It's a long and arduous process, but a good thing.

We have experts like NJ Spotlight News, budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer overseeing it.

Drawing attention to lawmakers sometimes slippery last-minute deals.

John joins me now to talk through what we can expect to see in this year's budget negotiations.

John, great to talk to you.

As David just mentioned in his piece, we are now in what we'll call budget pleading season, right, where folks are making the case for what they want to see in the budget.

How much does this pleating process actually play into the final budget numbers?

Yeah, nice to be with you, Joanna.

And you know, I think it can go one of two ways We've certainly seen over the years testimony at these budget hearings influenced the decisions that lawmakers make later in the year when they do write that annual appropriations bill before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year.

And so just last year, there were a lot of concerns raised about child-care issues in New Jersey.

And we ended up seeing the establishment of the new child tax credit, which coincidentally is being proposed to be expanded by Governor Murphy and some other legislation advanced in response to some of those concerns.

So certainly they do get the attention of lawmakers, but it's definitely not something that every concern as we listen to these hours of testimony ends up informing individual items that get added to the budget.

So some of the big picture issues that are raised certainly influence the final budget, but maybe not every single thing that people are talking about.

Republicans are criticizing what we've called Christmas tree items or pork-barrel spending, in fact.

Senator Declan O'Scanlon saying there's enough pork in this budget to hold a luau and feed the state.

What kinds of extra spending items might we see?

Could we see in this budget?

Well, I think what Republicans are seizing on to here is every year at the very end of the process, so late June, the majority Democrats have added millions in spending to the final budget right before it goes up for final votes.

And so while all of Governor Murphy's proposals get a long review, starting with these public budget hearings, these last minute items that the majority inserts into the budget funding for football fields, other community projects Really a number of different proposals get funded in that way at the last minute.

They don't quite get the same review.

And that's been something that Republicans have been complaining about for years.

But as the amount of money that goes to this type of last-minute spending increases, we're hearing those complaints get louder and louder.

And they do come at the expense of some of the issues.

You know, social service programs and other programs that advocates are raising concerns about during the budget hearings.

Even with the legislature recently and the bill is still working its way through the legislature right now.

But there's likely to be another $102 million set aside for education funding.

Even still, we're seeing districts show up to these budget hearings pleading for more money.

Granted, some of these districts have seen year-over-year cuts but what does this tell us about just the need for more state aid?

Yeah, I think that's a really good example of something that we've seen in the last few years and are starting to see again this year, which is just even with record spending proposed by Governor Murphy.

We're hearing about all the needs out there in the community, whether it's addiction services, other social programs, education aid is a great example.

So the state would spend a record amount of money, almost 11 billion on K-12 direct aid, what's known as formula aid.

And yet we have districts that are facing cuts that would be a bit smaller under legislation that's being fast-tracked this month through the legislature, but still facing cuts.

And there is a lot of concern about the current school funding law and how it's operating now.

Several years after lawmakers and Governor Murphy made tweaks.

And so that's been some of the source of testimony already this year.

John Reitmeyer Good to know you are overseeing this process as always.

Thank you, John.

You're welcome.