by James Pytell, Managing Editor, New Jersey Business Magazine
New Jersey’s new Senate President, Nicholas Scutari, met with business leaders today at NJBIA’s Meet the Decision Makers event in Clark, where he reaffirmed his commitment to tackling one of the state’s most pressing issues: affordability.
“Emphasizing our priority of affordability is first and foremost on my agenda this year,” said Scutari, who took over as senate president on Jan. 11. “We want to get back to basics. We want to make sure that affordability is front and center in all the things that we do in New Jersey.”
One of the initial bills passed during Scutari’s first legislative session as senate president was S-330, which increases the amount of funding distributed to municipalities from the Energy Tax Receipts Property Tax Relief Fund beginning in 2023. The bill targets affordability for homeowners by requiring that municipalities use the new funds to reduce their property tax levy.
“One of the things that we can do better in the future is doing less,” Scutari said. “Doing less sometimes is more. [We want to] work on the bills that are important to New Jerseyans and make sure that there is a full vetting process to things.”
Scutari said he wants to “slow things down” during legislative sessions in order to ensure items get more intensely reviewed.
“Legislators and the public need more of an opportunity to understand what it is that we are doing,” he added.