Last night, both the Assembly Budget Committee and the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee favorably reported A-5669/S-2024, the $54.3 billion FY2024 New Jersey Budget Bill. It includes an additional $150 million for Energy Tax Receipts (ETR), double what was included in the FY23 budget. The additional funding is classified as “Municipal Relief Funding.” The full Assembly and Senate will consider the budget bills during voting sessions on Friday.
This additional funding marks a partial restoration of the energy tax receipts, a sum that the state had been diverting for its operations. The full $330 million should be sent to municipalities and while efforts were steered towards a full restoration of the funding, the latest outcome signifies another positive step forward that increased the partial restoration from last year’s $75 million to $150 million, doubling FY2023’s allocation.
The budget language for the additional $150 million is similar to last year with the allocation to municipalities to be proportional to the amount received by the municipality from ETR and distributed on the same schedule as ETR.
The Legislature is set to approve the budget on Friday morning. Following this, the Governor is expected to sign it before the deadline of July 1.
Many thanks for your outreach! We would also like to highlight the work of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors and New Jersey Urban Mayors Association for their partnership and outreach.
We are fully reviewing the budget document for other areas of particular interest to municipalities and will advise accordingly.
Contact: Mike Cerra, Executive Director, mcerra@njlm.org, 609-695-3481, x120 or Lori Buckelew, Deputy Executive Director & Director of Government Affairs, lbuckelew@njlm.org, 609-695-3481, x112.