Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell has a simple test for whether government is working: Did anything actually get done?
“One of the things that frustrates me is the allegiance to a process,” he said. “The governor and I are 100% in agreement. It’s about getting stuff done. You don’t get rewarded for process.”
Caldwell, speaking on a panel with PSEG Chair Ralph LaRossa and Amtrak Chair Tony Coscia on Wednesday during the ReNew Jersey Business Summit & Expo in Atlantic City, said the new administration wants to be judged on outcomes, not on how many meetings it holds or how many plans it writes.
He praised the hiring of Chief Operating Officer Kellie Doucette, who has been tasked with doing just that.
“This is where Kellie and others come in to really make things move with an end result focus, so that, at the end of four years, we can sit back and say, ‘This is what happened under our watch,’” he said to the crowd at Harrah’s.
For Caldwell, who spent more than a decade at Deloitte advising public‑ and private‑sector leaders across six states, the obsession with process is not a minor annoyance — it’s the root of many of government’s failures.
Communication, he has learned, is the key.
“I’ve worked in six states advising health care and public sector,” he said. “And every problem is a communication problem. Every single problem.”
Caldwell took time to communicate one central belief to the hundreds of business leaders in the room: Government cannot get things done without working directly and openly with business. In his view, the state and the business community aren’t on opposite sides of the table — they’re serving the same people.
“One of the things the governor and I are trying to do, and the fact that she was here yesterday and I’m here today, is to communicate with the business community as partners,” he said. “We’re in it together. We have the same customers.
“When people leave New Jersey, it hurts business. It hurts the state. When people aren’t trained properly for the jobs you need, that hurts everyone.”
That “same customers” line is Caldwell’s way of collapsing the supposed gap between what’s good for residents and what’s good for employers. Retaining people, training them and connecting them to real jobs is a shared bottom line, he said.
Caldwell feels workforce development is a prime example of where business and the state either deliver together or fail together.
“It’s going to be very hard for us to be less expensive than some other states, but if we have the best trained workforce in the United States of America, we’re going to attract many more businesses,” he said.
Caldwell made it clear the potential is not only there — it’s already here.
“New Jersey would be the 22nd largest economy in the world,” he said. “I’ve been encouraging people to begin to think about us as the country of New Jersey.”
From there, Caldwell pushed the room to think differently — about building supply chains, courting international partners, and seizing opportunities that might otherwise be left to Washington or New York.
“I’ve challenged people to say, ‘Why don’t we think about working with countries?’” he asked. “This is our time to begin to have relationships with them that we’ve never had before.
“I’m here to say, ‘We’re here to be partners; we’re here to facilitate communication,’” he said.
He closed by returning to his core theme: Results, not rhetoric — and results delivered with business, not to it.
“You have a partner in Trenton,” he said. “We’re here to work with you. We’re here to clear out the bureaucracy. We want to hear about the problems so that we can’t solve them unless we hear about them.
“We want you to be optimistic about the future. There is tremendous hope for New Jersey to be something far greater than it’s ever been before. If we work together — so we’re in it together — we’re going to make a difference, and we’re going to be the best business‑friendly state in the United States of America.”
