Governor Sherrill’s environmental report card: Moving FAST for polluters

The first 100 days show the administration siding with special interests over people

New Jersey is in the middle of a climate emergency, an affordability crisis, a flooding disaster, and a public health fight over dirty air and contaminated water. This is not a time to play political games, siding with corporate interests at the expense of our environment.

So far, Mikie Sherrill has looked more like another politician managing headlines siding with special interests than a governor willing to confront the forces damaging New Jersey’s future.

In just her first 100 days, she has already sent a dangerous message through her Transition Reports and now the so-called Operation FAST executive order. It is not about protecting the public. It is about saying yes faster to developers, utilities, and politically connected interests while the people of New Jersey and our environment are left standing outside the door.

She talks about affordability while raiding clean energy funds. She talks about cutting red tape while weakening environmental reviews. She talks about climate while supporting expensive nuclear power and polluting fossil fuel expansion. She talks about being tough on Washington while failing to show the kind of resistance needed when extremists attack environmental protections. She now calls polluters and developers Department of Environmental Protection customers, which shows total disregard for the people and the environment.

This is the same old New Jersey formula: say the right things, then remove public oversight and participation. Govern for insiders and special interests.

Final Grade: D For Developers / Polluters

Affordability is an excuse for bad priorities. There are several dangerous warning signs.

Operation FAST: Declaring War on the NJDEP

One of the clearest warning signs is Operation FAST. This is being done without legislative approval or public oversight or approval.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) was created to protect clean air, clean water, wetlands, floodplains, open space, and public health. Under Sherrill’s FAST agenda, the NJDEP risks becoming a permit mill whose success is measured by how quickly it approves projects, while not being able to say no because that takes time.

NJDEP: The New Jersey Department of Expedited Permits

Her plan creates “shot clocks,” artificial deadlines, and cross-agency permitting teams designed to rush approvals. Rule freezes and red-tape reviews are a way to roll back environmental regulations and standards. A permit czar acts as a corporate lobbyist in government to push through permits and roll back rules.

What these deadlines really mean is pressure on NJDEP staff to rubber-stamp applications instead of doing real reviews—to push through permits for data centers, ICE facilities, pipelines, nuclear power plants, metal recycling centers, and more overdevelopment.

Developers and polluters are treated as “customers.” Residents who have to live with the flooding, traffic, pollution, and destruction of open spaces apparently do not count. Fast-track is back.

We’ve been down this road before. It was called Fast-Track in 2004, a dirty political deal by Norcross’s so-called Democrats. Under that law, if the NJDEP 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 the so-called permit czar.

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

“Shot clocks” mean rubber stamps

One of the most dangerous parts of Operation FAST is the use of artificial deadlines and “shot clocks” on permits. That may sound harmless, but in reality, it means rushing complex environmental reviews that require science, engineering, and public scrutiny.

You cannot put a stopwatch on protecting drinking water.

You cannot fast-track wetlands review.

You cannot rush flood hazard permits when neighborhoods are already drowning from stronger storms and rising seas.

What these deadlines really do is pressure NJDEP staff to rubber-stamp projects or face political backlash. Instead of asking whether a project is safe, sustainable, or lawful, the new question becomes: Can we approve it fast enough?

A Republican playbook in Democratic clothing

What makes this even more disturbing is that these are the same anti-environment tactics we fought for years under Republican administrations: regulatory freezes, weakening oversight, privatization, cutting agency budgets, and treating environmental rules as obstacles instead of protections.

These are the policies Republicans always wanted, and Democrats always claimed to oppose. Now they are being repackaged with buzzwords like “affordability” and “efficiency.”

But affordability does not come from deregulation. It comes from clean water, healthy communities, lower flooding costs, lower energy waste, and smart planning. When you weaken protections, the public pays later through flooded homes, polluted waterways, asthma, traffic congestion, and higher taxes for cleanups.

Privatizing the public interest

This executive order will lead to the privatization of key environmental functions at the NJDEP. It is 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. It’s the fox designing and building the hen house and saying it is safe.

Operation FAST also moves power away from scientists and career professionals and into the hands of political appointees and the permitting czar. That is not streamlining government—it is privatizing the public interest.

The NJDEP was created to serve the people of New Jersey, not to function as a customer service desk for developers. Yet under this model, those seeking to profit from permits are treated as priority clients while communities are treated like inconveniences.

Residents who want to question a warehouse, pipeline, power plant, luxury development, or flood-prone project are expected to get out of the way while deals are rushed through.

It’s about science—political science.

Raiding clean energy funds is robbery in broad daylight

One of the oldest scams in Trenton is pretending that environmental funds are piggy banks for political problems. Instead of making utilities and corporate profiteers pay, politicians steal from the future.

That is exactly what happens when clean-energy funds are diverted to cover electric bill relief. Those funds were meant for:

• Energy efficiency
• Solar programs
• Electrification
• Battery storage
• Lowering long-term bills
• Helping low-income families permanently cut costs

When you raid those funds, you are not solving a crisis. You are delaying solutions and pretending it is leadership. That is like selling the fire truck to pay for the fire.

New Jersey families need lower bills. But utilities should pay, not the clean-energy future.

NJDEP cuts and “red tape” politics

A proposed 23% reduction in NJDEP funding—down from $650 million to $502 million, including a $15 million cut to operations and $13 million in new funding to cut red tape—sends a terrible signal.

Whenever politicians say “cut red tape,” the public should grab their wallets and environmentalists should grab their boots. Because in New Jersey, “red tape” usually means:

• Wetlands protections
• Flood hazard rules
• Stream buffers
• Public hearings
• Environmental justice review
• NJDEP permit scrutiny

Polluters never complain about too little regulation. Developers do not lose sleep over paperwork. They lose sleep over rules that stop them from paving wetlands and building in flood zones.

Climate change is here, but New Jersey still approves disaster

You cannot claim to fight climate change while allowing reckless development in floodplains, forests, wetlands, and stormwater failure zones. New Jersey has become a state where we subsidize disasters by:

• Approving overdevelopment
• Flooding neighborhoods
• Spending taxpayer money on recovery
• Repeating the cycle

That is insanity dressed up as planning.

What we need is:

• No new major building in high-risk flood zones
• Stronger stormwater rules
• Mandatory climate impact reviews
• Buyouts for repetitive-loss homes
• Forest preservation
• Transit-centered growth where infrastructure exists

Instead, too many politicians still treat every development proposal as sacred.

The environment is not anti-growth. Flooding people’s homes is anti-growth.

Clean Air: Sacrificing frontline communities

Communities in Camden, Newark, Elizabeth, and industrial corridors across New Jersey breathe diesel soot while politicians issue statements.

Warehouse sprawl, truck traffic, port pollution, power plant emissions, and asthma clusters continue.

Where is the emergency response?

Where is the warehouse moratorium in overburdened communities?

Where is port electrification at scale?

Where is aggressive diesel enforcement?

Where is cumulative impact regulation with teeth?

Environmental justice cannot be a slogan for press conferences and ignored in permit offices.

Toxic sites: Privatized cleanup is a polluter’s dream

New Jersey has thousands of contaminated sites. Yet too much cleanup relies on consultants hired by the same parties responsible for contamination. That system was always flawed. Self-policing cleanups are like letting students grade their own exams.

We need:

• Direct NJDEP oversight
• Independent audits
• Faster orphan-site remediation
• Aggressive lawsuits against polluters
• PFAS testing wherever needed
• Public transparency on cleanup failures

If Sherrill keeps defending insider cleanup systems, communities will keep living next to poison while paperwork says “resolved.”

Energy policy: Expensive diversions and delays

New Jersey does not have an energy shortage. It has a political courage shortage.

The cheapest power is efficiency.

The fastest power is solar plus storage.

The cleanest power is demand reduction.

Instead, politicians keep getting seduced by fossil gas and nuclear talking points.

Solar + storage = delayed.

Efficiency = raided.

Microgrids = ignored.

Offshore wind revival = stalled.

Every new gas plant means:

• More emissions
• More pipelines
• More ratepayer costs
• Stranded assets
• Decades of dependence

Gas is not a bridge fuel anymore. It is a dead-end road.

Existing nuclear plants are one debate. But chasing expensive new reactors while homes leak energy and solar projects wait in line is absurd.

Nuclear power is the most expensive way to boil water.

Standing up to Washington requires more than TV soundbites

If extremists in Washington attack environmental laws, clean air rules, science, and democracy, New Jersey must fight back hard. Do not use federal attacks on the environment as cover for your own rollbacks.

That means lawsuits, executive action, resistance, and refusing intimidation, not symbolic outrage and cable-news courage. Pass a law like Oregon did, blocking the EPA /Trump’s rollbacks in NJ.

If Mikie Sherrill wants to be seen as a fighter, then fight where it counts: against rollbacks, against fossil fuel favoritism, against anti-science extremism. Anything less is performance.

What Mikie Sherrill should do immediately

1. Stop raiding clean-energy funds.
2. Say no to new fossil fuel plants or pipelines.
3. Strengthen the NJDEP, don’t gut it.
4. Strengthen flood rules and Coastal Area Facility Review Act (CAFRA) protections.
5. Create an environmental justice emergency plan now.
6. Launch a solar, storage, and efficiency revolution.
7. Clean toxic sites with public accountability.
8. Institute a moratorium on reckless AI data center sprawl.
9. Stop logging schemes and the privatization of public lands.
10. Fight sprawl and release open space funds.

Final verdict

Mikie Sherrill has the chance to be a real environmental governor. Right now, she is acting like a conventional politician trying to please everyone. That never works in a climate emergency.

You cannot split the difference between science and developers.

You cannot compromise between flood safety and overbuilding.

You cannot balance polluter profits against children’s lungs.

You cannot raid the future to patch the present.

New Jersey does not need another polished manager of decline. It needs a fighter for the environment, not for polluters’ permits.

Right now, Mikie Sherrill is being graded on what she is doing—not what she is saying. And so far, she is close to failing the test.