Ask Governor Murphy: Gov. dodges questions about the pick to replace Menendez

WNYC News

Governor Phil Murphy declined to say what he was thinking about his pick to replace Sen. Bob Menendez, but then his decision to send his former chief of staff to Washington appeared in other news outlets shortly after the show.

"No news to make in terms of names, but that'll be, you know, it's getting now to the point where it will be any moment over the next few days," Murphy said.

He has chosen George Helmy, who served as his chief of staff from 2019 to 2023 and before that worked for Cory Booker and the late Frank Lautenberg in the senate.

Murphy also fielded a question from a caller about the huge amount of delays on NJ Transit trains over the summer.

"It's been a really bad summer, there's just no two ways about it," he said. In June, only 69 percent of trains arrived on time, well below the minimum standard that NJ transit sets for itself.

The governor also acknowledged that delays of another sort are also hurting residents, answering a question about why it's taking so long to get marijuana convictions expunged. The governor says the delays are mostly a result of records being available only on paper and not digitized.