In our spotlight on Business report, Governor Murphy will deliver his annual budget address before lawmakers in Trenton tomorrow.

And he's got a tall order ahead.

After last year, enacting the largest budget in state history.

Murphy and legislators will have to figure out a way to sustain that spending while the state battles high inflation, high interest rates and lagging tax collections.

There are dueling proposals on whether the administration should rein in the budget or reinstate a tax on corporate businesses.

Our budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer's with me now for more on what to watch.

John Reitmeyer.

Good to see you ahead of what will be a busy day tomorrow.

What do we expect the governor to list in his speech as the big ticket items this year?

Yeah, I mean, the full details for sure have yet to be released, but the governor has begun to talk already about this new spending plan that he's going to put forward.

One of the big priorities he's already talked about is school funding.

And so for the last several years, New Jersey has been on a school and public school funding ramp up.

So that's K-through-12 aid that goes right into the classrooms.

So we're getting to the top of that ramp up.

And the governor has already indicated that one of the areas where we should expect to see spending increased is on public school aid for for K through 12 districts.

We've also heard his administration officials talk at a recent meeting of the that's basically the board that oversees the the state pension system and pension investments.

Talk about another full year of of pension contributions.

So when you put those two together, you know that's 1011 billion on the school funding side and another six 7 billion on the pension funding side.

So we're already sketching out some major components of this budget even before we see the full details tomorrow.

And then there's debt service, things that have to be paid.

These are bills that come due that the state basically asks them to pay.

That's another several billion dollars.

So while we don't have the full 50 plus billion in spending down to the line item, we know some of the broad sketch is already heading in.

But we've had a couple of years, John, where the state has been somewhat flush with cash.

Do we expect that trajectory to continue or is this going to be a tighter budget?

I think that's one of the big questions heading in is exactly where the Murphy administration forces things going when it comes to revenue collections.

And so you're right, the last several years, New Jersey's been collecting or seeing year over year growth in tax collections as we head into this budget message.

The latest tax collection data indicates that the state has been behind the pace that was set this time last year.

How much are you keeping an ear out for items around transportation?

We've got the Transportation Trust fund this year that needs to be renewed.

And New Jersey Transit already announced that for the first time in nine years, there will be fare hikes.

So should we be keeping an eye on that?

I think two big themes headed in are education, which we've already discussed, and transportation, which is it's not necessarily in the four corners of the budget.

So NJ Transit has a standalone budget, but the state every year subsidized NJ Transit and provides a subsidy out of the state budget that helps NJ Transit balance its own operating budget.

So that will be something important to watch.

Do lawmakers seek to intervene in these fare hikes or even soften them in any way?

And then also the Transportation Trust fund.

It's technically a different fund, not exactly part of the state budget, but the deadline for the renewal of the Transportation trust fund is June 30th, the same deadline for a new budget.

So we expect all of this to get talked about sort of together as we go over the next few months.

And that transportation trust fund pays for road, bridge and rail infrastructure improvements throughout the state of New Jersey.

Which of course, the fact that some of the state coffers have gone to subsidize those in many past years has been a gripe by many organizations in the state for quite a while.

We will be talking about all that and more.

John Reitmeyer, thanks so much.

You're welcome.