Governor’s Annual Address
On Tuesday Governor Murphy gave an annual “State of the State” Address, which he used to talk about his priorities over his final year in office. Next month he will speak again to give his annual Budget Address, which will be a more important speech as he lays out his taxing and spending priorities for his final budget.
There were two issues he addressed that could impact our industries. One was a call for an expansion of the paid family leave program. He focused his comments on expanded leave for state workers, but he also sought to build support for an expansion of the program overall. Currently, all workers are entitled to 12 weeks of leave to care for a newborn or sick relative, with their pay being covered by a state fund funded by payroll taxes. While all workers are entitled to this leave, employers with fewer than 35 employees are not required to re-hire the employee when their leave ends. There has been legislation to remove the small business protection entirely, forcing all businesses to rehire someone, at the same hours and pay rate that they were at before the leave, even if they have hired a better replacement or decided they do not need the position at all anymore. We have opposed this change which appeared to have stopped the bill, but the Governor’s push may lead to it being brought up again. An Assemblywoman also stated afterward that she intended to introduce a bill to increase the paid leave period to 24 weeks.
The other concern was his call to enshrine in law a requirement that within ten years all the electricity generated in the state to power our grid come from zero emissions sources. Currently, about 50% of electricity generation comes from natural gas, about 40% comes from the nuclear plant down in Salem County, and just under 10% comes from solar and wind. To meet this goal would mean a 5-fold increase in the amount of solar and wind energy currently being generating, at a huge installation cost that would be passed on to all ratepayers.
His other goals would require even more than that to be installed. The Governor’s official Energy Master Plan wants all vehicle transportation and building heating and cooking to be powered by electricity from the grid, a transition that is estimated to double the total electricity demand we currently have. He also said he wants to provide government grants to encourage the development of AI tech in the state. AI and data centers generally are going to require tremendous amount of new electricity–Microsoft is considering opening their own nuclear power plants just to power their efforts and a single Chatgpt prompt causes as much electricity to be consumed as running a light bulb for an hour. Add in ongoing population growth in the state, and we are talking about a goal that would be extremely difficult to meet, probably impossible, and not without significant increases in our already too high electric bills. In fact, utility bills are on track to increase even further this year, in no small part because the mere discussion of eliminating natural gas power generation has encouraged the utility companies to avoid investing in new plants, and that capacity is not being replaced with enough solar and wind, reducing power supply across the grid.
What matters to small businesses is that our utility bills are as affordable as possible, and that the lights are always on when needed, and that’s what we will be pushing for.
.jpg)
