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“Nobody should have to worry about being able to afford critical health care,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said in his sixth-annual State of the State address.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey embraced proposals to make it easier to build affordable housing and cut out-of-pocket expenses for abortions in his annual State of the State address on Tuesday.
The governor, a second-term Democrat barred from running for re-election, also said he would support the increased use of phonics to teach reading and that he would continue to work to ease the burden of medical debt, presumably by expanding a program he funded last year that sought to leverage $10 million to retire 100 times that amount in residents’ debt.
“In the wealthiest nation in the world,” the governor told lawmakers from the Senate and Assembly in a joint address in Trenton, “nobody should have to worry about being able to afford critical health care services or a lifesaving medical procedure.”
The goals mentioned by the governor were fairly modest as he looks ahead to his final two years in office, and they largely piggybacked on existing initiatives proposed by the Democrat-led Legislature.
Mr. Murphy made a glancing reference to his support for wind energy, but offered no hint about how he might pivot after the Danish company Orsted abruptly withdrew in November from its plan to build two wind farms off the Jersey Shore. The canceled projects represented a major setback for the state’s, and the country’s, ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change, and some feared it could hurt Democrats days before an election.
Even before the Orsted announcement, most Democrats in tight races had avoided campaigning with Mr. Murphy, who was re-elected in November 2021 by only about three percentage points. Democrats, however, went on to expand their majority in Trenton, leading the governor to appear to take a veiled swipe Tuesday at his legislative colleagues.
“I guess being in a picture with me wasn’t so bad after all,” he said.
Here are some of the highlights in Mr. Murphy’s sixth-annual State of the State address:
Louisa Carman Medical Debt Relief Act
Health-related costs are the No. 1 source of debt in the United States, surpassing debt linked to credit cards, loans and utility costs, according to the White House.
In New Jersey, the outlook is even more grim.
New Jersey ranked 45 out of 50 states for policies that help residents burdened with unpaid medical bills, according to a report by Innovation for Justice and a team of researchers from the University of Arizona and the University of Utah.
The governor used his address to the Legislature to propose a package of medical-debt-relief bills to help families “avoid being caught in a medical debt trap” and require medical bills to be clear and transparent.
Part of the legislation would be named for Louisa Carman, who was killed on New Year’s Day in a traffic accident in New Jersey. Ms. Carman, 25, was a policy analyst who worked for the governor and who had focused on making health care more affordable and accessible.
“With this legislative package we can carry her mission forward,” the governor said, choking back tears.
Fully funded abortions
Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Mr. Murphy and state lawmakers proposed an expansion of reproductive health care access while at the same time enshrining abortion as a right in New Jersey.
Lawmakers succeeded in codifying the procedure as a constitutional right in the state, limiting the effect of the Supreme Court decision.
But they fell short of winning support to fully fund the procedure for low-income women.
Beginning last year, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance started requiring coverage of abortion services. And Mr. Murphy said the Legislature should pass a bill sponsored in the past by the Senate majority leader, M. Teresa Ruiz, and Assemblywoman Shanique Speight, to “scrap out-of-pocket costs for abortion procedures.”
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Sound-it-out reading
Mr. Murphy joined a chorus of governors, including Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, who now say that instructors should return to sound-it-out instruction known as phonics when teaching children to read.
Across the country, as reading scores have lagged, bipartisan support has grown for what has become known as the “science of reading.”
Mr. Murphy said he planned to introduce “new initiatives” to “teach our kids the fundamentals of reading — like sounding out letters and combining them into words.” He did not elaborate on the proposal, but said the goal was to “improve literacy rates among our children.”
Affordable housing
Mr. Murphy said he supported a proposal unveiled last month by the leaders of the Assembly and the Senate to make it easier to build more affordable housing “efficiently and equitably.”
The proposal calls for a new, streamlined process to give towns greater flexibility when building low-cost housing.
It would also create a neutral panel of experts to mediate conflicts over how much and where affordable housing should be built in an effort to cut down on costly and lengthy litigation that can delay construction.
The right to vote at 16
Mr. Murphy said he would support lowering the voting age in school board elections statewide to 16.
On Wednesday, the City Council in Newark is expected to approve legislation that would make it the largest city in the country to permit 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections. The next such election is in April.
In Trenton, lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation in the coming months that would require communities across the state to allow 16-year-olds to vote in school board races.
“Encouraging our young neighbors to engage with democracy is really about encouraging them to become lifelong voters,” the governor said.
Artificial intelligence
The governor also announced what he called an “A.I. moonshot.”
He said he would press to make New Jersey a hub of innovators and leaders willing to invest in research and development surrounding artificial intelligence.
Last month, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority announced plans to join with Princeton University to make the state “an integrated hub of A.I. activity.” He said the state’s chief innovation officer, Beth Noveck, would also become New Jersey’s first A.I. strategist.
Unlike Ms. Hochul, who on Tuesday proposed spending $275 million in state funds to create a public-private partnership aimed at making New York a key player in artificial intelligence research, Mr. Murphy offered few additional details.
“The future of generative A.I. has yet to be written,” he said. “New Jersey can be the author.”
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