one of the youngest to he's been doing a lot of work at the local county and state levels over the last couple of years and first of all senator thank you for joining us from your office appreciate you coming on today for ha you well we'd like to talk a little bit first about some of the things that you've been doing since being elected to the senate this year in january i know that you've been appointed vice chair of the senate transportation committee and you're a member of the economic growth committee in health human services and senior citizens committee so do a lot of your do a lot of the u s senators in the senate kid you about your age and being the youngest member of the senate well i have another chairman in the chair of the well you have a lot of experience behind you i know that you used to be you know chair of the mom of county democratic party and i know that basically you've done a lot a lot of work on the bipartisan legislative manufacturing caucus too and i think one of the one nice things about is that you're in you're in jersey guy you know my understanding is that you're born in that tune you're raised in freehold and you represent the eleven legislative districts in jersey and let's talk a little bit about quick examples i recently put in legislation that i prophesy that allows a school district and a town to hire the same in health care broker and consolidate their contract so what happens right now the school district the say has two hundred employees and the town that has fifty employees may have the same broker and they're right now independently negotiating on behalf two hundred and fifty instead of doing to fifty so this bill will now allow them to merge that contract we should be doing the same thing w waste management contracts we should be doing the same thing with how we buy our papers and our pens in our schools what you do in your household and what i do in my small business what we think is common sense government has failed and it really hasn't matter whether it's been john corps on or chris christie republicans or democrats taxpayer money has been an afterthought i think that's one of the things that's been very important i've never held elected office before coming to the  our beautiful shoreline we can be an economic engine for the future but we have to start ending it by ending home rule and killing this theory that we need to have you know if i'm driving out t princeton right now i can't tell you how many different layers of government i learned drive through before i get there it's in the hundreds and that's got to change well you know there is a love with with home rule you know we have a less cool business a lot of  with consolidation you know years ago and that seems to be working but i think a lot of districts you know haven't haven't gone that way in fact they've resisted it for for quite a long time do you think the increase in taxes or just the cost of living is a eight to one that's the fire districts are held in a random february election itself it's a part of your property tax bill even though police in first state or in your municipal budgets the fire districts aren't so they consolidate those n that what are your thoughts on the recommendations from the senate president so i've been going through them i think there's a lot of good things in there there are some things i don't some things i don't agree with but there's a lot of good things in there i think we do need to look towards consolidating school districts i think you need to you should have at least three schools or a high school to have a school this i think the state needs to come in and provide financial relief so we don't have a system of winners and losers which is what's to happen when you consolidate you're going to have one winner and one loser but a state comes in and provide that instant financial emotional five ten fifteen years down the road everybody states i think that's the healthiest way i think we need to look at a not current employees but once they retire not refill those positions there's a lot of ways we can do this in a very humane way that's what we've got to get moving because this is a ten to fifteen your game plan ok talk about getting moving that's move right along to transportation which is something that you're familiar with and you know talk talk to the viewers about the conditions in the state the transportation needs and a lot of times the frustration that has  same struggles with the gateway project so this is an issue of priorities on the ng it actually goes back to when we do some consolidation and some of these other things that we want to do we need to do some long term cost saving  many decades almost to pay for other things and it's it's coming due so i guess the question also the question is do you think new jersey has the fortitude to know that we need to we need to fund this and we need to find a way to do it and what creative solutions of any do you have right now apart from people's fears about just raising taxes to pay for you know if we the legislature last year passed an increase in the gas tax we have a responsibility and i make sure risk you would see that every project that's being done there that those gas tax dollars are put that money and is being spent the right way and sponsor don't get raided that constitutional amendment was almost defeated two years back and it's a good thing it was and that dedicates the funds towards the roads and bridges that we need to rebuild it's expensive viewers go out and talk to your local council people mail they'll tell you it's a big expense when there's a snow storm or any type of product and type of flood or anything on a road project or bridge project so we need to look towards public private partnerships i've i've watched other states that have hope with this commission or shoot to lead in florida where they did some very creative things with autonomous vehicles and innovative public transportation tactics and i think those those are some of the same innovation items we need to do but i don't number  one we are totally underfunded when it comes to number of engineers and technicians and things like that we have to hire those people first ok which is which two is a couple porn topics and that's women's rights and health care i know that you  i mean as a as a man i don't know certain experiences of discrimination that women face in the workplace and until you see the statistics until you see the pure evidence is out there it's it's pretty staggering how much a woman is paid versus a man for the same job with the same responsibilities and the same qualifications so equal pay for equal work was something that was very important our health care funding which branch to really rely on a lot of these screenings and test things and things like that that are strictly important and what seems as right now governor has been very committed he's he's he's he's really light on these issues and it's been good to good to see that by the way a lot of these lot of these bills relating to women's health care and equity have had bipartisan support from both parties republicans and democrats in the senate and assembly which is nice to see was this attack on planned parenthood right now and certain quarters yeah look i think it's an education piece planned parenthood does a lot of good services and we need to continue to educate people of all the  million dollars special election he did when the late frank lautenberg guided or the hundreds of millions of dollars in brigade legal fees he took that money out because he is running for president and he was trying to attract to an element in i were new hampshire somewhere to help get him votes in the primary so it's unfortunate planned parenthood and health care funding should never be a colliton football and that's really what it was used for over the years i'm hopeful moving forward it was so nice to see the planned parenthood vote for women's health care funding receiving bipartisan support from stand some of the some of the legislation moving so that new jersey sees some relief in the future so this is one of the most important things to me is working across the aisle and bipartisanship when i am elected i went out to meet with senators from all over the state south jersey north jersey  people with very different world views the names and i wanted to understand where they're coming from even if i had an issue i disagree i it helps me to understand why they have that probably why their worldview is different and to see what we have in common some of my best mind but we have work so well together because we treat each other with respect we don't talk down to each other if we have an idea we disagree with or even a court of principle of how we're going to get the same place that we disagree with we do it with respect and i think that's that's what's missing and it's it's unfortunately it's been both political parties at the national level of can democrats you see folks on the far right and far left trying to demonize their own ends and i think it's really lead to an unhealthy place in politics compromise important no side is ever going to get one hundred percent of what they want they do there's a problem and i think we need to figure out how we can go back to that place and we need to govern and it's something i admire greatly about governor murphy because he does treat everybody with respect ok let's move on to the issue of gun control which is a big issue right now whether be in the schools or nationally or internationally  how can we move to some of the issue of gun violence in new jersey it's obviously new jersey's is knock on wood it has done better than a lot of other states because we have some of the strongest gun control laws in th the in the union but it's a federal issue of background checks when someone has to go get a car buy a car they got to do certain paperwork when they got to get a license they got to take a test background checks you know i'm ok if somebody a law abiding citizen at the way next for a couple of days to buy a gun we should have started background checks make sure that the wrong person doesn't have a gun should be treated like anything else i get frustrated when i talk to my friends you know and i'm a  strong supporter of the second amendment and i talk some my friends who are like well i don't want to wait next for our to be able to get a gun and that's my right now it's your right to get the gun it's not your rights not get it safely and that's what's missing you can go to certain states walk into a wal mart and buy a gun right on the spot we need to have bigger risk factor on checks and i think that is one of the most important things and there's other things we have legislation right now that if somebody has a history of animal cruelty that they've been arrested for they should able to get a gun that in a lot of states the legal new jersey is the legal so and by the way that's something down our plan that the f b i and the attorney general's office said the young men there had a history of animals use and it was miss so we need to make sure that gun ownership is responsible safe storage background checks there's a lot of different pieces that we can do will we ever stop gun violence i think that's difficult but can we make it much harder if we had given authority down in fargo an extra two weeks hopefully they would have found something and that's all we can do is to try to make it as hard as hard as people as hard as possible for the wrong people younger eight year olds nine year old kids over the years i've been to some in the last seven months i was at least one service that was very emotional of the of the of the young man who was killed as a result of some violence gun rounds affects every community in this country doesn't matter as urban rural suburban and it's a major problem and unfortunately lot of the people that are getting killed are innocent bystanders what are your thoughts on three d printed  three d printed guns i think that it's it's a step that we have to kind of look towards on all the different types of guns that are out there so i think that we have to you know in new jersey we don't have something used what's your feeling about that and what are the pluses and minuses of having a constitutional convention and putting it to the voters and saying this name is something that we should talk about yeah i think we tried this over the years and it's been it's been going on i know this came up in two thousand and five two thousand and six i think honestly we got to get moving and we've got to move on a lot of these consolations plans we've seen plenty of studies have been out there a lot of independent groups that are going out there there are things we can do tangible things we can do  to to move on tax reform and pension reform and a lot of these other things i'm not sure that a constitutional convention would help us get there i think it just kicks the can down the road a little for that ok so  what do you think would get us there i think we need action now we've been talking and i'm excited we have just like the legislation i told you about earlier in fact consolidating the health care contract next thing we're going to be looking at i know the senate president with his committee is going to be putting out something shortly but we need now we've got to start moving our legislation on towns that have very small population starting with them making it easy for counties to consolidate services like health officers at nine one one operators and things like that which home rule has assessed that every town needs to have their own new jersey now as a state and to make it easier to start merging a lot of these services and i think that's the first and very important  step in consolidation but we you know i plan on putting out a package of bills i know all the legislators are i think it's barbara starr move and we know what the problems are yes now we got again and you mentioned that senator sweeney he was also looking at pensions and there's been some talk of some concern about you know the cost of the state government pensions and local government employee pensions whether they be teachers or police but i think or just you know individuals who work in state local government obviously the pet system has been underfunded you know over the years that's causing the problems with those was funded from day one fully funded and we will be talking about the probably have right now when you thought about and when you see the patent system going look i think that the one of the goes back to governor florio i believe was the last government will fully funded the pension system since then governors have been raiding from both parties have been raiding the pension funds i believe in a in an obligation to all current employees that have collectively bargain their contracts i think that those contracts should be respected like any contract but i agree with the senate president that looking at future employees coming to the system we're right now researching what other states are doing but i believe there is a more cost effective approach this i also believe that police fire academia are very specialized professions we have tens of thousands employees out there that are similar to professions in the private sector and i think we need to to look at that if somebody is working  in a motor vehicle agency and there are a secretary and somebody works at a dental office and they have the same job description for future employees we need to see what makes sense as far as how their benefits compare how their jobs  if their job descriptions are essentially the same and i think those are the things that we need to start looking at and i know we're looking at what other states are are doing with that with that impact i think police fire  doing anything on their pensions because it's hard enough already and to as far as recruitment and i think that's a very important piece of recruiting qualified good police officers ok well think a lot of people will have people don't know about you is that you served as a that i miss it really opens your eyes to all different types of experiences that people are going for small and large and it really gives how much respect i have for emergency responders especially our police office and our firefighters because they go day in day out helping everybody not asking for much in return that's why i'm very sensitive when it comes to anything related to police officers and firefighters as far as hurting their overall package i think those are very specific industries that the state cannot afford to mess around with one of the things i like to ask everyone who comes on the show is basically who is a role model you know growing up who has been your role model over the years had about a lot of role models but i i would say it's a lot of folks like my parents to work day to day out they came to this one tree in the early thousands of other fathers and mothers grandparents you know folks that are out there working to just try to make a difference and they try to do their piece to leave the world a little better than they found it and i think a lot of those folks are inspirational to so many different people before we wrap it up today senator i just want to ask you your vision going forward with some of the programs of projects like t has the ability to have massive savings when you think about six hundred school districts five hundred sixty five towns hundreds of authorities all independently having their own health care contracts are delayed now merged some of these contracts with the same broker  there are so many other things like this that we want to tackle and i'm excited about going and i've talked to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and are saying what they agree with what they disagree with whatever my tenure in the in the senate may be whether it's a few years or four or ten years or whatever it may be i want to be able to look back and know that i made a difference and i don't want to have any regrets saying i should have done this or should have done that i'm confident if i go in and do the nothing but the best and hope to hear and see a lot of good things from you in the future thank you so much for having me on a great while ago thing thank you for watching that's our show for tonight so until next week stay healthy stay focused active and