Sherrill transitions to rolling back environmental protections

Democrats using Trump as cover for developer and corporate polluter agenda

I was concerned from the start when Governor Mikie Sherrill failed to create an environmental transition team — something that has never happened before in New Jersey. When the executive orders were released, the red flags multiplied. Still, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Then the Transition Team Reports came out, and the picture became unmistakably — and deeply — disturbing.

Those reports are not just background documents. They are the blueprint. Together with the executive orders, they reveal a troubling direction: a steady rollback of environmental protections at the very moment New Jersey should be standing as a bulwark against the national assault on the environment.

There is not one meaningful mention of improving the environment — no commitment to clean water, clean air, or safe drinking water. Instead, the focus is on fast-tracking permits and issuing waivers to get around those very protections. There is no plan to stop sprawl or overdevelopment, no effort to save open space. Instead, the reports promote more destruction of open land, more sprawl, and more overdevelopment.

There is no mention of protecting people from flooding or mitigating flood risk. Instead, the emphasis is on granting waivers to allow building in flood-prone areas. There is no serious discussion of sea-level rise — only a roadmap for getting around existing coastal protections. The reports do not call for regulating greenhouse gases or launching new climate programs. Instead, they call for raiding clean-energy funds and promoting natural gas and nuclear power.

There is not a single new environmental program recommended. The Transition Reports aren’t about strengthening protections — they’re about getting around them. Frankly, they read as if they were written by the New Jersey Builders Association and the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, along with their lobbyists and consultants.

Taken together, the Transition Reports and executive orders could amount to the biggest assault on environmental protection in decades. If fully implemented, they would represent the most comprehensive rollback of environmental standards New Jersey has ever seen.

Privatization is not efficiency — it’s environmental destruction

The executive orders and transition report to privatize key environmental functions at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection are not about efficiency — it’s about environmental destruction. Allowing consultants who work for developers to write permits, review those permits, and then sign off on them is an open invitation to abuse.

This doesn’t make housing more affordable or projects safer. It makes communities more vulnerable to flooding, pollution, and public health risks. Building in wetlands or flood-prone areas puts people directly in harm’s way. This is worse than the fox guarding the henhouse — this is the fox designing the henhouse and then certifying that it’s safe.

We’ve been down this road before. It was called Fast-Track. Under that law, if DEP didn’t act on a permit within 90 days, it was automatically approved — no matter the environmental damage or whether it violated the law. It also created a so-called Permit Czar.

The law was so extreme that the Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush ruled that New Jersey was violating the federal Clean Water Act. If fully implemented, EPA would have been forced to take over New Jersey’s water permits. The current executive orders and Transition Reports revive that same anti-environment agenda.

These executive orders create a new Permit Czar — a corporate lobbyist embedded in the Governor’s Office whose role is to push through permits for polluters and developers while rolling back rules and regulations. Permitting, standards, and oversight are taken out of the hands of scientists and professionals and placed in a political office where speed matters more than environmental protection.

This isn’t science. It’s political science.

Undermining local democracy and public participation

The damage goes even further. The executive orders and reports call for changing the Municipal Land Use Law to require towns and cities to fast-track development approvals. Planning and Zoning Boards would be forced to rush decisions or face automatic approvals.

That undermines public participation, local control, and meaningful government scrutiny.

Executive orders are being used to bypass the Legislature, weaken public input, pause critical protections, and fast-track approvals before communities even know what’s being proposed. Environmental safeguards aren’t being repealed outright — they’re being hollowed out through waivers, compressed timelines, and backroom decision-making.

Fossil foolishness in a climate crisis

The reports and executive orders don’t propose new programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they promote fast-tracking gas-plant upgrades and expansions under the banner of “efficiency,” locking New Jersey into fossil fuels during a climate crisis.

These facilities are disproportionately located in Environmental Justice communities, increasing pollution and public health impacts in already overburdened areas.

Energy deregulation allows gas plants in New Jersey to sell electricity out of state. Expanding generation won’t deliver cheaper or more reliable electricity to New Jersey — it will deliver more air pollution, more fracking, and more climate damage.

This is familiar language, familiar tools, and familiar tactics: fast-tracked permitting, regulatory pauses, privatization, waivers, and executive shortcuts. It’s straight out of the developer and corporate polluter playbook.

As Dick Cheney once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

We’ve seen this before. Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency to fast-track fossil-fuel projects and weaken environmental review. It was reckless and dangerous.

Now New Jersey is using similar crisis framing — electricity affordability, red-tape reviews, shot clocks, privatization, permit czars, and expanded executive authority — to sidestep public process. Whether these tools come from Republicans in Washington or Democrats in Trenton, the outcome is the same: weaker oversight and greater risk to public health and the environment.

Ironically, Trump’s open hostility to environmental rules now provides political cover for rollbacks in New Jersey. Governor Sherrill is not Donald Trump. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. But the Transition Reports make clear that these policies side with developers and corporate polluters over environmental protection.

Affordability as an excuse for rollbacks

Affordability has become the new buzzword used to justify weakening environmental protections — and the danger is even greater when Democrats do it. Democratic governors often get a pass because they are assumed to be pro-environment. That makes rollbacks harder to challenge and easier to normalize.

This isn’t just a Trump or Christie agenda. It’s the agenda of corporate Democrats, lobbyists and big donors putting polluters and developers ahead of the public interest.

Building in wetlands and flood-prone areas doesn’t make housing affordable — it puts people directly in harm’s way.

Freezing regulations is always the first step in rolling back protections. Trump did it. Christie did it. Now Sherrill is doing it. There is a freeze on proposed and new regulations, including critical rules on PFAS cleanup standards, real flood-protection and wetlands rules, Toxic Site Remediation Act reforms, and solid- and hazardous-waste and recycling rules.

Raiding clean-energy and RGGI funds turns them into a piggy bank and effectively guts these programs. People will pay more to live in colder homes. Pollution will increase. Costs will rise. Jobs will be lost.

These funds exist to reduce emissions, weatherize homes, lower demand, and deliver long-term savings. Using them for short-term relief isn’t affordable — it’s a gimmick that hurts consumers, workers, and the environment.

Instead of investing in renewables and conservation, the administration is pushing nuclear power through a new task force. Nuclear power is the most expensive and dangerous way to boil water. It leads to rate hikes, long-term health risks, massive subsidies, and locks ratepayers into decades of financial and environmental risk — while crowding out cheaper, faster renewable solutions.

Silence from big green

The silence from many major environmental groups is deafening. These groups endorsed Sherrill, failed to extract strong environmental commitments during the campaign, and now sit quietly as these rollbacks move forward.

One organization even served on the transition team and supported a report calling for raiding clean-energy funds and promoting natural gas and nuclear power. Too many “Zoom-chair warriors” seem more concerned with access than with protecting the environment.

New Jersey needs environmental leadership — now

New Jersey is the most densely developed state in the nation, denser per square mile than China or India. The only things denser are the politicians who don’t get it.

People are angry about overdevelopment and sprawl. They’re frustrated by traffic, flooding, and high property taxes. They’re upset about the loss of open space, logging of public lands, and privatization of parks. Yet the Sherrill Administration has no plan to address any of it.

New Jersey ranks near the top nationally for building in flood-prone areas and for FEMA and flood-insurance payouts. Only one of our watersheds meets the Clean Water Act’s highest standards. We face rising seas, worsening air quality, and growing public health risks.

New Jersey should be taking on Trump environmentally — strengthening state law, restoring Clean Air and Clean Water Act standards, adopting tougher greenhouse-gas limits, and aggressively opposing federal rollbacks. Other states have done it. We can too.

Affordability means clean air, clean water, open space, and safe communities. Our economy depends on it — tourism, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and public health all rely on a healthy environment.

If Governor Sherrill wants DEP to be more effective, the answer isn’t cutting red tape. It’s staffing, resources, and respect for science and public process.

After eight years of rollbacks under Chris Christie and eight years of inaction under Phil Murphy, New Jersey cannot afford four more years of environmental rollbacks disguised as affordability.

We must speak out and stand up — no matter the political party. Protecting our environment makes New Jersey healthier, more affordable, and more livable.

Addendum: executive orders — privatization, power grabs, and polluter giveaways

What matters isn’t party — it’s actions.

Taken together, Governor Sherrill’s Executive Orders 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 represent a coordinated rollback of environmental protection, using affordability and efficiency as cover while shifting power away from science, public participation,n and accountability.

EO 1 & EO 2 — energy “affordability” by raiding climate funds

These orders divert clean-energy and climate funds — RGGI, the Clean Energy Program, and solar funds — to provide short-term bill relief. That may look helpful today, but it sacrifices long-term savings, job creation, pollution reduction, and climate resilience. It’s a shell game: sell the future to cover the present while utilities continue to post record profits.

They also promote expanded natural-gas infrastructure and nuclear power, locking New Jersey into more greenhouse-gas emissions, more fracking and higher long-term costs. Nuclear energy is neither cheap nor fast. It is heavily subsidized, enormously expensive and shifts massive long-term financial risk onto ratepayers while crowding out renewable solutions.

EO 4 — the permitting czar power grab

EO 4 centralizes permitting authority in the Governor’s Office through a COO-style “permitting czar” — effectively a lobbyist for polluters and developers inside state government. This role overrides the expertise of DEP scientists and professionals, making rules negotiable and replacing environmental review with political pressure.

This is political science replacing real science.

EO 5 — fast-track, rubber-stamp permitting

EO 5 creates cross-agency permitting teams, shot clocks, and approval pressure that turn environmental review into a race against the clock. We’ve tried this before — and it caused New Jersey to violate the Clean Water Act. Shot clocks don’t fix bad applications; they force agencies to approve them. The result is more sprawl, more flooding, and more pollution.

EO 7 — the regulatory pause

Freezing regulations is the opening move in every rollback campaign. EO 7 halts new protections and pulls pending rules off the track just as climate change accelerates and public health threats grow. Pollution doesn’t pause. Flooding doesn’t pause. Science doesn’t pause — but protections do.

The Transition Reports also call for changing municipal land-use law to require towns to fast-track approvals. If municipalities fail to meet shortened deadlines, projects would be automatically approved. This is pay-to-play sprawl on steroids.

Privatization: the worst idea of all

Layered through these executive orders is an aggressive push to privatize permitting and land-use review. Letting consultants — many of whom work for developers — review and approve permits for those same developers is unconscionable.

This isn’t reform.

It’s deregulation by executive order.

It’s corporate polluters and developers writing their own approvals.

And we know exactly how this ends.

If we fight back — together we can win.