Permit giveaways, budget raids, and weakened enforcement are reshaping New Jersey’s environmental agency.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection budget has been signed, and it reveals exactly where the state’s priorities lie. A budget is a roadmap. It shows what the government values and what it is willing to invest in. The DEP budget used to represent a commitment to protecting our air, water, parks, wildlife, and public health. Today, it is being transformed into something very different: the Department of Expedited Permits.
The Sherrill administration talks about “efficiency,” “cutting red tape,” and “modernizing government.” Don’t be fooled. When politicians say they’re cutting red tape, what they usually mean is they’re cutting environmental protections. They’re replacing science with stopwatches, public participation with corporate consultations, and environmental review with rubber stamps.
This isn’t simply about making permits move faster. It is about changing the mission of the DEP itself. Instead of asking whether projects should be approved or how their impacts can be minimized, the focus is now on how quickly permits can be issued. They have even renamed permit applicants as “customers.”
The result is a dangerous combination of budget cuts, weakened enforcement, fast-track permitting, climate rollbacks, and billions of dollars in subsidies for dirty and risky energy projects. It is an agenda that puts corporate developers, fossil fuel companies, and politically connected industries ahead of the people of New Jersey.
This isn’t environmental policy. It’s the continuation of the war on environmental protection.
Starving the DEP while expecting the public not to notice
You cannot protect the environment while cutting the very agency responsible for protecting it.
The DEP is facing one of its largest financial cutbacks in years. The state budget cuts the department’s direct state appropriation by $150 million, dropping it from $662 million to $512 million. Including federal reductions, DEP funding has fallen by nearly $253 million, including an $84.3 million loss in federal funding, an 11.5% overall reduction.
At the very moment New Jersey faces stronger storms, worsening flooding, sea levels rising, PFAS contamination, wildfire threats, drinking water problems, and aging infrastructure, Trenton has decided the DEP should do more with substantially less. Apparently, someone in the State House believes climate change takes budget cuts into consideration, especially after the Climate Superfund bill was killed.
Instead of strengthening environmental protection, lawmakers eliminated $8 million for Green Acres Urban Parks grants, cut $6.6 million from water infrastructure programs, and slashed funding for the Council on Green Jobs by 50%, while adding $4.3 million to fast-track permitting.
These aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They mean fewer parks in urban communities, delayed replacement of aging water systems, fewer opportunities to train workers for clean energy jobs, and fewer investments in healthier neighborhoods.
The annual budget shell game
Every year, lawmakers propose eliminating $1.3 million for the New Jersey School of Conservation and its outstanding environmental education program for schoolchildren. Every year, there is a public outcry, advocates spend weeks lobbying to restore the money, and every year it is reinstated.
It’s political theater.
The fight diverts environmental groups from battling the real damage: $150 million in DEP budget cuts, raids on clean energy funds, and policies that fast-track permits while weakening environmental protections.
Meanwhile, lawmakers somehow found new money to speed up permit approvals.
That tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.
They added money to process permits faster but couldn’t find enough money to hire inspectors to ensure permit holders actually obey the law. That’s like hiring more ticket agents at an airport while firing the mechanics who inspect the airplanes.
The message is clear:
Developers get customer service.
The public gets fewer protections and less accountability.
The Clean Energy Fund has become Trenton’s favorite ATM
For the 18th consecutive year, New Jersey has raided the Clean Energy Fund. Think about that.
A fund created to reduce pollution, lower energy costs, promote renewable energy, weatherize homes, and fight climate change has become Trenton’s favorite budget-balancing gimmick. This year alone, $140 million is being diverted from the Clean Energy Fund to support NJ Transit.
NJ Transit certainly needs stable funding. But balancing one budget by robbing another isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s political accounting.
You don’t solve one crisis by creating another.
Even more alarming, the state authorized diversions of up to $510 million from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative revenues, including transfers into the Clean Energy Fund and the Board of Public Utilities for short-term utility bill credits. These climate programs were never intended to become permanent piggy banks.
RGGI revenue comes from carbon pollution allowances. It was supposed to reduce emissions, improve energy efficiency, expand renewable energy, help communities adapt to climate change, and reduce pollution in overburdened neighborhoods.
Apparently, Trenton’s motto is: Bet you can’t steal just one.
The Clean Energy Fund raid was supposed to last one year. Eighteen years later, they’re still doing it. Once politicians start raiding environmental funds, they rarely stop. That’s what is so scary about taking the RGGI money. It will not stop.
Every diversion delays energy-efficiency projects. Every raid postpones renewable energy investments. Every dollar stolen today means more pollution, higher emissions, and greater costs tomorrow. The irony and hypocrisy couldn’t be greater.
The same politicians who give speeches about climate leadership are quietly draining the very programs designed to fight climate change. It’s like bragging you’re on a diet while eating a hot fudge sundae because you had a Diet Coke with it.
Parks without protection
Our state parks tell the same story.
Years of underfunding have created an estimated $400 million maintenance backlog and $1.5 billion in needed capital repairs and upgrades. Our parks are deteriorating.
In 1993, Parks and Forestry employed 1,200 people. Today, there are only about 600 employees, despite managing 40% more land.
Historic buildings continue to decay, and many have been demolished. Swimming areas close. Bathrooms remain locked. Wildlife Management Areas are understaffed. Some close. Visitor facilities continue to deteriorate. Naturalists and park historians have disappeared through attrition.
Federal cuts also eliminated approximately $31.5 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and another $17 million from urban forestry programs.
Meanwhile, the DEP is sitting on approximately $750 million in unspent Green Acres funds and another $400 million for farmland preservation.
Land acquisition has slowed dramatically:
• 1999-2009: 18,000-20,000 acres annually
• 2009-2019: 12,000-13,500 acres annually
• Since 2019: About 5,400 acres annually
Forests are one of New Jersey’s best defenses against climate change. They store carbon, reduce ambient temperatures, protect drinking water, reduce flooding, recharge aquifers, prevent erosion, and provide critical wildlife habitat. Yet they receive less attention while politicians rush to subsidize energy projects and speed development approvals.
Apparently, paving over open space has become easier than protecting it.
Enforcement is being replaced by expediency
Perhaps the greatest irony is that while politicians insist permits must move faster, they continue weakening the very enforcement programs that ensure environmental laws are followed.
Enforcement has been downgraded from an independent division to an office under the commissioner. Enforcement staff has declined by 40%, while the DEP hired 50 new employees to accelerate permit approvals.
Meanwhile, EMR in Camden keeps catching fire. The Pioneers Metal Finishing Superfund site caught fire. Galaxie Chemical in Paterson caught fire.
Permits are only meaningful if someone verifies compliance. There are now so few enforcement staff that they often respond only to emergencies. Many violations of environmental laws simply go unenforced. Without inspectors, monitoring, and enforcement, permits become little more than pieces of paper.
Environmental laws are only as strong as the people enforcing them. They are the cops on the environmental beat. Without them, there will be more accidents, more mistakes, more deliberate destruction of our environment, and more pollution.
New Jersey is moving toward a system where permits are accelerated, inspections are reduced, enforcement is weakened, and polluters face less oversight. That isn’t government efficiency. It’s government surrender.
And when enforcement disappears, pollution gets worse.
A 30-year war on environmental protection
The effort to dismantle the DEP didn’t begin today.
It began in 1994, when Gov. Christine Todd Whitman cut the DEP budget by roughly one-third, laid off about one-third of its staff, rolled back regulations, and weakened enforcement. During her administration, enforcement actions dropped by nearly 80%, and two chemical plants exploded. She also attempted to weaken Clean Water protections, triggering one of New Jersey’s biggest environmental battles.
Public outrage over those cuts led Republican senators, with Democratic support, to dedicate Corporate Business Tax revenues to environmental programs such as watershed protection and contaminated-site cleanup. That momentum also helped secure Whitman’s eventual support for open-space preservation.
Gov. James E. McGreevey restored some funding and staffing. He advanced major environmental protections, including Category One stream buffers and the Highlands Act. Progress continued under Gov. Richard Codey and during the early years of the Corzine administration.
Then the rollback resumed. Gov. Jon Corzine froze hiring, cut the budget, began raiding the Clean Energy Fund, privatized toxic-site cleanups, and got rid of the award-winning independent Division of Science.
Gov. Chris Christie declared open war on environmental protection, cutting the DEP budget by another 25%, laying off staff, using “Red Tape Review” to roll back dozens of environmental rules and standards, and even stopping the legally required enforcement reports to the Legislature.
Gov. Phil Murphy continued cutting the DEP budget and staff while failing to fully restore staffing or strengthen many of the protections weakened under Christie. He got rid of the independent Division of Enforcement.
Now the Sherrill administration is continuing the pattern with more budget cuts, more “red tape” reviews, and faster permitting.
The bottom line
In 1994, the DEP represented 1.2% of the state budget. Today it is only 0.5%. The DEP had approximately 4,300 full-time employees. Today it has about 2,700.
The numbers would be even worse without dedicated Corporate Business Tax funding, which now provides roughly 18% of the DEP budget, increased federal funding at about 48%, and permitting fees.
Ironically, the DEP is one of the few state agencies that largely pays for itself while helping fund programs in other agencies.
At the same time, the department has taken on dozens of new responsibilities, including Environmental Justice, climate programs, PFAS regulation, resilience planning, and managing 40% more public land, all with significantly fewer employees.
The reality is simple. The DEP no longer has enough staff to properly maintain our parks, inspect facilities, enforce environmental laws, prosecute violators, protect our air and water, clean up toxic sites, or respond to the growing threats of climate change.
There may not be enough staff to protect New Jersey’s environment or deal with an environmental emergency. But there will always seem to be enough staff to fast-track and rubber-stamp permits to cut down forests, pave over farmland, fill in wetlands, weaken protections, and accelerate environmental destruction.
Jeff Tittel is an environmental and political activist, the founder of SOAR, and the former director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
