Listen to this article

Gov. Phil Murphy says his administration is still hashing out just how it will spend $9.9 billion under a massive borrowing plan that the state Legislature is poised to approve on Thursday.

“It’s too early to tell,” Murphy said Wednesday. “Bear with us on that.”

The legislation allows the state to borrow up to $2.7 billion through Oct. 1; and another $7.2 billion between then and June 30, 2021, to cover the budget hole the state is seeing due to the COVID-19  pandemic, and ensuing recession.

Murphy initially pushed for borrowing up to $14 billion, though the amount was ultimately scaled back to $9.9 billion.

“That’s the latitude we are asking for and getting,” Murphy said at a COVID-19 press briefing in Trenton. “I think you should assume that it’ll be spent both in priorities and obligations that we speak about all the time, education, health care, front line workforce,” and “meet[ing] our obligations on pensions and other fronts.”

Republicans have vowed to sue the state to block the plan, which could drag out the borrowing process by months.

The bill will establish a four-person “Select Commission on Emergency COVID-19 Borrowing” within the state Legislature that must approve any borrowing. It will consist of two picks from the state Senate and another two from the state Assembly, and according to Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District, work to keep the governor in check when necessary.

Murphy has to present his spending plan for the next fiscal year by Aug. 25. His stopgap budget, signed on June 30, calls for cutting or delaying $5.3 billion in expenses, many of which will have to be addressed after Oct. 1.

Under the bill, Murphy will be able to borrow without voter approval because the legislation utilizes wartime powers granted to him under the state constitution. It allows for increases to the sales and property tax rates across the state if officials cannot come up with money in that year’s existing budget to cover interest and debt payments.

The governor has strongly suggested he would push for taxes as part of next year’s budget.

But Senate leadership, including Senate Budget Chair Paul Sarlo, D-36th District, indicated during a Tuesday Senate committee hearing on the bill that “we’re taking taxes off the table by allowing borrowing to go forward.”

Both the Assembly and Senate are poised to approve the bill during their Thursday full-floor voting sessions.

“I would say you should assume it will be signed pretty much as soon as it gets here,” the governor said on Wednesday.