Opinion: Starving Peter to Feed Paul

By Michael Catania

[Michael Catania is a former deputy commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection who served in that position under two Governors and three Commissioners in both Republican and Democratic administrations. He is also the author of many of New Jersey’s landmark environmental laws (including several of the Green Acres Bond Acts) and is currently the president of Conservation Resources, a non-profit conservation intermediary organization. The opinions expressed in this commentary are entirely his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of any other individual or any organization.]

It is getting harder and harder to go a week these days without hearing about the administration's latest plans to divert some significant source of funds intended to support a key state environmental program. If it isn't raiding more than $200 million in clean energy funds, then it might plan to glom tens of millions of dollars intended to clean up old landfills or hazardous waste sites.

And all the while, DEP staffing levels continue to shrink, and the agency loses more and more experienced employees to retirements or just attrition. Watching this from the outside, it seems as if the agency is slowing being starved to death.

What is really going on here? The administration claims that it is simply making "tough decisions" that reflect difficult times as part of the governor's self-proclaimed "Jersey Comeback." But enviros and many other informed government watchers -- including many in the regulated community -- suspect that something else is afoot.

For all the administration's propaganda to the contrary, what has gradually become clear is that an intentional and wholesale dismantling of the state's nationally recognized environmental regulatory infrastructure is underway. With a vengeance. And while this appears to be just a part of a larger ideological effort to remake government, there is no doubt that DEP is now regarded as the red-headed stepchild by a governor with national political ambitions.

And this is not exactly a health-and-fitness regimen we are talking about, where a bloated bureaucracy is remade into a leaner, more efficient organization. It is more like watching the forces of Santa Anna surround the Alamo, where the outcome is inevitable.

Over the course of the past 40 years, DEP has grown like Topsy as governors and legislatures gave the agency ever-increasing responsibilities to address a wide range of public concerns -- safe drinking water, solid, hazardous waste, and even radioactive sites to overdevelopment and sprawl, endangered species, and historic preservation. The rate of growth in programs, staff, and budget was meteoric, and managing this growth was one of the biggest challenges seen anywhere in government at any level. Clearly there is some room for improvement here, and a real need for innovative and inspirational management.

Few supporters or opponents of DEP would argue that the current financial crisis facing virtually every state government does not call for tough choices that will of necessity affect DEP, or that is would be inappropriate to figure out ways to retool the agency to make it more effective and efficient. But I cannot honestly say that the approach taken by the Christie administration even scratches the surface on the things that could and should be done along these lines.

Instead, Christie has invariably taken the easy way out in dealing with DEP. First, he has sought to demonize the agency and its mission in a way that no other governor -- Republican or Democrat -- has ever even considered, much less made into standard operating procedure. Starting with his scathing transition report on DEP, he has sought to portray the agency and its volumes of "overly burdensome" regulations as a job-killing problem, with the clear implication that a smaller DEP meant a smaller problem.

Next, the Governor has systematically isolated the agency from the federal EPA, as well as other states, through a series of policy reversals on climate change, clean energy, and regional air pollution that have left agency as the odd man out among its traditional allies.

Last but not least, by diverting funds and seeking to privatize a number of the agency's regulatory functions, he has largely succeeded in not only demoralizing the staff, but also eviscerating many key DEP programs -- all the while touting the agency's improved "customer service."

What the Governor has not done, however, is to make any real effort to consider and implement some very thoughtful recommendations of groups appointed by previous governors, like the Permit Efficiency Task Force, or the earlier Environmental Law Institute report on streamlining DEP permitting procedures. Nor has he bothered to empanel his own balanced group to develop new recommendations, or to spend time brainstorming how DEP might better regulate cross sector, or otherwise respond to changed circumstances in innovative ways. Instead, like an occupying army, he has chosen to transform the agency through ridicule, policy reversals, and impounding funds meant to support vital environmental programs. The approach has been all bullying, all the time.

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