Quick Joe on that an important piece, an important piece of this that that I'm sure we'll be talking about in the days to come Is this issue with the school funding formula?

The governor in this budget wrote in a 3% floor, I'll call it a cap on how much state aid each district can lose year to year so that school districts can budget, which has been their plight and really their argument and having to, you know, cut teachers, cut staff at the last minute.

Well, so that's going to ease some volatility, but but not all of it.

Yeah.

To that point and to the volatility issue, we don't know what's going to happen with certain funding streams coming from Washington.

Medicaid, a billion possibly in school funding that could be at risk.

What happens if we don't receive that funds?

Has this governor allowed for New Jersey to have some slack to pick up some of those costs?

Yeah, well, I mean, we were in a budget briefing earlier today where the governor's staff said he's very concerned about three items in particular, that's Medicaid.

As you mentioned, because that's a 1 to 1 match that the state has to make up with the federal money, transportation and education.

And so he is dead set on making sure that this surplus stays at or about $6 billion.

That is a priority for him.

Of course, a lot's going to happen between now and June with the budget, as it always does.

But we have the uncertainty, the added factor of federal dollars that very likely will get cut from what the state relies on and the governor has said that he's going to cap discretionary funding in this budget.

But like you said, a lot could change between now and June.

Brianna, John, thank you so much for the insight.

Great work down there in Trenton today.

Thanks, Joanna