Why NJ's Permitting Play Matters: A Closer Look at Governor Sherrill's Executive Order on Permitting
Co-written by: Danielle Bissett and Brent Efron
Across the country, policymakers are trying to figure out how to make permitting a tool for progress, not a bottleneck. At the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), we work on this every day, and we’re excited to see Governor Sherrill of New Jersey and her administration adopt several of the state strategies we have identified that improve the permitting process.
On her first day in office, Governor Sherrill signed Executive Order (EO) No. 5, a comprehensive directive to update New Jersey’s permitting process. If this EO is implemented successfully, New Jersey will be a national model for how states can reimagine the permitting process and their role in it—making it faster, fairer, and more transparent.
Governor Sherrill and her team are already taking the right first step—taking actions that can shift NJ’s state culture around permitting. In our report on the nine types of permitting reform, we identify this as one of the most overlooked strategies for effective permitting reform. In fact, we’ve come to believe that without prioritizing culture change, governments tend to fail at making permitting better.
Leadership That Can Deliver
We’ve seen that for most reforms to succeed, vision needs to be paired with strong leadership and expertise on the problem. Governor Sherrill’s nomination of Ed Potosnak as Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection sends a strong signal that this administration is serious about both environmental integrity and operational efficiency. His track record suggests he understands how permitting shapes outcomes for businesses, communities, and ecosystems.
For example, in Virginia, Director Mike Rolband’s decades of on-the-ground experience was key to modernizing workflows and measuring real permitting improvements. We’re glad to see New Jersey set itself up for the same type of success.
What Makes NJ’s Executive Order No. 5 Stand Out?
Establishing a Cross-Agency Permitting Team: By creating centralized coordination, the state is addressing one of the more challenging barriers in permitting, siloed decision-making. This approach merges ideas from Maryland’s Coordinated Permitting Review Council and Connecticut’s Client Concierge Service. We’ve seen that when clear and feasible Executive Orders and strong leadership are combined, permit reform efforts are more likely to be successful. So we’re excited to see what this Cross-Agency Permitting Team accomplishes.
Building a Permit Dashboard that could spur process improvements: One of the most common frustrations we hear from applicants is the “black box” problem—you submit your permit application, and then you are left wondering what’s happening behind the scenes. This is notably true not only for applicants but in many cases, the government itself. States that have been using tools for tracking permits as they move through the review process are seeing incredible results. This includes Virginia, which, through its Permitting Transparency program, has reduced processing times by up to 65%.
Deploying a Regulatory Simplification Team: The Executive Order’s directive to review outdated processes, especially those written for a different era of environmental regulation, might be the most exciting task to keep an eye on. This structural review, including the exploration of AI tools and third-party certifications, puts New Jersey among some of the more forward-thinking states in the nation.
Here are a few more initiatives from nearby states that New Jersey could learn from:
Pennsylvania: Streamlining Permits for Economic Expansion and Development (SPEED)
Connecticut: 20By26
NJ Should Make Permitting Easier for Ecological Restoration
While permitting reform conversations often center on clean energy, housing, and infrastructure, New Jersey’s order is about making the actual permitting process better, which opens the door for ecological restoration. Permitting that’s faster and smarter can get more wetlands, streams, and shorelines restored sooner. Too often, restoration projects are slowed down by permitting—a process designed decades ago to regulate pollution and development rather than assist the recovery of ecological function. New Jersey has the opportunity to change this and could follow the lead of several states:
California - Statutory Exemption for Restoration Projects and Cutting Green Tape
Colorado - Exemption of voluntary stream restoration from its dredge and fill law (and website)
Washington - Habitat Recovery Pilot Program (and brief) and the Multi-Agency Review Team
New Jersey has progressive policies, and with an improved permitting process more good work will get done faster. This is a big opportunity to align the state legislature’s vision with how agencies implement it.
Why NJ's Permitting Play Matters
Overall, we’re seeing a lot of states trying to figure out how to improve permitting—some are succeeding, and some have really good ideas but can’t figure out how to actually implement them. And this is why New Jersey is at such an exciting point—they’re using executive leadership as a catalyst to identify those good ideas, they’re encouraging state staff to rethink how they approach permitting, and they’re setting up teams to actually bring these ideas to life.
Check out our 30 Permitting Wins in 30 Days fact sheet to learn more about what permitting reform initiatives states and the federal government are implementing.
At EPIC, we’re excited to see how this EO is implemented over the next few months and are eager to support this work and share New Jersey’s learnings with other states interested in addressing or expanding permitting reform initiatives. If you’d like to learn more about our work on permitting reform, check out our websites here:
