NYC NOW - January 16, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Governor Kathy Hochul wants to end a longstanding policy that guarantees New York public schools get at least as much state money as the year before. Plus, State Senator and stand up comic Jon Bramnick says he’ll run for governor. Finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with Jessie Gómez of Chalkbeat Newark about the historic ruling allowing Newark teens to vote in school elections as early as 16 years old.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jared Marcel. Governor Kathy Hokel wants to end a longstanding policy that guarantees New York public schools get at least as much state money as the year before. The Democratic governor unveiled the proposal as part of her $233 billion state budget plan earlier today. It includes a slight increase in overall education spending, but she wants to end the practice. known as Hold Harmless, which means some school districts could soon see a decrease in funding from the prior year. As much as we may want to, we are not going to be able to replicate the massive increases

of the last two years. The governor's budget also includes more than $2 billion to assist the cost of thousands of migrants arriving in New York City. The governor and state lawmakers have to get a budget in place by April 1st. Up next, New Jersey State Senator and stand-up comic John Bramnick is running for governor. That's after the break. New Jersey State Senator John Bramnick says he will run in the Republican primary for governor. WNYC's Nancy Solomon reports on what could be the most amusing political race come 2025.

There's a billboard on the Garden State Parkway, John Bramnick, the funniest lawyer in New Jersey. Admittedly, the bar for funny lawyers may be low. No pun intended. The bad news is you paid money to see a lawyer tell jokes. The good news is I'm not getting paid either, so none of your money is coming to me. And just to add some insult to injury, I'm also a New Jersey politician, which means you can trust everything I'm about to tell you. Graham Nick is a Republican state senator from Westfield, who served in the legislature for 21 years. He's a personal injury lawyer, and he does stand up comment. on the side. Now he's taking his stand-up routine to one of the biggest stages in New Jersey politics,

the race for governor. Bramnik is one of the last moderate Republicans in the legislature, and he'll face an electorate in the primary that skews right. He says he'll try to convince his party they won't ever win a general election in New Jersey if they don't move to the center. You can't be neutral on Donald Trump. You can't be neutral on democracy. You can't be neutral on January six and expect New Jersey voters to vote for you. You have to stand up and when you see things in your party that are bad, you've got to say them. Simple as that. But if that tack fails, Bremenick says he can fall back on the happy warrior routine. As a parting shot, what's the funniest thing about being involved in New Jersey politics?

That you have to take ethics every year and there's a full-time ethics officer. So I went in, last week for ethics training and she says sit down Senator I said okay she's you ready for your ethics training I said I am she said rule number one

you can't take cash in an envelope and I said I never take the envelope she goes rule number two there's no joking during ethics training I said I'm not joking what you think about you got a full-time ethics officer not doing too good that's WNYCC

senior reporter Nancy Solomon. We're staying in New Jersey. A week ago, at his state of the state address, Governor Phil Murphy said he'd back a bill that allows 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in school elections. But the Newark City Council was already working on its own plan for teens to vote in those races, and a day later approved it unanimously. It's the first city in the Garden State to let teens vote.

Jesse Gomez covers the school system for chalkbeat Newark. My colleague Sean Carlson spoke with her about why this vote is so important. significant. How did Newark find itself leading this discussion about letting teens vote in school board elections? So historically in Newark, school board elections have always been pretty low. They're held annually in April and turnout has been around 3%. So the conversation on the ground to include more participation in these school board elections has been brewing for quite some time. But most recently, this ordinance was sponsored by council president La Monica McIver, but also stems from her own desire to engage in civics as

a younger teen. And it also stems from a lot of advocacy on the ground to actually allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote. Yeah, talk more about the argument for letting younger people vote specifically in school elections. We heard a lot of comments from supporters on the ground who say 16 and 17 year olds are more than equipped to vote and have more engagement when it comes to civic conversations. Specifically, we heard from students who say they've been to school board candidate forums where they've heard different candidates talk about different issues that concern them, but felt very disappointed when they found out they couldn't actually vote for any of them. And so a lot of what students are saying is, yes, we are equipped to vote,

but we're also hearing from community members saying that there needs to be more engagement when it comes to civic conversations and actually educating students on how they vote and why they should vote. What's the opposition to this? What concerns are they raising? So there's been a couple of reservations. But I should say that this ordinance was passed unanimously by all council members, but each had their own caveats when it came to actually talking about the ordinance. So on the council side, there's a couple of council members such as Aniwal Ramos and Luis Quintana who raised concerns about the future of order turnout and specifically the importance of just engaging young people in Newark about these elections.

So like they said, historically, the school board election has hovered around 3% when it comes to participation. So one of the council members was concerned about if we increase who is eligible to vote, then, you know, it might actually lower the school board election turnout. So since we're allowing now more than 7,300 of Newark's 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, voter participation could actually hover down to 2% or even 1% if these young people aren't civically engaged. In Newark and maybe beyond, if this thing does go statewide, how might this change the politics of school board elections? And what might it mean for how people campaign or what issues they focus on? So historically on the ground, especially last year, we did see a lot of young people going out canvassing. We saw a lot of folks, you know, in last April school board race, especially a lot of young folks helping out, you know, candidates when it comes to canvassing, when it comes to talking about the engagement piece of voting in these elections. But it really could change who gets to be on the board.

Specifically in this upcoming race, there are currently two vacancies on the school board. and historically, and currently all the board members on this school board are backed by the mayor, and they've also been endorsed by other lawmakers as well. And so if we open the pool for more young folks to actually vote, it might change who we see on the school board. In Newark's case, this isn't just about lowering the voting age. There's ideas, too, about tying this in with the school curricula. Can you tell us a little bit about that? So, again, a couple of other comments that we heard during Tuesday's council meeting is that, you know,

folks are very much concerned about the civic engagement piece here. So right now, there is no civic courses to all of the public schools to help engage high school students with civic actions. So part of what we heard from Council President McGiver is that I guess the next step here is to really engage the state delegation to bring back those civic courses in the public school system to help students understand why it's important for them to vote, but more specifically how they should vote. Again, a lot of the comments on Tuesday, were revolved around, you know, the concerns of, you know, are 16 and 17 years actually able to vote? Do they understand what it means?

So bringing back these civic courses could be a way and a step forward in helping bridge that gap. Jesse, before we let you go, we mentioned that the governor said he would back a bill statewide for this. What happens next when it comes to youth voting in New Jersey? So I guess the conversation continues. In Newark, it's, you know, the first municipality to actually, you know, make this happen. perhaps other municipalities in towns across the state could follow suit. Mina Murphy is also asking state lawmakers to send them a bill to expand voting rights for 16 and 17-year-old statewide in local school board elections. This could expand statewide too.

That's my colleague Sean Carlson in conversation with reporter Jesse Gomez of Chalkbeat Newark. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times today. I'm Jared Marcel. We'll be back tomorrow.