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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. Now we'll begin a new monthly feature on the show with WNYC's Nancy Solomon, who many of you know hosts our once-a-month evening call-in show, Ask Governor Murphy, where Nancy and callers do just that. Ask Governor Murphy questions about his policies and other New Jersey issues. Last night they talked about issues including New Jersey refusing a federal government request to have some of the asylum seekers coming by the tens of thousands to New York City. The nurses' strike at the hospital in New Brunswick, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, now a month old.

The reasons for a shockingly high number of COVID deaths at some New Jersey veterans' homes. Two bus companies shutting down despite the need for more public transit, not less. I'll say a can of beer makes an appearance in this episode. We'll play that clip, and one about the nurses, and one about the asylum seekers. Ask Governor Murphy aired live at seven o'clock last night. Hi, Nancy. Hope you got some sleep in between. Welcome back to the show.

Nancy Solomon: I did, Brian. Thanks so much.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your call is welcomed on any of the issues I just mentioned or other relevant ones for Nancy Solomon. Here, ask Nancy Solomon about asking Governor Murphy, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Let's dive into our first clip here from last night, and it's the longest one we'll play in this segment. We just talked in our last segment about New York's desire for a so-called decompression strategy on the asylum seekers. That is having the federal government place the migrants in various locations, a few places, especially New York aren't overwhelmed with resettlement costs.

As you will hear listeners, as we pick this up in Nancy's question, that the Biden administration wanted at least one of those places to be in New Jersey. This is a three-minute clip. You'll note that in the middle of it, the governor promised to actually answer Nancy's question.

Nancy Solomon: Mayor Eric Adams has called for federal help, and now the Biden administration has proposed 11 different federal sites to create emergency shelters. One of them is the Atlantic City Airport, and you came out pretty much with a hard no on that idea, and it surprised a lot of people. Why are you opposed to this?

Governor Murphy: Let me say a couple of things as background. First of all, I would put our record as a general matter on immigration, immigrants, welcoming society up against any other state in the past six years. That's everything from being among the first in the nation to have driver's license access for everybody, regardless of their status. It's the way we use our bully pulpit. It's not just in-state of tuition, but financial aid for dreamers.

It's the way we dealt with the Afghan refugees. No state took more Afghan refugees than the New Jersey, coordinated very tightly with the federal government, in particular, our military. We're almost literally virtually without incident. We've opened the door to Ukrainian immigrants. We have one of the largest Ukrainian-American populations of any American state. Indeed, we already have spillover out of New York City, anecdotally, and otherwise, you can see it, we know it. I could go on and on and on. I will answer your question.

Secondly, please God, America, let's figure out in Washington, and governors are willing to help. I had dinner last night with governors from both sides of the aisle. We're very committed to trying to add our voice to this. Let's figure out our immigration policy once and for all. In my humble opinion, it's a three-legged stool. One is, whether we like it or not, we have to secure the border. It has to be done responsibly, in a 21st century way with compassion, but it must be secured. Number two, there must be a pathway to status for the-- I don't know, 15 or 20 million. I'll bet you, that's understated at this point, folks who are already here, and that's got to be part of this.

Thirdly, let's have a really smart 21st-century legal, enlightened immigration policy that feeds folks into the jobs of tomorrow, the industries of tomorrow, where we are right now desperate. I think I've said this to you before. I was raised until recently, the chair of the National Governors Association and the Business Roundtable reached out, and said, "We want to have a conversation with you." I got a couple of governors last minute to get on the call, and there were probably 25 CEOs, and the lead spokesperson was Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple.

Everybody sees this from all sides. Having said all of that, it's a bridge too far. It's a scale too far. The resources required to do what they're suggesting, and by the way, I didn't hear from anybody, I read about this in the paper, or on the news wires. We just can't do it. It's very, very different than the Afghan example. It's very different than all the other bonafides that I mentioned. Not only do I not see it now, I just don't see it.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Phil Murphy, with WNYC's Nancy Solomon on the Ask Governor Murphy call-in show last night. Listeners, you can react to that, or bring up anything else relevant. 212-433 WNYC. Nancy, that was a lot of I love immigrants wind up to say, "No, we can't house them at the Atlantic City Airport," in a pretty brief way. Is it clear to you what the setup at Atlantic City would be, and why the Governor thinks it's not doable, and why he thinks it's different from the Afghan example, as he stated there?

Nancy Solomon: No, not at all. It's not clear to me. I think the only way you can understand that statement is to see it as an election-year problem for the Democrats in the legislature. They're all up for reelection in November, and Governor Murphy is not going to do something in September, eight weeks before the election, that is going to put Democrats who might be in a competitive race in a bind. Reporters call this silly season, [chuckles] and I think there's no better example of silly season than that statement. He clearly has always been steadfastly supportive of immigrants who live in New Jersey and welcoming immigrants to come to New Jersey.

As he mentioned, he opened up the state when Afghans were fleeing and coming to the country, and there was a refugee camp set up at a Air Force-- Well, it was a military base, I can't remember which one. It's hard to make sense of this, except that-- Not only is he concerned about the November election, and I think we might see some movement on this issue after the November 7th election. He still has his foot in the national presidential waiting pool, I'll call them. I would put him in the number of Democratic governors and senators who are waiting to see if Joe Biden gives up the ghost and takes himself off the ticket.

That is the only way to explain why he still has a political action committee that is actively raising money. It's a dark money groups, we don't know from whom. I think that's why you get this kind of like posturing on what the federal policy should be, and then at the same time, closing the door to any discussion right now about bringing asylum seekers to New Jersey between now and November 7th.

Brian Lehrer: Very interesting. Are parts of New Jersey getting many of the asylum seekers anyway, just of their own choosing, do you know?

Nancy Solomon: I do not know. He clearly mentioned it. I have not seen, like you mentioned the people selling stuff on the Deegan, and I saw that the other day. You're not seeing that here. At least, I'm not seeing it. Maybe in some of the cities, there might be an influx going on, but it's not as visible. Let's put it that way.

Brian Lehrer: One other thing on this before we go on to other things you talked about with the governor last night, is the right to shelter law a big difference between New York and New Jersey. Does New Jersey house new arrivals who have no other place to live or do any cities in New Jersey have that policy as far as you know?

Nancy Solomon: I see, you've now stumped me. I don't know Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Okay. All right. Let's go on to another issue and we're going to let Kate in Bloomfield raise it. This is one of the things that I listed in the intro that you talked to the governor about last night. Kate, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon.

Kate: Hey, thank you. Yes, am very appreciative of the 102 bus that replaced the DeCamp 33. It's only during rush hours to New York in the morning and from New York in the afternoon. However, it used to serve Montclair State and students don't follow that schedule. Boy, I wish we had service on the weekend to Montclair State and Bloomfield College or Montclair State Bloomfield College. That's my concern is that oh boy, we need to replace the old DeCamp buses.

Brian Lehrer: Kate, thank you. Nancy for people not familiar, explain that issue. What bus services are going out of service or what bus companies are going out of service and who's most affected?

Nancy Solomon: Right. There is DeCamp which as far as I know went out of business. It's been a while now and the governor says New Jersey Transit has picked up those roots. It sounds like maybe a few routes were picked up and some weren't. DeCamps was a century-old bus company that started with horse carriages. It serves basically the suburbs of Essex County largely, and a little bit of Passaic County. That was the first one that was a big news story that went down some time ago.

Now there are two lines one in Jersey City and one in Newark that are also now announcing longtime bus companies announcing private, that they're going out of business. Now the question is will the Murphy administration have New Jersey Transit pick up those routes? Last night the governor said that he was in favor of that. He used an interesting term, Brian. He said he didn't want to see any transit deserts. We hear a lot about food deserts. I thought that was an interesting turn of phrase and nice that it's on his radar. The question is, how quickly can they get New Jersey Transit bus service online to replace these private companies?

Brian Lehrer: Is the issue getting around Jersey City, getting around Newark, getting around Montclair, other suburbs in Essex County, or is the issue getting in and out of New York as commuters?

Nancy Solomon: I believe it's the latter. I believe it's about getting into New York.

Brian Lehrer: Why would demand be down enough that these private bus companies are discontinuing service? Is it related to different commuting patterns since the pandemic?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think so. I think a lot of people aren't commuting and that would affect the bottom line.

Brian Lehrer: We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio, on the New Jersey side right now with our Nancy Solomon who hosts the Ask Governor Murphy call-in show which usually is on the second Wednesday night of the month at 7:00 PM, mark your calendars. Mark your calendars for the second Thursday morning of the month when Nancy will be coming on the show on a regular basis on the morning after. Here's another clip from last night. You got a call from a nurse about staffing at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick where I think the number is 2000 nurses have been on strike for a month, and the hospital has been bringing in replacements. Some would call them scabs to staff the place. Here's part of the governor's response.

Governor Murphy: These are heroes. Let's get this thing resolved, period.

Nancy Solomon: It's crazy that the strike has gone on for a full month and that this is the first time they're going back to the negotiating table. I've been told that the hospital is spending an enormous amount of money bringing in nurses from out of state to break the picket lines and fill those positions. It doesn't make sense to me why not just spend some extra money then and settle.

Governor Murphy: Yes. Listen, I don't have visibility into the explicit levels of the negotiation other than staffing I know has been an issue that's been out there. Get this done, get this done, and get it done now.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, remind people of what this strike is and why it's happening.

Nancy Solomon: This is a strike at a private nonprofit hospital, Robert Wood Johnson/Barnabas Hospital. It's a merger of two big hospitals. I haven't actually covered this that much. I got some calls before the show about it yesterday and then we had the caller who called in. My understanding is that the issues going on there, what the strike is about is not necessarily so much pay but about working conditions and safety for patients and for nurses. The idea is they want all kinds of concessions and changes to make the hospital better and safer.

Like I said in that clip, they're going back to the negotiating table today. It's been a month. Apparently, they're running on nurses who are breaking the picket line, many of them from out of state. It's an enormous amount of money. I don't have a dollar figure but I've been told like tens of thousands of dollars every month keeping the place afloat instead of settling.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Alex, excuse me, in Edison who I think wants to take the governor's side on not using the Atlantic City Airport for asylum seekers. Alex, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Alex: Hi. How are you? Thanks so much. Thanks so much for all you do covering New Jersey. It's really a great service you guys do. Real quick and I think actually Nancy's probably aware of this to a certain degree, but one thing I wanted to say is I think it's overly simplistic to say that not wanting to put migrants in Atlantic City is just an election ploy, The reality of it is is that Atlantic City has bared a unfair percentage of social services in Atlantic County for God knows how long, and for years has been trying to get other surrounding municipalities in the county as a whole to take their fair share burden of social services.

I think it shows how out of touch the Biden administration is in picking Atlantic City as its first choice in New Jersey. If they had any familiarity for local politics as well as the incredible amount of compassion that's contained both within the city and within the administration, they'd understand that placing a greater social service burden on Atlantic City is placing a burden on it that it just can't currently handle right now but does its best to try to handle and if it actually paid attention to some of the local politics, it would see that they should probably look for other locations because it'd be a continuation of dumping all social services into Atlantic City as has historically been the case.

Brian Lehrer: Do you or other people who espouse this who you're referring to have other places in mind?

Alex: To be clear, I'm not a professional that works in this space but I would say that New Jersey is obviously most densely populated state in the union, but also at the same time the politics as well as the capacity for any given municipality to handle these types of migrants, especially considering the incredible burden of property taxes with how many municipalities we have in general. When you think about the costs that are incurred to any given municipality, California has 440-something municipalities, New Jersey has 560-something which makes the ability to spread that cost around also much less. Additionally, it would be beating down on a city that has tried its best to accommodate all of those in need within its borders with very little help from surrounding towns because obviously, it's not easy to place people in these places but we can't just keep placing them in the same communities that we've historically placed them in [unintelligible 00:19:20] Memoriam because, at the end of the day, I think that that is still discriminatory. [unintelligible 00:19:26]

Brian Lehrer: Alex, thank you. Thank you for your call. We appreciate it. Nancy, going on to another issue, you also asked the governor last night about the really tragic issue of a high number of deaths from COVID in New Jersey veterans homes, some worse than others in terms of how they've been managing the pandemic in different individual homes but this is based on a new report, right?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. This is a investigation done by the US attorney of Newark into what caused the spike in COVID deaths there. The death rate was higher than other nursing homes. Of course, we know that nursing homes were worsley affected if that's a term than everyone else during the pandemic, and the veterans homes were the worst of the worst. The report is heartbreaking and damning. Really, truly, truly damning of the state administration that runs Veterans Affairs, and the management at the two out of the three veterans homes which were affected in the state.

The other was in South Jersey. The early infection rates were much lower down there. It wasn't as poorly affected as the other two. The report basically lays out so many problems. Lack of infection control. Not just the lack of masking, but employees who wanted to wear masks, and were willing to bring them from home, given the shortage in the early days, were told they could not wear masks. Families of the residents--

Brian Lehrer: Why? Was that a maga ideological thing or some other reason?

Nancy Solomon: No. I read the report, and I took a look yesterday again before prepping for the show, and there is a whole discussion of management saying "No masks." I don't really understand it. It appears that they saw this as insubordination. They had said, "We're not going to mask." It's not clear to me why. Maybe it started with shortages, but there seems to be-- throughout the report, you get the sense, and there are specifics about just really poor management and poor management worker relationships that just are punitive. There's no trust and there's no training, there's no expertise. You get the sense of a place that is being run so poorly and not with the health and safety of everyone there at top of mind.

I thought the most interesting thing the governor said about it because he did defend his actions of the time but said that the buck stops with him, and he is appalled. He said all the kinds of right things you'd expect them to say. I thought the most interesting new thing he said last night was that he's thinking about whether or not the division of Military and Veterans Affairs is the right place in the state to be managing a healthcare facility. Implicated in that was the idea that it would be moved into the Department of Health. That's the logical extension, even though he didn't say that, of what he was saying. I think he was basically saying, "Look, we've got this division that was really ill-equipped to handle a pandemic at their nursing homes."

Brian Lehrer: Maybe a particular point of reform coming there. All right, one more clip. This is about a real issue, but you had some fun setting it up, and that's the part we'll play. Spoiler alert, Nancy came to the interview with the governor last night with a can of New Jersey-brewed beer.

[start of audio autoplay]

Nancy Solomon: Now come along the craft beer breweries who are upset because I guess there are all kinds of restrictions on what they're able to do. They can't hold events and they can't serve food, they can't have food trucks. There was a bill that the legislature has passed and they want you to sign it.

Governor Murphy: Sign the Bill Phil including their own-- Do you have some here?

Nancy Solomon: Look what I brought you.

Governor Murphy: Look at this.

Nancy Solomon: People can't see this.

Governor Murphy: We should be on TV.

Nancy Solomon: We have a can of beer. You can look at it.

Governor Murphy: I'm not going to drink it but I'm going to look at it.

Nancy Solomon: It's a can of beer that on its label says, Sign The Bill Phil. It's an IPA. If you give it back.

Governor Murphy: I'm going to give that to you.

Nancy Solomon: I know you like beer so we're going to crack this open.

Governor Murphy: Oh, god, I can't do that. That's violating something, isn't it?

Nancy Solomon: There we go. You're not allowed?

Governor Murphy: I'll have a tiny sip. Just to be social. [laughter] That's plenty.

Nancy Solomon: Well, we don't really want to go off the rails here. Cheers.

Governor Murphy: Cheers.

Nancy Solomon: Why have they had to produce this beer can that says, Sign The Bill Phil? Why do you not want to sign this bill?

[end of audio autoplay]

Brian Lehrer: That from last night's Ask Governor Murphy. Wait a minute, Brian in Metuchen is calling in about this issue. Brian, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Brian: Hello, Brian, and hello, Nancy. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a big fan of craft brewing. I go to a lot of craft breweries in the state. New Jersey has somewhere around 150, I think, craft breweries, and they are, I think, substantially restricted in what they can and cannot do. You have a legislature that has, I believe, unanimously presented this bill, and the governor won't sign it. I don't understand why. I know he wants some broader changes to liquor laws in New Jersey. I fully support that, but I think he can take an action here that would be good for small business. Many small businesses across the state, they don't feel like there is real competition, and it's going to take business away from bars and restaurants in any meaningful way. I simply don't understand why he can't do this for the many small businesses across New Jersey.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see if we can get an answer. Nancy, we have a minute left. If the beer can says sign the bill Phil, what bill is it that Phil won't sign?

Nancy Solomon: Okay. This is a bill to allow breweries to have all kinds of food services, food trucks, events. They're very limited to just brewing beer at the moment. The governor supports the bill. He's very clear about the fact that he wants to sign the bill and that he's told there'll be no enforcement of those rules that the bill reforms until January. The problem he's facing again, it's silly season, election time in November of the entire legislature. He does not want to separate this issue from broad liquor license reform.

We have a constricted system that dates back to the prohibition era, in which every town only gets the number of liquor licenses 1 per 3000 of their population. That has driven the price up like taxi medallions. Driven the price up it can be as high as a million dollars to get a liquor license in New Jersey. Murphy wants to reform the system because it would help downtowns which of course are suffering in this post-mall era that we've been in for 50 years. He's got good reasons on this one. He wants to hold out because if he signs the brewery bill, he's afraid that he's not going to ever get his liquor license reform bill through the legislature.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy Solomon hosts Ask Governor Murphy, the second Wednesday night of every month at 7:00 PM. I'll drink to that but not on the air. Starting today, she'll be coming on the next morning to debrief it a little bit and play some choice clips on the show. Nancy, thanks a lot for doing that today. Talk to you next month, if not before.

Nancy Solomon: That's great, Brian. Thanks so much.

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