Democrat,

I don’t need to tell you these are different times. So, instead of delivering this year’s State of the State address in a crowded State House, I stood in an empty theater.

Yet for all the changes, the most important things remain constant. Our values. Our priorities. Our vision. And that we are all New Jerseyans. You can watch our 2021 State of the State address here. 

Three years ago, I took office with a pledge to rebuild New Jersey from the middle out and from the bottom up -- to change the way Trenton works not simply for the sake of change but for the sake of people and to put working and middle-class families first. That mission is now even more urgent.

Over these three years, we have laid a foundation to support a stronger and fairer New Jersey that works for every family. These were the right things to do before the pandemic, and they turned out to be some of the best decisions to get us through the pandemic:

• Raising the minimum wage
• Passing earned sick leave
• Expanding paid family and medical leave
• Making those at the very top pay their fair share with a millionaire’s tax 
• Cutting taxes for working families -- with either a larger earned income tax credit or a direct rebate, or both
• Protecting health care from attacks from Washington and reducing premiums for hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans
• Expanding pre-K education, making record investments in public education -- while also stabilizing property taxes, making community college tuition-free for thousands of New Jerseyans, and expanding job training programs.

These are real accomplishments that helped people across our state. We made these strides by working with the people of New Jersey and with my partners in the Legislature -- especially Senate President Steve Sweeney and Speaker of the General Assembly Craig Coughlin, and colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Together, we will continue moving forward, grounded in our shared everyday reality, yet propelled by our optimism about tomorrow.

Everything, together, shows the promise of the new, post-COVID day that is just beginning to dawn. It’s a day we will enter not fearing what’s next, but knowing where we’re heading. And that direction is forward. That’s why we’ll continue to work on important priorities like: 

• Continuing our statewide COVID-19 vaccination program and vaccinating every willing New Jersey adult resident
• Supporting small businesses and innovative startups to promote good-paying, future focused jobs to build New Jersey’s economy
• Solidifying New Jersey’s bridge and tunnel infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor through improvement projects at the Portal North Bridge and working with President-elect Biden to fund the Gateway Program and build new tunnels under the Hudson River
• Building our clean energy economy by bringing together stakeholders to assess New Jersey’s needs and develop a robust and equitable green jobs workforce development strategy
• Codifying a woman’s full reproductive rights into state law
• Transforming our justice system to eliminate the root causes of systemic racism and make New Jersey’s criminal justice system more transparent and fair
• Expanding access to democracy by enacting early, in-person voting
• Ensuring our students have the academic, digital, and social-emotional support needed as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic
• Easing the burden of working parents by building out a robust and affordable child care support system
• Improving our overall healthcare system to make it more transparent, more accessible, and more affordable
• Instituting comprehensive ethics reforms to ensure transparency and accountability across government
• Expanding opportunities for safe and affordable housing by providing assistance to New Jersey’s renters and homebuyers, and giving renters impacted by the pandemic up to 30 months to make up for back rent 

A year ago, we had no idea of what 2020 would throw at us. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote: "a dream deferred is a dream denied." And for so many, 2020 was a year of deferred dreams. But we stuck together, even in the darkest of days, as the New Jersey family we are.

After all, this is New Jersey. No state has our character. Our backbone. Our attitude. Our fight. We’ve always fought because we’ve always been the underdog. We’ve been counted out over and over again. But we’ve never been bowed, and we’ve never, ever failed.

Governor Phil Murphy