By Matt Katzand James Osborne, Inquirer Trenton Bureau.
TRENTON – The state’s proposed $32 billion budget got caught up in anxieties over the overhaul of New Jersey’s universities Thursday, as a group of Democratic lawmakers threatened to buck their party unless adoption of the university plan was postponed.
Nine Democrats, led by former Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Cryan of Union County, told their leaders they wanted to vote on the reorganization of the state’s higher education system in the fall instead of next week. Otherwise, they said, they would vote against the budget that the party’s leadership introduced Thursday.
“This legislation is three weeks old and is going to be the biggest change in higher education since the Rutgers Act of 1956,” Cryan said in the middle of a marathon day at the Statehouse. “We need a full understanding of the implications of this bill.”
The threat emerged after days of closed-door meetings as Democratic legislators tried to create a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, while trying to find common ground on the sweeping university restructuring.
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