TRENTON — The budget is done, but the budget battle? Not so much. Democratic leaders in the Assembly said Wednesday that lawmakers will return to the Statehouse on Tuesday for the first of several hearings to try to gauge the effect of Gov. Chris Christie’s spending cuts. They said the focus would be on how the cuts affect low-income...
TRENTON — The budget is done, but the budget battle? Not so much.
Democratic leaders in the Assembly said Wednesday that lawmakers will return to the Statehouse on Tuesday for the first of several hearings to try to gauge the effect of Gov. Chris Christie’s spending cuts.
They said the focus would be on how the cuts affect low-income children even though restoring any funds would have to be approved by the governor, who has repeatedly said the state can’t afford to spend more.
“We’re talking about abused children,” Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said. “We’re talking about traumatized children.”
The governor removed $900 million in spending from the Democrats’ budget, largely scaling back programs for the state’s poorest cities and residents.
Among the cuts was a $537,000 reduction for the Wynona M. Lipman Child Advocacy Center in Newark, which provides legal services and treatment for victims of sexual or physical abuse. If the cut survives, the center says its doors will close.
Christie has blamed Democrats for forcing him to chop the budget, saying they purposefully overspent and inflated revenue estimates to score political points.
“If you want to talk constructively about building some of these things back into the budget, okay, let’s have that talk,” Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), the Republican budget officer, said. “A committee hearing absolutely certain to be more political theater than substance isn’t the way to do that.”
The hearing will follow a week of failed attempts to override some of Christie’s vetoes in the Senate.