Before voting against a $7.75 billion three-month budget supported by Gov. Phil Murphy, Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick said that more should have been done to protect taxpayers and provide transparency to the public.
“It is clear to me that in the private sector when we ran into financial difficulties we did layoffs,” said Bramnick (R-Union) before listing the numbers of employees at state agencies that have been closed since Gov. Phil Murphy’s statewide shutdown.
“When we are voting on an interim budget, part of that discussion should be what have we done before we pass a budget for the next three months,” continued Bramnick. “Did we do any layoffs? What did we do in this regard?”
Bramnick also pointed out that lawmakers did not have much time to consider the proposal. It was only made public two hours before the Democrat-controlled committee’s vote Thursday afternoon.
“This bill was introduced to the Republicans hours before the vote,” said Bramnick. “Billions of dollars of spending, two hours to consider the vote. I find that to be insufficient.”