New Jersey’s governor publishes permit tracker, inclusive budgeting website
Mikie Sherrill, who’s been New Jersey’s governor for three months, has promised, among other things, to be “relentlessly focused on lowering costs” and to deliver “transparency and accountability from Trenton.” On Thursday her office announced its second initiative in two weeks that seems to make progress on those promises.
A new permit dashboard allows developers, businesses and nonprofits track permit applications across the various state agencies that offer them. According to the new website, the dashboard displays “target due dates, next steps and status updates” for each permit, in hopes of reducing “permitting delays, saving time and money so important projects get built faster across New Jersey.”
Last Thursday, Sherrill’s office announced another transparency initiative: ReportCard.NJ.gov, “where New Jerseyans can easily understand where their tax dollars are going and what state-funded programs are delivering,” according to a promotional LinkedIn post. The website displays data “in meaningful and accessible ways,” the post continued.
New Jersey’s new site includes a breakdown of the governor’s 2027 budget, information about the budgeting process, 10 years of budget data and brief summaries of key budget areas: nearly $4 billion in debt service, $7.12 billion for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, for instance.
Dozens of states run similar portals designed to make their budgets easier to access and understand. New Jersey itself already had a financial transparency website, YourMoney.NJ.Gov, though accessing any particular figure there may require a bit of hunting and possibly some technical expertise.
New Jersey’s new report card website claims to be “first-of-its-kind.” When a skeptical reporter asked about this designation, a spokesperson from the state’s Innovation Authority explained there was no “precedent for a centralized, interactive, informational, transparent state budget site like this. It goes beyond just displaying files and numbers, and aims to provide a more user-friendly and inclusionary experience for anyone.”
