Issues and answers A chat with the governor.

Eight months into the first year of his first term, Gov. Phil Murphy has stayed true to his campaign priorities and enacted a progressive agenda not seen in New Jersey in several years. NJBIZ Government Reporter Daniel J. Munoz recently spoke with the governor to get an update on where matters of critical importance to the state currently stand - and where they may be headed.Whether it's kick-starting the innovation economy, raising the minimum wage or legalizing marijuana for recreational use, the Murphy administration has wasted little time in moving forward on these and a host of other issues.

NJBIZ Government Reporter Daniel J. Munoz recently spoke with the governor to get an update on where these and other matters of critical importance to the state currently stand and where they may be headed.

NJBIZ: One of the things we've been talking about are the pension and health care reform initiatives that were outlined in a recent report from a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Senate President Stephen Sweeney. Can you talk about what we can expect from your administration as far as working with him on these recommendations?

Gov. Phil Murphy: So, it's probably too early to tell. I read with great interest the list of items that came out of his group in the report they put out, some of which we are very anxious to work with him on. Some others are more complicated but you can probably put them into a variety of categories. At least one category would be called "very complicated." One of the things, one of the areas, obviously, that's complicated is both pension and health benefits, and I separate the two.

They get lumped together. In fact, I myself chaired the original commission on this 13 years ago and we lumped them together, our review of the pension and health care benefits for state employees. So I'm guilty of the same lumping together. But I see them as separate items.

On the health care side, we've already stood up a commission. Now probably a couple months ago. That commission is meeting. It's got representatives from a variety of walks of life, including the public sector unions themselves, health care experts, folks from all sides of the issue. And we think there is real opportunity to save meaningful money and to do it in a way which does not harm the participants.

If anything, we think there are so-called "Holy Grail opportunities" where the state saves money, the individual may save money and the health care coverage is at least as good as it was before. And so I don't have a dollar sign on that. These are things where you've got to get the folks who are impacted and the representatives at the table working on it with you. And I think that's going to yield some real significant fruit."We don't have all the answers. ... Just because we don't agree with all their recommendations doesn't mean we don't admire and [have] respect for the group he [Sweeney] put together, as well as many of the recommendations that I think are worthy of pursuit."

The pension side I've got more of an issue with because even the commission put together by Gov. [Chris] Christie a couple of years ago concluded that the pension shortfall is the state's fault. And so this can has been kicked down the road, and I still feel quite strongly that the participants did what we asked them to do, [but] we didn't do what we promised to do.

And so, there's a level of trust that needs to be reinstated, and so we made the largest pension payment in our budget in the state's history, and so I think we need to continue to make the statement with our actions, and not our words, that we're good for it. Now the last comment on pension, which is important to note, there's lots of people out there, and I don't disagree, who could blame them, [that] would like to see the pension payment percentage of our total budget go down.

Count me in, I want the same thing to happen. But, here's the biggest issue with this. If you have got a group of people who didn't do anything wrong and they've been doing what they said they would do, and you've got a flat, dead-in-the-water economy where we...