With the guarded hope that we are on a downward trend of coronavirus activity, the discussion has turned to the reopening of the state. EJB Talks host Stuart Shapiro broaches the topic with Bloustein alumnus Brandon McKoy, MCRP ’13, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, and a member of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s commission to reopen the state. Brandon touches on some of the issues the state (and the country) must face in determining how to reopen, what the CARES Act is helping (and what it isn’t), and how not investing in the future has hurt the state.

Stuart Shapiro
Welcome to another episode of EJB Talks. I’m Stuart Shapiro, the Associate Dean of the Faculty at the Bloustein School. And the purpose of this podcast is to talk with my colleagues. And today an alumni, about issues affecting people in New Jersey, the United States and the world. Today, we’re talking with Brandon McCoy, the president of New Jersey Policy Perspective. And, we are very proud to say, a Bloustein School graduate. Brandon, welcome.

Brandon McKoy
Thank you, professor. How are you doing?

Stuart Shapiro
I’m doing all right. It’s good to have you on. Can you tell us a little bit about New Jersey Policy Perspective and what you do?

Brandon McKoy
Absolutely. So NJPP is a what we call a “think and do tank,” or as some of our partners say our research and action organization. We do a lot of, sort of, research and analysis, particularly for issue areas–tax and budget policy, health care, immigration, and economic security policy. Occasionally, we touch on other areas. But we have the view that the New Jersey state budget is a moral document that should provide for every resident in this state, and ensure everybody has the resources they need to thrive. And so that’s the view that we bring to our work. We take very seriously issues of equity and discrimination to ensure that we are accounting for the disparities of the past and the disparities that still live with us today. But as I like to tell folks, you know, we just do math. And then we, we like to make sure that people understand exactly what our research means. So that’s, that’s the “do” part.

Stuart Shapiro
Wonderful. And in terms of–I mean, we’ve talked a lot about disparities and equity on previous episodes of the podcast–and in terms of economic security, we’re now in the midst of an economic crisis, unlike any since the Great Depression.

Brandon McKoy
Yes.

Stuart Shapiro
Let’s talk about short-term measures first, and then we’ll go to medium- and longer-term. You are on Governor Murphy’s commission for reopening the economy. Can you talk a bit about your views on when we can reopen? It’s obviously something that’s on a lot of people’s minds right now.

Brandon McKoy
Yeah, and it’s, you know, as someone who is going on, I think, week 10 of being inside my house. I definitely understand folks getting antsy and wanting to go outside, but as you know, Governor Murphy has said before, data determines dates. And so, I think when we think about when, is really taking into account and being careful to consider, what are the logistics necessary to ensure that not only can people get to work but that all the other things in their lives are not going to be a major concern, causing anxiety. So for me, you know, obviously testing and tracing and isolating the coronavirus is going to be critical before we can fully get back to a quote-unquote reopened economy. But there’s a lot of other things that must be considered as well. Like, no childcare. No one’s coming back to work if their kids can’t if they can’t be sure that their children are safe and secure throughout the day. We’ve got to think about, who are we asking to go back to work and when and how. You know, just this sort of blanket let’s reopen and get things back going, that’s not really how it works in practice. And so, when I think about when? It’s a little bit tough to see or to pick a specific date. But I think what we can do right now, is focus on the how and what people need to be whole before we can just expect them to go back to what they were doing before.

Stuart Shapiro
Right. I think that, we’re learning that opening is a lot more complicated than closing.

Brandon McKoy
Yep!

Stuart Shapiro
And as you know, the how is really important. Just as important as when we reopen is how we reopen! What considerations are you and the Commission and the Governor thinking about in deciding what opens first? I saw today, that we got bike shops. And car dealerships were allowed to open. What’s the process that people are going through and making those decisions?

Brandon McKoy
Well, definitely we’re trying to figure out ways that folks can start operating again in a safe manner. So, you know, are there certain businesses and establishments that could maybe operate outside. You know, maybe have things outside of their facility? Because we know that, you know, the virus, there’s a less likely chance for it to be transmitted to others outside than it is inside. So, you know, where can we have folks open outside? Can certain restaurants operate outside instead? You know, can certain retail stores operate outside for the time being, or at least can conduct their business you know, outside? For folks that can do that I think they’re probably, you know, will be earlier in the queue for getting back to operation quickly.

I think the tough thing is going to be, there’s a lot of portions of the economy and businesses that require intimate space, right? Barbers, you know, hairdressers, nail salons, massage therapists. Just things that require, you know, physical touch and being near others. And, you know, I’ve seen a couple of videos on Instagram and elsewhere, like barbers sort of almost using, taking like a broomstick and attaching it to a clipper and like, shaving somebody’s head like that. And more than anything, I’m shocked at their skill of being able to do that! From so far away!

Stuart Shapiro
Right, right!

Brandon McKoy
But yeah, I think, you know, the biggest challenge here is just that, we’ve learned a lot about the virus, but there’s still clearly so much we don’t know. It’s still acting in ways that it did not when it first came onto the scene. And so, there’s a bit of a concern about assuming that we know too much and that we can say, okay, you’re good to go, you can open, you know, just follow these rules, and all will be well. But, we have to try to make those decisions as we go along here. So, I think folks who can be outside, operate outside will be better off in their early term here. But folks who require intimate distance and stuff like that, it’s going to be critical that we figure out what are the specific guidelines that they need to follow as best as we know. And then, you know, for me, the thing that’s always a big challenge is how do we enforce those guidelines? You know, we can pass you know, laws and policies all day long. But if state government or county government or local doesn’t have the wherewithal or the capacity to make sure that people are following those things, then they’re not worth the paper that they’re written on.

Stuart Shapiro
Right. You mentioned the schools earlier, and that strikes me as kind of the heart, almost the hardest problem here. You’ve got an inside environment. You’ve got lots of people crowded together. And those people are ones, as anyone who’s tried to raise a child knows, ones that are not particularly good at following rules. (laughing) And so, you know, getting the schools online is required to get everything else online, but it’s also one of the hardest things to bring up, I think.

Brandon McKoy
Absolutely. And, you know, we’re heading into summer, so summer camps are going to be a thing. And, you know, like you said, I don’t think we can expect kids to socially distance really. That’s exactly how they operate.

Stuart Shapiro
Exactly.

Brandon McKoy
And, you know, nor should we expect them to. So this is really a big challenge. And I think it’s the type of thing that, you know, even though I’m the president of a policy think tank, my degree at Bloustein was actually a planning degree. (laughing) You know, it’s given me a bit of a different view on some of these issues. But it’s the type of challenge that a lot of us who went into this line of work, I don’t think a lot of us thought we will be dealing with this type of thing. So, it really requires us thinking outside the box and being willing to be a little bit bolder than we’ve been called to be.

Stuart Shapiro
Yeah, the planning idea, you know, the number of people I’ve seen, say, on social media, we just want to plan. And I don’t think they realize how much uncertainty we’re operating under and how difficult it is to come up with a plan. It’s more like figuring out what’s the next step and what can we do next here?

Brandon McKoy
Yep. Yep.

Stuart Shapiro
What is New Jersey doing to cushion the blow the of this economic crisis on those who have lost their jobs, have been furloughed? And what else should they be doing?

Brandon McKoy
So, thanks to some of the provisions in the CARES Act that was signed into law at the end of March, the state has been able to take advantage of up to an extra $600 a week in unemployment insurance coverage for individuals who are, you know, filing and claiming unemployment. And that’s one of the scariest charts you could see right now. Is just the number of unemployment claims and how it just totally dwarfs the Great Recession and anything that we’ve seen before. It really puts into, you know, into focus how drastic and how rapid, you know, how rather quickly-moving this crisis is. And so an extra $600 a week is really great. I think one concern I have about that is, it is obviously because it’s an unemployment insurance claim, it’s tied to people who were working. And we have a lot of people in the state who don’t and or cannot work. So making sure, I think one thing that’s left out is, how do we implement policies and have a more robust safety net that takes into account everybody, regardless of their ability to, you know, produce labor or have them have employment.

But the $600 from unemployment insurance has been a big boost. But one of the major challenges is that–and the state has done a lot with regards to, you know, providing small business support and relief, with the EDA. Legislators are talking about trying to figure out a fund for undocumented immigrants who’ve been left out of federal relief packages, unfortunately. And, undocumented immigrants are a major and important part of New Jersey’s culture and economy and society. So, we’ve got to figure that out. But the overarching challenge here is just that, you know, we’re seeing a lot of states that have the financial and fiscal resources to be flexible in their response. New Jersey has not really budgeted in the most forward-looking manner for the past decade or so. You could actually probably argue for the past three decades.

Stuart Shapiro
Oh, yeah, I was gonna go back farther than that (laughing).

Brandon McKoy
(laughing) Yes. You know, I was trying to be nice. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a really, what I would consider, a quality budget. I think this administration has done a much better job of investing in the assets that we need to grow our economy. But still, you can’t make up for almost 30 years of poor decision making in two years. And so, we know, states have what they call a rainy day fund to keep on hand for when a rainy day comes around. This is definitely a monsoon. And New Jersey totally exhausted our rainy day fund from the Great Recession. And we didn’t put more money into it. And so last year’s budget, Governor Murphy and the legislature invested $401 million into it. Well, $401 million in New Jersey gets you four days of government operation. And, the recommendation from experts is two months.

Stuart Shapiro
Wow.

Brandon McKoy
And so, we just don’t have the fiscal wherewithal right now. And you know, our poor credit rating is infamous for a lot of other poor decisions that we’ve made. So our ability to borrow isn’t as great as you’d like it to be, even though interest rates are low. But, I say all that to say that, because of the past decisions that we’ve made coming into this crisis, we are working with fewer resources and fewer assets to tackle it. And this is the most difficult crisis we’ve had. This is a more difficult crisis than the Great Recession than the late 2000s recession–I’m sorry, the early 2000s recession–and the early 1990s recession. This is the hardest one, and yet we have the fewest resources on hand to tackle it. And so, that’s the major issue we’re dealing with right now. And, we just need to do a much better job of accounting for unanticipated crises like this, and like, you know, I like to remind people, we’re six months away from hurricane season. We’ve got to account for that, too. You know, and so, there’s always going to be a crisis, but New Jersey hasn’t done a very good job, historically, of budgeting in a manner where we have the resources to handle it well.

Stuart Shapiro
Right. And so normally in a situation like this, what New Jersey is in right now, we would think, okay, can the federal government help us? And indeed, as you mentioned, the CARES Act, a remarkable accomplishment, you know, it’s not every day you see trillion-dollar legislation passed with the speed that it was passed in Congress. But it’s also becoming clear that it was not enough. The next step, at least from the Democrats point of view as the bill passed by the House last week, the HEROES Act. Can you talk a little bit about that and what it has that might be able to help us?

Brandon McKoy
Yeah. So right now, you know, it’s only passed the House. And so once the Senate gets done with it, it might look really, really different.

Stuart Shapiro
Yeah. Very different.

Brandon McKoy
Yeah. But for now, at least, you know, the HEROES Act, it contains significant fiscal aid for states and local governments. I believe last time I looked at $900 billion dollars. I think $500 billion would go to states, and $375 billion to local governments. And then you have, thankfully, an extra $40 billion for like Native American tribes and territories, which often have been left out of previous efforts. So that’s good to see.

And that’s really meant to help states avoid drastic cuts to programs and services. And Governor Murphy has stated that New Jersey is going to need between $20 and $30 billion in federal support to avoid drastic cuts here. You know, the treasurer said that for this year’s budget, they anticipate a $10 billion shortfall. That’s more than a quarter of our state budget. And so that’s really, really drastic. And we’re going to need that state relief if we’re going to have any chance of coming out on the other side of this in a strong fashion. There’s also in the HEROES Act, I think they’re considering a second round of direct payments to citizens. So it’d be, I believe, $1200, this time per family member, including children. Last time, it was like $500 for children. This time it would be $1200 for children too, up to $6,000 per household, which is good to see. Though I would argue that that should be tied to economic conditions and should be a consistent thing, not just something that we have to ask Congress to do over and over and over again. You really want it to be there as long as this crisis, and this economic situation is with us.

There are also some labor protections. There’s something called the HEROES Fund that they would put $200 billion towards to provide hazard pay for essential workers, which is good to see. Also the $600 per week in unemployment insurance I mentioned before. Previously, or up until now it’s designed to end at the end of July this year. But in the HEROES Act, it would be extended through January 2021. So that will be important. And then some other things there’s, I think $175 billion for housing assistance for folks to help low-income homeowners and renters afford housing costs. There’s $100 billion for education to states and school districts and universities to defray additional pandemic-related costs. There are some more things in there but, you know, that’s a lot. And like you said, it’s still not enough. It’s just what we’re seeing. You know, like I mentioned childcare before. This bill doesn’t touch childcare. And, it will take a significant–it would take billions of dollars a month for the federal government to stand up child care in the way that it needs to be. And so, this is really causing us to rethink how we invest in and support all the things that it takes to run our country. I think we’re finding out that, things cost a lot more than we’ve been led to understand. There are some folks who have known this forever, you know (laughing). But there’s a lot of folks who like to sort of downplay the importance of investing in these things. And we’re really learning that lesson right now.

Stuart Shapiro
So Senator Everett Dirksen famously said, a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. What is your response, when we’re talking multiple trillions of dollars here, to people who say, we can’t afford all of this.

Brandon McKoy
Yeah, and that’s something that I hear a lot. And I think it’s a very narrow view of costs. There are costs on both sides of the ledger. There’s the cost to doing things, and there’s the cost to not doing things. And we don’t really, very often, costs talk about the cost of not doing things. You know, what is the cost of having so many people who are sick and ill? What is the cost of having so many people who are undereducated or underemployed? You know, what’s the cost of having so many folks who don’t have access to critical services? Or who are living in an environment that is, you know, not entirely healthy, either because of, you know, lead in the water or in the ground or whatever it may be. There are costs to those things. And I think the problem is that the way that you know, we in this country have viewed costs have just been well, how much does it cost to do it? And there hasn’t been a ton of research, or at least, not enough attention paid to the research about the cost of not doing it.

And so I would strongly say that the cost of not doing a lot of these things is way, way, way more than the cost doing them. And the cost is only going to go up. I remember, when I was actually at Bloustein, I believe was my second semester, and Governor Christie at the time, canceled the ARC Tunnel. And I was in the computer lab, and I just happened to be sitting with a bunch of transportation planners and it was as if the world ended. (laughing) And they were just like, oh my god, all of our projections are off, we don’t know what we’re going to do. And the rationale at the time was, oh, well, you know, New Jersey is going to, is footing too much of the bill it’s going to cost too much. Well, now you look at the cost of doing it, it’s way more than the ones then! And, it’s no less needed. It’s more needed now. And we had that tunnel in place now, we’d be a heck of a lot better off. And so, just this conversation around costs, you know, I think it always obscures the costs that fall on marginalized communities, communities of color, people who’ve been pushed behind throughout history. And I think that is a very incomplete and narrow view if we’re going to be better about taking into account everybody who lives in this country,

Stuart Shapiro
Right, I like your formulation of the cost of not doing things. Let me conclude with a question on the sort of even longer run implications of the crisis we’re going through. And you mentioned already, you know, investing in a rainy day fund and investments. Is there anything else you’d like to add in terms of structural policy changes that you would like to see government, whether at the federal or state level, put a high priority on?

Brandon McKoy
Yeah, at the federal level, as wild as it is, I do think that there is a lot to be said for focusing on rebuilding the country and having, like, a domestic works program. Not only from a capital, you know, projects perspective, but also from a putting people to work perspective. There are still so many people who are out of work or underemployed, but there’s so much work to be done. And you know, a lot of folks like to point to the skills gap, but in my opinion, this is not really a skills gap issue. It’s just that we’re not matching the work that needs to be done and valuing it in the way that we should. So, seeing some sort of focus at the federal level on employing people to do the work of rebuilding the country would be wonderful. And I think that would help, especially coming back from this pandemic and this recession, possible depression, I think it would help us get out of it and have a quicker recovery.

At the state level, there’s, you know, there’s a ton of things that you could do in New Jersey. And one of the great things about going to Bloustein was just, you know, understanding how deep you can go in one place. How much you can learn about policy and government in one state. And, you know, everybody has their bugaboo when it comes to New Jersey politics and policy. Beyond some, you know, some of the major things that I and my colleagues have said around having a more equitable tax code and one that raises revenue in a more reliable and consistent manner so we can actually afford the things that we need to invest in. That’s just, I gotta be a broken record on that.

But other than that, we really do need to do a better job of actually putting our money where our mouth is on our complaints. We complain all the time about there being too many municipalities, but then don’t really come up with a real legitimate plan for making that happen. And I think there are ways you could do that. You could do things through DCA, you could have a program in place to incentivize, you know, localities to consolidate. That’s gonna take real work and that’s going to take investment, and that’s just not going to happen overnight with what we have. So I would like to see that.

I like to see a recommitment to funding and expanding NJ Transit. It’s been so long since we’ve had a conversation about transportation in this state that wasn’t just, how do we get back to a reliable operation? You know, if we were having a real conversation we’d be talking about, what are the parts of the state that need access, and that should be having their own train stations? And you know, we’re not at that point. But we need to get to that point. I think, talking about investment in NJ Transit–and not just rail but also bus–would be really great to see.

But finally, the real number one thing I think is, I really think in New Jersey, the major challenge facing us–and I think this is almost a really good dry run for we’re kind of facing the long term is–we’re a coastal state.

Stuart Shapiro
Right.

Brandon McKoy
We do not take climate change and the threat of climate change as seriously as we should. And there’s been some studies recently done about if sea level rise is as bad as we expect it to be, you could have you know, a real crisis in property tax in New Jersey. And for a state that relies on property tax as much as we do, that’s something that should be you know, DEFCON One, you know, all hands on deck, everybody trying to figure this out. So we think that Coronavirus has messed with our economy. We don’t want to see what the climate change impacts are going to do to us, as you know, considering our location. And so, for me, I hope that there is more focus on those issues. Because, for the long term health and wellness and welfare of the state of New Jersey, we have to figure out solutions to those problems. Otherwise, we’re going to have a lot bigger issues facing us that we’re not going to be able to address and we’re not going to be able to keep our residents and our communities whole.

Stuart Shapiro
Well, for better or for worse, you’ve given us a lot of topics we could bring you back on to talk about on another…

Brandon McKoy
I would love to!

Stuart Shapiro
Another edition of the podcast there. Certainly climate change is something we’d like to hear a lot more about and talk a lot more about. Thanks for coming on today. Brandon, this was really, really wonderful.

Brandon McKoy
Thank you so much. I hope to come back soon.

Stuart Shapiro
Another thanks to our production team, Tamara Swedberg, Amy Cobb, and Karyn Olsen. We’ll be back next week with another talk from another expert from the Bloustein School, stay safe out there. Thanks,