The proposed New Jersey FY27 budget does not include funding for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, created in 2018 to support trustworthy, community-based news and information statewide. New Jersey should restore the $2.5 million allocated to NJCIC last year.
This is not only a journalism issue. It is a business, government, and resilience issue. When communities lack reliable local information, public decisions become harder to understand, explain and trust. Rumors spread faster. Basic facts get lost. People are left making sense of important issues from fragments.
For elected officials and business leaders, that should matter. Here are five reasons why:
1. Communities and local economies need reliable information to function
People need to know what is happening around them: what businesses are opening, what roads or utilities are being repaired, what services are available, what is being proposed locally, where public dollars are going, and what decisions are coming next.
When local information is weak, residents hear partial accounts, public questions go unanswered, and basic facts are harder to find. Reliable civic information gives communities, local officials, and businesses a clearer starting point.
2. Local news supports better public decision-making
For more than 20 years, I have worked as a professional planner in New Jersey, helping communities navigate land use, redevelopment, infrastructure and long-term change. Alongside that work, I have spent nearly 15 years building two-way civic information systems, reporting for WHYY and working internationally on information needs research.
Civic information is infrastructure: how people understand what is happening, who they can trust, and how public decisions affect daily life.
3. Trusted information matters before disruption, not only during it
Business continuity depends on more than power, roads and supply chains. It also depends on whether people can find reliable local information during storms, outages, public health emergencies, infrastructure failures, and other disruptions.
People usually rely on information systems they already know. I saw that during Superstorm Sandy, when communication channels became strained and people turned to trusted local information networks to understand road conditions, assistance, damage, and what neighbors were seeing.
I saw the same pattern after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where communications failures left communities disconnected from basic information about services and recovery resources.
For residents, businesses and public agencies, the question was often the same: what is open, what is available, what has changed, and who can be trusted?
Trust cannot be built on command. It has to exist before people urgently need it.
4. Business and government depend on factual information flows
Every community decision has an information environment around it, from a Main Street opening to a housing development, road project, hospital expansion, warehouse proposal, redevelopment plan, or zoning change. People need to understand what is proposed, what is not, what the process allows, and where their questions can go.
When that information environment is weak, confusion takes over early. Officials spend time correcting misunderstandings. Businesses face uncertainty. Property owners and developers may also find that incomplete or inaccurate information shapes public perception before the facts are clear.
Reliable information flows support public confidence, more predictable processes and better conversations about investment, growth, housing, infrastructure, and local economic development.
5. Civic information deserves the same seriousness as other infrastructure
New Jersey already treats physical infrastructure and public safety systems as things that must be planned, funded and maintained. Roads, drainage, emergency operations, utilities, and resilience projects all show up in public plans and budgets.
Civic information should be treated with similar seriousness. That does not mean turning local news into government communication. It means recognizing that trusted, independent civic information has public value. Communities need people and organizations that can identify information gaps, translate complex issues, and help residents make sense of change.
NJCIC is one of the few public structures New Jersey has created to support local news, civic media and community information as public goods.
Restore the $2.5 million for NJCIC. Keep investing in local news and trusted civic information. Treat community communication as infrastructure.
Justin Auciello is a NJ licensed professional planner, local media founder, civic information systems practitioner, and former WHYY reporter.
